smail vs. sendmail

[Gertjan Vinkesteyn]

I am trying since a couple of days now to bring up smail (2.5/1.14) on
a level that it will be accepted by our backbone hp4nl (previously mcvax).
In this version I am missing support for Cc: fields and Reply-To: and
In-Reply-To: fields. Especially the absence of a Cc: field scanner can cause
mail to bounce between major backbones like in the following example:

	Subject: acceptance test
	From: gertjan at atcmpe
	Cc: gertjan
	To: user at hp4nl
results in 
	Subject: acceptance test
	From: gertjan at atcmpe
	Cc: gertjan at hp4nl.nluug.nl
	To: user at hp4nl
at the target site.
The empty domain address in the Cc: field will be filled in by hp4nl to
their domain address. That causes it to bounce between their two computers
hp4nl.nluug.nl and mcvax.cwi.nl something what they don't like.

So if smail3.x should be accepted in netland, let it be a good MTA mailer,
comparable to sendmail and mmdf. Proper handling of RFC822 is first demand.
Smail2.5 is considered to be a good LAN mailer but to send mail out of the door
is done by sendmail still.

My conclusion is that smail is very good in what it does, it is difficult
to bring it up as an acceptable MTA mailer without using sendmail (or mmdf).
-- 
UUCP and other network	  )\/(	..!hp4nl!kunivv1!atcmpe!gertjan
  connections via mcvax	  )/\(	gertjan at atcmp.nl (at due time)
This note does not necessarily represent the position of AT Computing BV