emacs mailer from error with Sun OS4 clients with Yellow Pages

[George Planansky]

On our covey of diskless Sun 3/60's, served by a Sun 3/280, Sun OS 4.0x,
mailings made with the GNU Emacs ver. 18.52 mailer put the wrong name in
the ``From: username'' field.  

This occurs when mailing from a 3/60 login.  The letter arrives, saying it
came from that 3/60 and was received by the server, but the from: username
has the name of the recipient, not the sender.  If there is more than one
recipient, the first one named shows up as the sender.  This occurs
whether or not the name of the recipient is an alias, possibly of several
names, or not.

If the bcc: field is filled with the name of the sender, then the from:
field has the correct value.   If a from: field is filled before sending
the letter, the from: field and a sender: field both have the correct,
same, value.

When mailing from a server login, or from a standalone Alliant mail gets
the correct from: field value.   The Suns run Yellow Pages, using the
server's passwd, group, and so on, files.  The Alliant is not involved in
Yellow Pages.

Mailings by the Sun OS mailer, by the Alliant's Concentrix mailer, and by
ELM on the Suns, have correct from: fields under all circumstances.

What's going wrong and how do I fix it?

George Planansky                  gplan at ra.umb.edu
Atmosphere Environment Research
Cambridge MA 02139
(617) 547-6207