Setting ENVELOPE FROM

[Adam H. Kerman]

My system administrator asked me to ask you a question of how alpine
sets ENVELOPE FROM.

I have one inbox on my local Mail server. The inbox has several aliases,
and I can use submailboxes using "+" to delimit the submailbox part.

mymailbox+***@example.com

I set up roles to allow me to send email from foreign servers. I assume
ENVELOPE FROM matches From on those messages.

On the local server, I just manually edit From to send with an alias or
with a submailbox.

Will ENVELOPE FROM match my edited From header, or does it use my
regular email address?

My interpretation of the use of Sender header is that I wouldn't use it
in such a circumstance as it's still my account.

Without use of a Sender header, does the standard require From and
ENVELOPE FROM match unless there's a good reason not to do so?

Thanks.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My system administrator asked me to ask you a question of how alpine
sets ENVELOPE FROM.

That is a complicated question to answer because it depends on lots of
details, but in essence the answer is "the email address that Alpine
thinks belongs to the person using the computer used to send the email"
(there is an exception to this later).

Alpine tries to figure out your email address from your username and
domain. The username is the part on the left of the @ symbol in the email
address. In my case it is "chappa". You can set this up in PC-Alpine,
but not in Unix Alpine. The domain is what users configure in the "User
Domain" option in the configuration screen, and if this is not configured,
the name of your computer, or the network it belongs to.

That is the idea, so even though you may be sending messages in the
gmail.com network, your domain might be washington.edu.

This causes problems for roles, so when you are going to send an email
using roles, this is different. In that case, your email address is the
envelope from.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My interpretation of the use of Sender header is that I wouldn't use it
in such a circumstance as it's still my account.

I agree. There is no requirement to use the Sender header. It is an
optional header.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Without use of a Sender header, does the standard require From and
ENVELOPE FROM match unless there's a good reason not to do so?

No, there is no reason why the envelope from and the from address have to
match. The typical user case is of a secretary sending email on behalf of
the boss. In this case you want the From header to be the boss, and the
sender header to be the secretary, so this boils down to a problem of
authorization in the SMTP server, that is, can the secretary send messages
impersonating the boss. The envelope from would be the email address of
the secretary and the from address the one for the boss. The same issue
happens today with calendar events.

In other words, as long as the server allows the sender and the from
header to be different, there is nothing preventing this from happening.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My system administrator asked me to ask you a question of how alpine
sets ENVELOPE FROM.

That is a complicated question to answer because it depends on lots of
details, but in essence the answer is "the email address that Alpine
thinks belongs to the person using the computer used to send the email"
(there is an exception to this later).
Alpine tries to figure out your email address from your username and
address. In my case it is "chappa". You can set this up in PC-Alpine,
but not in Unix Alpine. The domain is what users configure in the "User
Domain" option in the configuration screen, and if this is not configured,
the name of your computer, or the network it belongs to.

Ok. If I edit From to use an alias or submailbox, then ENVELOPE FROM is
still ***@domain. Got it. Thanks. I take it SMTP Server is ignored for
setting ENVELOPE FROM.

Post by Eduardo Chappa
That is the idea, so even though you may be sending messages in the
gmail.com network, your domain might be washington.edu.
This causes problems for roles, so when you are going to send an email
using roles, this is different. In that case, your email address is the
envelope from.

Is SMTP Server in a Role also ignored for this purpose? I use the Role
command both for the purpose of setting From: and to set the matching
SMTP server. For instance, I set SMTP Server to a gmail SMTP server in
the gmail Role.

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My interpretation of the use of Sender header is that I wouldn't use it
in such a circumstance as it's still my account.

I agree. There is no requirement to use the Sender header. It is an
optional header.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Without use of a Sender header, does the standard require From and
ENVELOPE FROM match unless there's a good reason not to do so?

No, there is no reason why the envelope from and the from address have to
match. The typical user case is of a secretary sending email on behalf of
the boss. In this case you want the From header to be the boss, and the
sender header to be the secretary, so this boils down to a problem of
authorization in the SMTP server, that is, can the secretary send messages
impersonating the boss. The envelope from would be the email address of
the secretary and the from address the one for the boss. The same issue
happens today with calendar events.

