nanog mailing list archives
Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query
From: Jim Duncan <jnduncan () cisco com>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:49:34 -0400
wb8foz () nrk com writes:
A query to help educate me. Feel free to flame away; the week is young. Every site should accept/respond to "postmaster" -- T/F? Or is it "Every site running mail".... Or every box running mail? IOW: Which of the following are required vice recommended vice best practives, etc. a) postmaster () example com b) postmaster () mail example com c) postmaster () wizzbang example com d) postmaster () pop example com e) postmaster () cisco example com and most important to me: where to I go to justify the decisions on same?
The Host Requirements RFC says that if you support "receiver SMTP", you must support the reserved mailbox "Postmaster". In my experience, interpreting that statement has been a pre-existing exercise for the readers for nearly a decade, with many results. In my humble opinion -- heavily dosed with Jon Postel's Robustness Principle -- that rule means that if SMTP mail succeeds to _any_ address for a specific right-hand side, then SMTP mail must also succeed to "postmaster" at that same right-hand side. So using your examples above, if I can send SMTP mail to foo () example com, then I should be able to send SMTP mail to postmaster () example com. I would hope that a real human being would be able to respond, but I realize it's unlikely. There may be other RFCs that cover this issue. Jim == Jim Duncan, Product Security Incident Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc. <http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/sec_incident_response.shtml> E-mail: <jnduncan () cisco com> Phone(Direct/FAX): +1 919 392 6209
Current thread:
- Postmaster 'best practices' query David Lesher (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Ryan O'Connell (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Brett Frankenberger (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Peter van Dijk (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query David Howe (Oct 23)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Gary E. Miller (Oct 23)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Peter van Dijk (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Gary E. Miller (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Jim Duncan (Oct 22)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Steven M. Bellovin (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Steven M. Bellovin (Oct 22)
- Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Gregory Hicks (Oct 22)
- Fwd: Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Rodney Thayer (Oct 22)
- RE: Re: Postmaster 'best practices' query Mike Batchelor (Oct 23)