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| author | manuel <manuel@mausz.at> | 2013-02-04 00:08:53 +0100 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | manuel <manuel@mausz.at> | 2013-02-04 00:08:53 +0100 |
| commit | 69aec538b456402170dc723af417ba5c05389c32 (patch) | |
| tree | e6f34c543f17c6392447ea337b2e2868212424d1 /addresses.5 | |
| download | qmail-69aec538b456402170dc723af417ba5c05389c32.tar.gz qmail-69aec538b456402170dc723af417ba5c05389c32.tar.bz2 qmail-69aec538b456402170dc723af417ba5c05389c32.zip | |
qmail 1.03 import
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| 1 | .TH addresses 5 | ||
| 2 | .SH "NAME" | ||
| 3 | addresses \- formats for Internet mail addresses | ||
| 4 | .SH "INTRODUCTION" | ||
| 5 | A | ||
| 6 | .B mail address | ||
| 7 | is a string of characters containing @. | ||
| 8 | |||
| 9 | Every mail address has a | ||
| 10 | .B local part | ||
| 11 | and a | ||
| 12 | .B domain part\fR. | ||
| 13 | The domain part is everything after the final @. | ||
| 14 | The local part is everything before. | ||
| 15 | |||
| 16 | For example, the mail addresses | ||
| 17 | |||
| 18 | .EX | ||
| 19 | God@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 20 | @heaven.af.mil | ||
| 21 | @at@@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 22 | .EE | ||
| 23 | |||
| 24 | all have domain part | ||
| 25 | .BR heaven.af.mil . | ||
| 26 | The local parts are | ||
| 27 | .BR God , | ||
| 28 | empty, | ||
| 29 | and | ||
| 30 | .BR @at@ . | ||
| 31 | |||
| 32 | Some domains have owners. | ||
| 33 | It is up to the owner of | ||
| 34 | .B heaven.af.mil | ||
| 35 | to say how mail messages will be delivered to addresses with domain part | ||
| 36 | .BR heaven.af.mil . | ||
| 37 | |||
| 38 | The domain part of an address is interpreted without regard to case, so | ||
| 39 | |||
| 40 | .EX | ||
| 41 | God@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 42 | .br | ||
| 43 | God@HEAVEN.AF.MIL | ||
| 44 | .br | ||
| 45 | God@Heaven.AF.Mil | ||
| 46 | .EE | ||
| 47 | |||
| 48 | all refer to the same domain. | ||
| 49 | |||
| 50 | There is one exceptional address that does not contain an @: | ||
| 51 | namely, the empty string. | ||
| 52 | The empty string cannot be used as a recipient address. | ||
| 53 | It can be used as a sender address so that | ||
| 54 | the real sender doesn't receive bounces. | ||
| 55 | .SH "QMAIL EXTENSIONS" | ||
| 56 | The | ||
| 57 | .B qmail | ||
| 58 | system allows several further types of addresses in mail envelopes. | ||
| 59 | |||
| 60 | First, an envelope recipient address without an @ is interpreted as being at | ||
| 61 | .IR envnoathost . | ||
| 62 | For example, if | ||
| 63 | .I envnoathost | ||
| 64 | is | ||
| 65 | .BR heaven.af.mil , | ||
| 66 | the address | ||
| 67 | .B God | ||
| 68 | will be rewritten as | ||
| 69 | .BR God@heaven.af.mil . | ||
| 70 | |||
| 71 | Second, the address | ||
| 72 | .B #@[] | ||
| 73 | is used as an envelope sender address for double bounces. | ||
| 74 | |||
| 75 | Third, envelope sender addresses of the form | ||
| 76 | .I pre\fB@\fIhost\fB-@[] | ||
| 77 | are used to support variable envelope return paths (VERPs). | ||
| 78 | .B qmail-send | ||
| 79 | will rewrite | ||
| 80 | .I pre\fB@\fIhost\fB-@[] | ||
| 81 | as | ||
| 82 | .I prerecip\fB=\fIdomain\fB@\fIhost | ||
| 83 | for deliveries to | ||