Yes. That was always my interpretation of the purpose of the Sender header,
to indicate the person who literally authenticated to the server despite
the mailbox shown on From. I realize a lot of people set the Sender header
who interpret its use differently.

Post by Eduardo Chappa
In other words, as long as the server allows the sender and the from
header to be different, there is nothing preventing this from happening.

Thank you.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Ok. If I edit From to use an alias or submailbox, then ENVELOPE FROM is
setting ENVELOPE FROM.

That's correct. The smtp-server setting is completely ignored for purposes
of setting up the envelope from.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Is SMTP Server in a Role also ignored for this purpose? I use the Role
command both for the purpose of setting From: and to set the matching
SMTP server. For instance, I set SMTP Server to a gmail SMTP server in
the gmail Role.

Yes, no smtp-server setting is ever used to set the envelope from. What
counts is your email address at gmail. So, using a gmail address in a
gmail smtp-server is good, but using a gmail address in an outlook server,
or an outlook address in a gmail server is not good. You have to use an
address that the server allows as a sender.

[Lucas Levrel]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Ok. If I edit From to use an alias or submailbox, then ENVELOPE FROM is
setting ENVELOPE FROM.

That's correct. The smtp-server setting is completely ignored for purposes of
setting up the envelope from.

So, if I understood you two correctly, the only way in Alpine to override
the envelope from is to use a role that sets From: ?

I'm sometimes the "secretary" of a mailing list but don't want my username
and domain to be in the mail. Secondary question: how does Alpine find my
username? I think I tried to override various env variables to no avail.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Lucas Levrel

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Ok. If I edit From to use an alias or submailbox, then ENVELOPE FROM
ignored for setting ENVELOPE FROM.

That's correct. The smtp-server setting is completely ignored for
purposes of setting up the envelope from.

So, if I understood you two correctly, the only way in Alpine to
override the envelope from is to use a role that sets From: ?

That is one way.

Post by Lucas Levrel
I'm sometimes the "secretary" of a mailing list but don't want my
username and domain to be in the mail. Secondary question: how does
Alpine find my username? I think I tried to override various env
variables to no avail.

The "MAIL FROM" command sets the "return-path" header. SMTP servers use
the value here to figure out if you are allowed the send the email you are
posting to the server. The default value is taken from the login to your
computer and the domain for your computer, except in PC-Alpine, where you
can configure both of these values.

[Lucas Levrel]

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Ok. If I edit From to use an alias or submailbox, then ENVELOPE FROM
ignored for setting ENVELOPE FROM.

That's correct. The smtp-server setting is completely ignored for
purposes of setting up the envelope from.

So, if I understood you two correctly, the only way in Alpine to override
the envelope from is to use a role that sets From: ?

That is one way.

So, what are the other ways?

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel
I'm sometimes the "secretary" of a mailing list but don't want my username
and domain to be in the mail. Secondary question: how does Alpine find my
username? I think I tried to override various env variables to no avail.

The "MAIL FROM" command sets the "return-path" header. SMTP servers use the
value here to figure out if you are allowed the send the email you are
posting to the server. The default value is taken from the login to your
computer and the domain for your computer, except in PC-Alpine, where you can
configure both of these values.

To clarify, I don't expect to set an empty "MAIL FROM", but to set it to
the "secretary" address (list-***@example.com). My question remains:
_how_ does Alpine obtain my login? If it were from an environment
variable, I could adjust it to my liking...

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Lucas Levrel

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel
So, if I understood you two correctly, the only way in Alpine to
override the envelope from is to use a role that sets From: ?

That is one way.

So, what are the other ways?

I thought I explained it. Your login information in your computer, except
in PC-Alpine where you can specify both your user id and domain.

Post by Lucas Levrel
To clarify, I don't expect to set an empty "MAIL FROM", but to set it to
_how_ does Alpine obtain my login? If it were from an environment
variable, I could adjust it to my liking...

The way SMTP servers work today is by using the MAIL FROM command to
determine if you are allowed to send an email message from that account in
that server (and typically only setting the From header accordingly.) If
you are allowed to use the account list-***@example.com, then use a role
to send such message in the SMTP server that allows messages from that
address.

