BUG: GnuPG Key import fails to parse TLD email address

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 06:52:49PM +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> Hi,

> Taral:
> > Actually, the problem is that the email address should be:
> > 
> > blah@ai.

> The dot-at-the-end syntax is valid for DNS (host) names, but it's not
> valid SMTP address syntax to add a dot at the end of an email address
> (among other places).

	It's not???  I remember helping the sys admin at Emory University
out a few years ago with an ancient customized sendmail.cf file that was
broken on that syntax and he was getting bounces and failures.  Seems like
we pawed through the RFCs and never found anything that said it was invalid.
Turned out to be simple to fix in the sendmail.cf file anyways.  This
was on an old SunOS box that was their UUCP routing hub.  I was one of
tier 2 distribution hubs down from it on the UUCP links.  It was in one
of the UUCP to Internet rewriting rules for some of their special routes.
They had it busted and when an address came in with a trailing dot in the
from address, the rewriting rule broke badly.  It was pretty rare to run
into messages like that, but certainly not unheard of.

> I would agree that the best way around this problem is to use
> blah@mail.ai, or whatever. Many people with hosts or subdomains names
> "ai" will have problems sending mails to you otherwise.

	I agree whole heartedly with this.  How would I tell the difference
between "ai" and "ai.wittsend.com"?  Would I have to do DNS query for every
unadorned named to insure that it's not a TLD, and how would I resolve
the conflict if it were?  If I had a system "ai" (Artificial Intelligence
box?  Sounds like a reasonable name to me.) and tried to ftp to it, should
I get it or should I get your TLD?  If it works for mail, it shouldn't work
different for any other protocol or anything doing a name resolution.
That would imply that your actions could influence the behavior of local
names on my network.  I don't like that at all, even if it is exceedingly
rare and difficult.

> Personally, I'd use the ai.ai.ai domain.  ;-)

	ROTFL  :-)

	Back in the bad old days of UUCP, we talked a friend of ours
into naming his system "bing".  Well, that was reasonable, seeing as
his name was Bing Bang.  (I swear to God, I'm not joking.)  This was
great with the old UUCP bang paths.

	To get E-Mail to him through the bang path, it went from Emory
University like this:  emory!wittsend!bing!bing.

	That's "Emory bang WittsEnd bang Bing bang Bing"  ;->

> -- 
> Matthias Urlichs     |     noris network AG     |     http://smurf.noris.de/
> -- 
> Authority is no stronger than the man who weilds it.
>                                 -- Dolores E. McGuire

	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw@WittsEnd.com
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (678) 463-0932   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
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