On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Stanier A M wrote:
> order request:
>
> Received: from iiiord by serlib0 with local (Exim 2.05 #3)
> id 1283VR-00080C-00; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 15:46:49 +0000
> To: ukbisac@???
> Subject: Innopac Orders
> Reply-To: iiiord
> Reply-To: iiiord@???
> Message-Id: <E1283VR-00080C-00@serlib0>
> From: INNOPAC Orders <iiiord@???>
> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 15:46:49 +0000
>
>
> search results:
>
> Received: from exporter by serlib0 with local (Exim 2.05 #3)
> id 125tx7-0000Lh-00; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 17:10:29 +0000
> To: clarem@???
> Subject: Export E-Mail
> Reply-To:
> Message-Id: <E125tx7-0000Lh-00@serlib0>
> From: Essex Univ Lib <exporter@???>
> Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 17:10:29 +0000
>
>
> Note the two Reply-To fields in the first case, and the blank one in
> the second.
>
> It is not clear to me how an MTA should respond to these.
If it isn't configured to check the message header, it should ignore
them entirely, and just transmit them. MTAs on the whole work on the
envelope.
> In practice,
> exim both delivered the message to the recipient, and sent a failure
> message to the sender saying:
> "A message that you sent contained no recipient addresses, and
> so no delivery could be attempted"
Are you sure it wasn't two different messages? I find it hard to believe
Exim did both. Mind you, Exim 2.05 is now ancient.
What did the Exim log say? That error message occurs only when Exim is
called with the -t option, which says "take recipients from the header".
Those messages seem to have correct header lines, but...
> The suppliers of the library program refused to investigate the problem,
> as we were running Exim rather than sendmail. I thus reverted to running
> sendmail v 5.65, and the problems went away.
I believe that Sendmail ignores blank lines at the start of messages.
Exim is stricter and does not. Could it be that there is a blank line
somewhere causing premature termination of the header?
> I should prefer to run Exim everywhere, rather than Exim everywhere
> except on one library machine. Is there any way I can configure Exim
> to act like sendmail is these cases?
Depends what the problem *really* is. It isn't just those headers.
To debug this you may have to write an "interpose" script that sits
between your library program and your MTA, which logs the arguments it
is called with, and copies the message to a file as well as passing it
on to the MTA.
If there is an Exim problem, please let me know and I'll fix it, but
only in the current release. I'm afraid I don't have time to work on
ancient releases.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