[William Unruh]

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel
So, if I understood you two correctly, the only way in Alpine to
override the envelope from is to use a role that sets From: ?

That is one way.

So, what are the other ways?

I thought I explained it. Your login information in your computer, except
in PC-Alpine where you can specify both your user id and domain.

I think he wants to know more specifically what alpine looks at to
determine your username and hostname. It was not running when you logged
in, so it cannot have looked at your "login information" as you logged
in . Does it look at
some environment variable ($USER)? Does it look at the uid of the
running alpine? Or does it get this information from somewhere else?

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Lucas Levrel
To clarify, I don't expect to set an empty "MAIL FROM", but to set it to
_how_ does Alpine obtain my login? If it were from an environment
variable, I could adjust it to my liking...

The way SMTP servers work today is by using the MAIL FROM command to
determine if you are allowed to send an email message from that account in
that server (and typically only setting the From header accordingly.) If
to send such message in the SMTP server that allows messages from that
address.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by William Unruh
I think he wants to know more specifically what alpine looks at to
determine your username and hostname. It was not running when you logged
in, so it cannot have looked at your "login information" as you logged
in . Does it look at some environment variable ($USER)? Does it look at
the uid of the running alpine? Or does it get this information from
somewhere else?

Imagine you run a linux machine. And you login to it. Your system must get
you login information from somewhere (including your home, username, etc.)
That is what Alpine does.

I have no idea why anyone would think that Alpine uses environment
variables for this purpose. The answer is Alpine does not use environement
variables for this purpose.

As I said before, it uses your login information.

But again, you are missing the point in terms of the answer: Use a role to
send email and make sure that the From: address is allowed to send email
in that SMTP server. That is all that is needed.

Most personal computers are not configured to have the exact username and
domain than the one in the SMTP server, and in particular this would be
useless as soon as you configure two accounts, but even if you could
configure one computer with this data, it would have to be part of the
network in which the SMTP server resides, and so again, it would be not
useful for most people. In other words, the infomation about login/domain
is mostly irrelevant as obtained by default by Alpine, because it hardly
ever matches the information that is needed to send the email, so
configure a role, and use the correct address in it, so that your email
can go to its destination when sent through the chosen SMTP server
attached to that email address.

Having said all of that, some ISPs set their SMTP servers open for their
subscribers, and these rules do not apply at all. The situations I am
describing have to do more with commercial services such as Gmail,
Outlook, etc.

Bottom line: do not worry about this as much, worry more about setting
your from header correctly so that it will be accepted in the SMTP server
when sending, and then everything will be work correctly.

[William Unruh]

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by William Unruh
I think he wants to know more specifically what alpine looks at to
determine your username and hostname. It was not running when you logged
in, so it cannot have looked at your "login information" as you logged
in . Does it look at some environment variable ($USER)? Does it look at
the uid of the running alpine? Or does it get this information from
somewhere else?

Imagine you run a linux machine. And you login to it. Your system must get
you login information from somewhere (including your home, username, etc.)
That is what Alpine does.

It gets your machine name from the fact that you log on on that machine
or using the hostname command I assume.
login gets your username because you type it in. It then remembers your
user name because it stores it in $USER environment variable and because
it starts up programs under your uid, and remembers it because childred
of a program get the same uid as the parent.

Alpine does not user the environment variable USER (I just tried it-- I
changed USER and opened alpine, and it did not use the new USER), so it
probably gets it from the uid of running alpine program.

Post by Eduardo Chappa
I have no idea why anyone would think that Alpine uses environment
variables for this purpose. The answer is Alpine does not use environement
variables for this purpose.

Experimentally I agree.

Post by Eduardo Chappa
As I said before, it uses your login information.

It has to get your "login information" from somewhere. You say, and my
experiment agrees, that it does not use the environment variable to get
that information. The only other place I can imagine it getting that
information is from the uid of the alpine process.

Post by Eduardo Chappa
But again, you are missing the point in terms of the answer: Use a role to
send email and make sure that the From: address is allowed to send email
in that SMTP server. That is all that is needed.

