Subject: MDN: Original-Recipient header

From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 16:47:10 -0700

Hi.

Is anyone aware of a mailer that implements section 2.3 of RFC2298 (MDN)?
It's reproduced below.

-Dan Wing

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2.3 The Original-Recipient Header

   Since electronic mail addresses may be rewritten while the message is
   in transit, it is useful for the original recipient address to be
   made available by the delivering MTA.  The delivering MTA may be able
   to obtain this information from the ORCPT parameter of the SMTP RCPT
   TO command, as defined in RFC 1891 [8].  If this information is
   available, the delivering MTA SHOULD insert an Original-Recipient
   header at the beginning of the message (along with the Return-Path
   header).  The delivering MTA MAY delete any other Original-Recipient
   headers that occur in the message.  The syntax of this header, using

---

From: Matti Aarnio <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 17:50:41 +0300

> Is anyone aware of a mailer that implements section 2.3 of RFC2298 (MDN)?

  I recall having had a look into the MDN specs, and did consider it
  to be purely MUA thing.  (And thus I essentially ignored it..)

  I almost said: "ZMailer for couple of years" -- but alas, not quite.
  ZMailer puts  "X-ORCPT:" header into local delivery.
  (And puts things into environment variables for deliveries into pipes)
  Adding the official  "Original-Recipient:"  header is trivial ... done.

  To think of it, the DSN specs carries also  ENVID=  parameter, and ZMailer
  presents that (if present) in form of  "X-ENVID:"  header.

  Analogous presentation form would then be:  "Original-Envelope-Id:" ?
  (To take a model from DSN report formats.)

  Reading further, section 5 of 2298 refers to RFC 1891 for ORCPT= parameter,
  however at RFC 1892 section 6.2.1 subsection (d) says:

    If no ORCPT parameter was present in the RCPT command when the
    message was received, an ORCPT parameter MAY be added to the RCPT
    command when the message is relayed.  If an ORCPT parameter is added
    by the relaying MTA, it MUST contain the recipient address from the
    RCPT command used when the message was received by that MTA.

  and indeed that is what ZMailer is doing...

  .. as a result, major relays running ZMailer detect sites with bad
  firewalls, which said firewalls go mug the through-going SMTP protocol
  containing  ORCPT=  parameter data.    New  sendmail can do it too,
  but as it doesn't do that "MAY be added" part, it depends on rare
  UAs to issue them...

> -Dan Wing

/Matti Aarnio

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From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 08:54:59 -0700

>   Adding the official  "Original-Recipient:"  header is trivial ... done.

That was easy!  :-)

>   but as it doesn't do that "MAY be added" part, it depends on rare

FYI, the offending Cisco product that used to do that a few years ago has long
since been changed to now simply break ESMTP on purpose instead of allowing
EHLO but breaking several SMTP Service Extensions as part of its firewall
'feature'.  Obviously sub-optimal, but that's life ..

-d

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 21:49:09 -0700 (PDT)

> Is anyone aware of a mailer that implements section 2.3 of RFC2298 (MDN)?

PMDF does.

				Ned

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 22:10:32 -0700 (PDT)

>   (To take a model from DSN report formats.)

Seems to me like envelope-id would be more natural. There is, after all, only
one envelope id, whereas there's both an original and final recipient address.

				Ned