| 84 | .IR recip\fB@\fIdomain . | ||
| 85 | Bounces directly from | ||
| 86 | .B qmail-send | ||
| 87 | will come back to | ||
| 88 | .IR pre\fB@\fIhost . | ||
| 89 | .SH "CHOOSING MAIL ADDRESSES" | ||
| 90 | Here are some suggestions on choosing mail addresses for the Internet. | ||
| 91 | |||
| 92 | Do not use non-ASCII characters. | ||
| 93 | Under RFC 822 and RFC 821, | ||
| 94 | these characters cannot be used in mail headers or in SMTP commands. | ||
| 95 | In practice, they are regularly corrupted. | ||
| 96 | |||
| 97 | Do not use ASCII control characters. | ||
| 98 | NUL is regularly corrupted. | ||
| 99 | CR and LF cannot be used in some combinations | ||
| 100 | and are corrupted in all. | ||
| 101 | None of these characters are usable on business cards. | ||
| 102 | |||
| 103 | Avoid spaces and the characters | ||
| 104 | |||
| 105 | .EX | ||
| 106 | \\"<>()[],;: | ||
| 107 | .EE | ||
| 108 | |||
| 109 | These all require quoting in mail headers and in SMTP. | ||
| 110 | Many existing mail programs do not handle quoting properly. | ||
| 111 | |||
| 112 | Do not use @ in a local part. | ||
| 113 | @ requires quoting in mail headers and in SMTP. | ||
| 114 | Many programs incorrectly look for the first @, | ||
| 115 | rather than the last @, | ||
| 116 | to find the domain part of an address. | ||
| 117 | |||
| 118 | In a local part, | ||
| 119 | do not use two consecutive dots, a dot at the beginning, or a dot at the end. | ||
| 120 | Any of these would require quoting in mail headers. | ||
| 121 | |||
| 122 | Do not use an empty local part; it cannot appear in SMTP commands. | ||
| 123 | |||
| 124 | Avoid local parts longer than 64 characters. | ||
| 125 | |||
| 126 | Be wary of uppercase letters in local parts. | ||
| 127 | Some mail programs (and users!) will incorrectly convert | ||
| 128 | .B God@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 129 | to | ||
| 130 | .BR god@heaven.af.mil . | ||
| 131 | |||
| 132 | Be wary of the following characters: | ||
| 133 | |||
| 134 | .EX | ||
| 135 | $&!#~`'^*|{} | ||
| 136 | .EE | ||
| 137 | |||
| 138 | Some users will not know | ||
| 139 | how to feed these characters safely to their mail programs. | ||
| 140 | |||
| 141 | In domain names, stick to letters, digits, dash, and dot. | ||
| 142 | One popular DNS resolver has, | ||
| 143 | under the banner of security, | ||
| 144 | recently begun destroying domain names | ||
| 145 | that contain certain other characters, | ||
| 146 | including underscore. | ||
| 147 | Exception: A dotted-decimal IP address in brackets, | ||
| 148 | such as | ||
| 149 | .BR [127.0.0.1] , | ||
| 150 | identifies a domain owned by whoever owns the host at that IP address, | ||
| 151 | and can be used safely. | ||
| 152 | |||
| 153 | In a domain name, | ||
| 154 | do not use two consecutive dots, | ||
| 155 | a dot at the beginning, | ||
| 156 | or a dot at the end. | ||
| 157 | This means that, | ||
| 158 | when a domain name is broken down into components separated by dots, | ||
| 159 | there are no empty components. | ||
| 160 | |||
| 161 | Always use at least one dot in a domain name. | ||
| 162 | If you own the | ||
| 163 | .B mil | ||
| 164 | domain, | ||
| 165 | don't bother using the address | ||
| 166 | .BR root@mil ; | ||
| 167 | most users will be unable to send messages to that address. | ||
| 168 | Same for the root domain. | ||
