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Re: Email Subaddressing

"D. J. Bernstein" <djb@koobera.math.uic.edu> Thu, 31 July 1997 21:56 UTC

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From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@koobera.math.uic.edu>
To: ietf-822@imc.org
Subject: Re: Email Subaddressing
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> but you included as a local configuration problem
> the case where the MUA needs to supply a return address.

MUAs typically pass a partially formed message to a submission agent
supplied with the MTA.

The submission agent figures out From, Return-Path, etc., from a
combination of sysadmin configuration and user configuration. See, e.g.,
http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man8/qmail-inject.html.

> What's the mechanism for ensuring that they agree on what such a return
> address should look like?

They don't have to.

I use VERPs for my outgoing messages---e.g.,

   Return-Path: <djb-dsn-869300145.16932@koobera.math.uic.edu>

---so that a program can reliably associate bounce messages with
original messages. The VERPs are created by qmail-inject, not the MUA.
The delivery of djb-dsn-* is handled by qmail-local, not the MUA.

---Dan
Set up a new mailing list in a single command. http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html

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