I do not understand what you mean by a "role". I presume it is as
explained in
http://alpine.x10host.com/alpine/alpine-info/roles/

Post by Eduardo Chappa
Most personal computers are not configured to have the exact username and
domain than the one in the SMTP server, and in particular this would be
useless as soon as you configure two accounts, but even if you could
configure one computer with this data, it would have to be part of the
network in which the SMTP server resides, and so again, it would be not
useful for most people. In other words, the infomation about login/domain
is mostly irrelevant as obtained by default by Alpine, because it hardly
ever matches the information that is needed to send the email, so
configure a role, and use the correct address in it, so that your email
can go to its destination when sent through the chosen SMTP server
attached to that email address.
Having said all of that, some ISPs set their SMTP servers open for their
subscribers, and these rules do not apply at all. The situations I am
describing have to do more with commercial services such as Gmail,
Outlook, etc.
Bottom line: do not worry about this as much, worry more about setting
your from header correctly so that it will be accepted in the SMTP server
when sending, and then everything will be work correctly.

I think his question is precisely how to set up the header so that it
uses his alternative From: line. I will assume that the header he wants is suitable for
his SMTP server. Alpine seems to set the From: line on its own without any way of
configuring it except by using a "role", is that correct?

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by William Unruh

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by William Unruh
I think he wants to know more specifically what alpine looks at to
determine your username and hostname. It was not running when you logged
in, so it cannot have looked at your "login information" as you logged
in . Does it look at some environment variable ($USER)? Does it look at
the uid of the running alpine? Or does it get this information from
somewhere else?

Imagine you run a linux machine. And you login to it. Your system must get
you login information from somewhere (including your home, username, etc.)
That is what Alpine does.

It gets your machine name from the fact that you log on on that machine
or using the hostname command I assume.
login gets your username because you type it in. It then remembers your
user name because it stores it in $USER environment variable and because
it starts up programs under your uid, and remembers it because childred
of a program get the same uid as the parent.
Alpine does not user the environment variable USER (I just tried it-- I
changed USER and opened alpine, and it did not use the new USER), so it
probably gets it from the uid of running alpine program.

The command "whoami" gives the name. Probably a library call does the same.


...

Post by William Unruh

Post by Eduardo Chappa
Bottom line: do not worry about this as much, worry more about setting
your from header correctly so that it will be accepted in the SMTP server
when sending, and then everything will be work correctly.

I think his question is precisely how to set up the header so that it
uses his alternative From: line. I will assume that the header he wants is suitable for
his SMTP server. Alpine seems to set the From: line on its own without any way of
configuring it except by using a "role", is that correct?

I don't see in the role setup how to set the "envelope from" differently
of the "from" header. I see these:

Initialize settings using role : <No Value Set>

Set From = "..." <...>

Set Reply-To = <No Value Set>

Set Fcc = <No Value Set: using "value from fcc-name-rule">

Set LiteralSig = <No Value Set>

Set Signature = <No Value Set: using "default (.signature)">

Set Template = <No Value Set>

Set Other Hdrs = <No Value Set>

Use SMTP Server = <No Value Set>

Use NNTP Server = <No Value Set>


Maybe using "Set Other Hdrs", but how exactly? Perhaps 'Envelope-To:
<something>'?


Mutt can set the envelope from separately, they told me long ago, but
not Pine.

[William Unruh]

Post by Carlos E.R.

Post by William Unruh

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by William Unruh
I think he wants to know more specifically what alpine looks at to
determine your username and hostname. It was not running when you logged
in, so it cannot have looked at your "login information" as you logged
in . Does it look at some environment variable ($USER)? Does it look at
the uid of the running alpine? Or does it get this information from
somewhere else?

Imagine you run a linux machine. And you login to it. Your system must get
you login information from somewhere (including your home, username, etc.)
That is what Alpine does.

It gets your machine name from the fact that you log on on that machine
or using the hostname command I assume.
login gets your username because you type it in. It then remembers your
user name because it stores it in $USER environment variable and because
it starts up programs under your uid, and remembers it because childred
of a program get the same uid as the parent.
Alpine does not user the environment variable USER (I just tried it-- I
changed USER and opened alpine, and it did not use the new USER), so it
probably gets it from the uid of running alpine program.