| 169 | |||
| 170 | Avoid domain names longer than 64 characters. | ||
| 171 | .SH "ENCODED ADDRESSES IN SMTP COMMANDS" | ||
| 172 | RFC 821 defines an encoding of mail addresses in SMTP. | ||
| 173 | For example, the addresses | ||
| 174 | |||
| 175 | .EX | ||
| 176 | God@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 177 | .br | ||
| 178 | a"quote@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 179 | .br | ||
| 180 | The Almighty.One@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 181 | .EE | ||
| 182 | |||
| 183 | could be encoded in RCPT commands as | ||
| 184 | |||
| 185 | .EX | ||
| 186 | RCPT TO:<God@heaven.af.mil> | ||
| 187 | .br | ||
| 188 | RCPT TO:<a\\"quote@heaven.af.mil> | ||
| 189 | .br | ||
| 190 | RCPT TO:<The\\ Almighty.One@heaven.af.mil> | ||
| 191 | .EE | ||
| 192 | |||
| 193 | There are several restrictions in RFC 821 | ||
| 194 | on the mail addresses that can be used over SMTP. | ||
| 195 | Non-ASCII characters are prohibited. | ||
| 196 | The local part must not be empty. | ||
| 197 | The domain part must be a sequence of elements separated by dots, | ||
| 198 | where each element is either a component, | ||
| 199 | a sequence of digits preceded by #, | ||
| 200 | or a dotted-decimal IP address surrounded by brackets. | ||
| 201 | The only allowable characters in components are | ||
| 202 | letters, digits, and dashes. | ||
| 203 | Every component must (believe it or not) | ||
| 204 | have at least three characters; | ||
| 205 | the first character must be a letter; | ||
| 206 | the last character must not be a hyphen. | ||
| 207 | .SH "ENCODED ADDRESSES IN MAIL HEADERS" | ||
| 208 | RFC 822 defines an encoding of mail addresses | ||
| 209 | in certain header fields in a mail message. | ||
| 210 | For example, the addresses | ||
| 211 | |||
| 212 | .EX | ||
| 213 | God@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 214 | .br | ||
| 215 | a"quote@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 216 | .br | ||
| 217 | The Almighty.One@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 218 | .EE | ||
| 219 | |||
| 220 | could be encoded in a | ||
| 221 | .B To | ||
| 222 | field as | ||
| 223 | |||
| 224 | .EX | ||
| 225 | To: God@heaven.af.mil, | ||
| 226 | .br | ||
| 227 | <@brl.mil:"a\\"quote"@heaven.af.mil>, | ||
| 228 | .br | ||
| 229 | "The Almighty".One@heaven.af.mil | ||
| 230 | .EE | ||
| 231 | |||
| 232 | or perhaps | ||
| 233 | |||
| 234 | .EX | ||
| 235 | To: < "God"@heaven .af.mil>, | ||
| 236 | .br | ||
| 237 | "a\\"quote" (Who?) @ heaven . af. mil | ||
| 238 | .br | ||
| 239 | , God<"The Almighty.One"@heaven.af.mil> | ||
| 240 | .EE | ||
| 241 | |||
| 242 | There are several restrictions on the mail addresses that can | ||
| 243 | be used in these header fields. | ||
| 244 | Non-ASCII characters are prohibited. | ||
| 245 | The domain part must be a sequence of elements separated by dots, | ||
| 246 | where each element either (1) begins with [ and ends with ] | ||
| 247 | or (2) is a nonempty string of printable ASCII characters | ||
| 248 | not including any of | ||
| 249 | |||
| 250 | .EX | ||
| 251 | \\".<>()[],;: | ||
| 252 | .EE | ||
| 253 | |||
| 254 | and not including space. | ||
| 255 | .SH "SEE ALSO" | ||
| 256 | envelopes(5), | ||
| 257 | qmail-header(5), | ||
| 258 | qmail-inject(8), | ||
| 259 | qmail-remote(8), | ||
| 260 | qmail-smtpd(8) | ||
