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Date:      Sun, 10 Aug 1997 18:40:24 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        fenner@parc.xerox.com (Bill Fenner)
Cc:        terry@lambert.org, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/etc aliases
Message-ID:  <199708110140.SAA12999@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <97Aug10.161203pdt.177512@crevenia.parc.xerox.com> from Bill Fenner at "Aug 10, 97 04:11:56 pm"

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> Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote:
> >I *don't* think they should be taken out.  They are mandated by RFC.
> 
> I don't think they should be taken out either, but they are not mandated.
> 
> 1. RFC2142 is Elective, not even Recommended and certainly not Required
> (see RFC2200).  Elective means basically "if you are going to do
> something like this, you must do exactly this."
> 
> 2. RFC2142 itself doesn't claim to apply to all hosts:
> 

A point that most folks seem to be ignoring :-(, and the point that
is very important to me.

>    The purpose of this memo is to aggregate and specify the basic set of
>    mailbox names which organizations need to support.  Most
>    organizations do not need to support the full set of mailbox names  
>    defined here, since not every organization will implement the all of
>    the associated services.  However, if a given service is offerred,
>    then the associated mailbox name(es) must be supported, resulting in
>    delivery to a recipient appropriate for the referenced service or
>    role. 

Now please, go back and read that paragraph again everyone, make sure
you fully and completely understand that it only mandates that if
you offer the service you have to have the mailbox, and then later
in the RFC you'll see that these are only required at the organizational
in most cases.

> 
> I could go either way on the commented / uncommentedness of the aliases
> in the default file, but I think it should go all one way or all the
> other.

I'm defanitly of the opinion they should be commented, sans
MAILER-DAEMON and postmaster, as they are required if sendmail
is running, and the alias file only does anything if sendmail
is running.  Oh, and the pseudo users should be enabled as well.

The additional ones from RFC2142 should be comments if they
are there at all.

> 
> I disagree with the "it gives more ways for spammers to send to known
> userids" argument if they're all aliased to "root" -- "root" is already
> a well known userid.

But ``root'' is one almost every spammer in the world filters out as
they KNOW that root is the one who is going to come hunting them down
and/or filter them in major ways.  

Let's see.. joe mail bomb man wants to get to every host on the
internet's webmaster... ftp rs.internic.net/domain/*.gz, crunch
that through a bit of scripting, tag on webmaster@ and BOOOMMM....

I don't think the author of the RFC would have put it in the security
section of the RFC if there was no concern about it.


-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation, Inc.                   Reliable computers for FreeBSD



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