Re: [exim] Strange behaviour in batsched SMTP submission mod…

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Matthias Waffenschmidt
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Strange behaviour in batsched SMTP submission mode
On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Matthias Waffenschmidt wrote:

> If the original message lacks certain headers like From: or Date: it
> would be fine, if there is a control, whether Exim should handle the
> reinjected mail as a locally generated one or more accuately to
> disable submission mode.


It will not treat it as local if you submit it from a trusted user and
supply a remote IP address using -oMa, but that is very much a hack.

> It is very nice (using the -F option), that there now is no misleading
> name in the From: header, but if the original sender did not enter a
> From: line, while should I add one?


Because a message without an originator field or a date is syntactically
invalid. From RFC 2822:

"The only required header fields are the origination date field and
the originator address field(s)."

Exim doesn't like sending out locally-submitted messages that are
invalid. Sysadmins who are picky are justified in refusing messages with
no originator fields or no date field.

> The very same is true for the Date: header and even worse:
> SpamAssassin adds points and claims the test MISSING_DATE has matched,
> if there is no such header, but Exim adds the header during
> reinjection. This may cause some confusion...


Sigh. Reinjection isn't as useful for this kind of use as perhaps one
might think.

> A 'control = no_submission' as a new ACL option would probably also do
> the trick.


Only if you re-inject using SMTP (*not* BSMTP) and can identify the
reinjected messages so that you don't do this for non-reinjected
messages. [You couldn't do this in the non-SMTP ACL because that runs
far too late; the submission stuff has already happened.]

So why not submit to 127.0.0.1 anyway and have done with it? You can
always use another port to identify reinjected messages (and reject
anyone else who connects to the port).


-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book