[lug] e-mail addressing question

[J. Wayde Allen]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Riggs, Rob wrote:

> Yep. "+" for Sendmail and "-" for Qmail, and a whole lotta nothing for
> Exchange.

Actually I just tried and both the "+" and the "-" seems to work with
qmail.

> Anyone know if dash (-) aliased email addresses can be made to work with
> Postfix?

Just tried sending both versions to my postfix box and both were
rejected.  So ... the obvious answer without doing any research would be
to add these to the /etc/aliases file <wink>.

Also tried with my exim configured system, and neither the "+" or
"-" works there either.

So for what it is worth I've created the following table of my quick and
dirty experiments.

		me+something 		me-something
------------------------------------------------------

Sendmail	yes			no

qmail		yes			yes

postfix		no			no

exim		no			no


Now the next level of questioning is whether or not allowing such dynamic
aliasing is part of RFC822 or not?  (I just looked and it wasn't obvious
to me.)  The other question is whether or not this is desirable behavior
for a mail system or not?  The last major question is whether or not this
is a security risk?

Curious anyway.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)

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                        ISART 2002                          
    International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies 
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