On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, John Horne wrote:
> Having said that though I still think the documentation around - RFC's,
> drums - about the Return-path can be mis-leading. It may (or may not) become
> clearer when the new SMTP update becomes an RFC.
There is obviously some interpretation problem, because you are by no
means the first to be confused in this area. The confusion arises
because the documents talk about
(a) The "return path" of a message - meaning the envelope sender. This
is transmitted by the SMTP "MAIL FROM" command, and not as part of the
message data.
(b) The "Return-Path" header line. This may (optionally) be inserted
into a message at the time of final delivery into a mailbox, to capture
the contents of the return path (in sense (a)). There should be no
"Return-Path" headers in messages in transit, which is why Exim defaults
return_path_remove to "true" so that messages which are re-injected into
it after they have been in a mailbox get that header stripped out again.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Government Policy: If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.