The command "whoami" gives the name. Probably a library call does the same.

whoami.c
/* whoami -- print effective userid
....
uid = geteuid ();
pw = (uid == NO_UID && errno ? NULL : getpwuid (uid));
....

Ie, it gets the name from the uid (well, yes, actually the euid)

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My system administrator asked me to ask you a question of how alpine
sets ENVELOPE FROM.

That is a complicated question to answer because it depends on lots of
details, but in essence the answer is "the email address that Alpine
thinks belongs to the person using the computer used to send the email"
(there is an exception to this later).
Alpine tries to figure out your email address from your username and
address. In my case it is "chappa". You can set this up in PC-Alpine,
but not in Unix Alpine. The domain is what users configure in the "User
Domain" option in the configuration screen, and if this is not configured,
the name of your computer, or the network it belongs to.
That is the idea, so even though you may be sending messages in the
gmail.com network, your domain might be washington.edu.
This causes problems for roles, so when you are going to send an email
using roles, this is different. In that case, your email address is the
envelope from.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
My interpretation of the use of Sender header is that I wouldn't use it
in such a circumstance as it's still my account.

I agree. There is no requirement to use the Sender header. It is an
optional header.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Without use of a Sender header, does the standard require From and
ENVELOPE FROM match unless there's a good reason not to do so?

No, there is no reason why the envelope from and the from address have to
match. The typical user case is of a secretary sending email on behalf of
the boss. In this case you want the From header to be the boss, and the
sender header to be the secretary, so this boils down to a problem of
authorization in the SMTP server, that is, can the secretary send messages
impersonating the boss. The envelope from would be the email address of
the secretary and the from address the one for the boss. The same issue
happens today with calendar events.
In other words, as long as the server allows the sender and the from
header to be different, there is nothing preventing this from happening.

Dear Eduardo,

We had this discussion a few months back. I see from the alpine 2.24
Release Notes that you subsequently changed the default on FEATURE: Do
Not Generate Sender Header to YES. Now, this is something I'd set to YES
years ago because I didn't want X-X-Sender added ('cuz it looked weird)
and I didn't agree that a Sender header was desireable. It wasn't needed
locally as I had already authenticated into my account and had
privileges to send Mail.

Could I just point out that the Help text associated with this feature
wasn't updated to reflect the new default setting.

In the second sentence, perhaps change "By default" to "Prior to version
2.24"

This is an old issue that went back to the original pine, maybe in major
version 2. I recall reading Mark Cuccia's explanation for the weirdness of
the X-X-Sender header, but I don't seem to have saved his followup article.

I also note that you might update the Help text associated with FEATURE:
Scramble the Message-ID When Sending as it continues to refer to
encoding the operating system and program version in the generated
Message-ID, which you are no longer doing as of 2.24.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
We had this discussion a few months back. I see from the alpine 2.24
Release Notes that you subsequently changed the default on FEATURE: Do
Not Generate Sender Header to YES. Now, this is something I'd set to YES
years ago because I didn't want X-X-Sender added ('cuz it looked weird)
and I didn't agree that a Sender header was desireable. It wasn't needed
locally as I had already authenticated into my account and had
privileges to send Mail.
Could I just point out that the Help text associated with this feature
wasn't updated to reflect the new default setting.

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback!

Post by Adam H. Kerman
In the second sentence, perhaps change "By default" to "Prior to version
2.24"
This is an old issue that went back to the original pine, maybe in major
version 2. I recall reading Mark Cuccia's explanation for the weirdness
of the X-X-Sender header, but I don't seem to have saved his followup
article.
Scramble the Message-ID When Sending as it continues to refer to
encoding the operating system and program version in the generated
Message-ID, which you are no longer doing as of 2.24.

Good catch! Thank you for pointing this out. I will make these changes!
I appreciate your help!

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
This is an old issue that went back to the original pine, maybe in major
version 2. I recall reading Mark Cuccia's explanation for the weirdness of
the X-X-Sender header, but I don't seem to have saved his followup article.

Mark Crispin, not Mark Cuccia. The latter was a major contributor to
telecom-digest.