[sid-milter-discuss] "can't determine Purported Responsible Address" for all yahoo! groups verification emails

[Sotiris T. <tsi...@fo...>]

Hello everybody,

I work for an ISP and we use sendmail 8.13.7 with sid-milter 0.2.14 on 
linux (RHEL 3, kernel 2.4.21).

sid-filter is invoced with the following parameters:
"sid-filter -p unix:/var/lib/sid-filter/socket -l -r 2 -T 30 -P 
/var/lib/sid-filter/sid-filter.pid -u smmsp"
and called like this in sendmail.cf
Xsid-filter, S=unix:/var/lib/sid-filter/socket, T=C:1m;S:1m;R:6m;E:1m

We have sporadic mails being rejected by sid-filter errors (Too many 
retries, Invalid Arguments, unable to determine responsible domains) ..

But we have a persistent problem with yahoo! group verification emails, 
which are always rejected as "unable to determine responsible domain".

This is reproduced by us as follows: Go to any Yahoo! group 
(http://group.yahoo.com), try to join it and wait for the verification 
email sent by Yahoo!

This verification mail is never received, and mail logs show the following:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oct  4 13:15:02 mx-in-04e0 sm-mta[19160]: k94AF0sO019160: 
from=<reg.ojswoxzrge2tsojvgy4dsoi-mitsos=kat...@re...>, 
size=7026, class=0, nrcpts=1, 
msgid=<200...@mx...>, proto=SMTP, 
daemon=MTA-v4, relay=n2.bullet.mud.yahoo.com [209.191.126.208]

Oct  4 13:15:02 mx-in-04e0 sm-mta[19160]: k94AF0sO019160: 
to=<mi...@ka...>, delay=00:00:01, pri=37026, stat=can't 
determine Purported Responsible Address
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found a post made last year in this list by Dick St.Peters 
(http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=13348563) where 
he states:

"The problem isn't the envelope from address.  The "can't determine 
responsible domain" comes from the PRA scope check and shows up for mail 
sent without any "From:" or "Sender:" header or other basis for 
determining a PRA.

This happens for mail sent by simple-minded SMTP engines.  If mail is 
sent using sendmail and has no "From:" header, sendmail will add one 
based on the envelope from."


My question:
why does sid-filter fail to find (in this case) 
<reg.ojswoxzrge2tsojvgy4dsoi-mitsos=kat...@re...> 
and fails the check?

I find it hard to believe that yahoo! is not sending proper headers in 
its verification emails and it is using a "simple-minded SMTP engine", 
but I will try to contact them as well..

In the meantime, are there any suggestions to fix this problem? I am 
willing to provide any additional info and run any tests required..

Thanks in advance,
Sotiris.