🚀 go-pugleaf

In-reply-to: jpn@teddy.UUCP's message of 15 Jun 87 21:05:43 GMT


jpn@teddy.UUCP writes:

> >>Objection:  There is no problem with precedence because @ always has
> >>the highest precedence, and anything to the left of that is only
> >>interpreted by the site named after the @.
> >>
> >>Response:  This is pure chauvinism.
> >
> >There ARE good reasons for doing it this way -- because that's the approved
> >standard, mostly; if you do it this way your mail will get through and mail
> >forwarded through your system will get through.  This is not chauvinism.
>
> I think it's chauvinism.
> [long examples of hypothetical foul-ups...]
> Maybe I'm just confused...

Yes, you are confused.  The means by which remote gateways are reached
are very straightforward; smail handles it quite neatly.

Consider not a hypothetical example, but a real, working arrangement:
this site.  This is cbstr1.att.com.  We talk nothing but UUCP.  We
don't know anything about other networks aside from the info gleaned
from pathalias and smail.

You can run smail with the -d (debug) flag, in which case it makes
routing decisions but doesn't attempt any delivery (uux is not
called).  I have found the command
	smail -d user@site.domain.spec < /dev/null
to be so useful that I have an alias set up for it.  Consider the
output of this command on some sample properly domainified addresses:

"mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu," a very real address I type all the time.  Note
that cbosgd is the local gateway (as far as my system's understanding
is concerned) to reach the .edu domain.  I believe it, in turn, hands
it off to seismo.  But I don't know for sure, and I don't care - the
mail gets there.  This is as it should be: users care about addresses,
and back-end, low-level software cares about routes.

resolve: parse address 'mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu' = 'mbj' @ 'spice.cs.cmu.edu' (DOMAIN)
getpath: looking for '.spice.cs.cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for 'spice.cs.cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for '.cs.cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for 'cs.cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for '.cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for 'cmu.edu'
getpath: looking for '.edu'
route:  'spice.cs.cmu.edu' (edu) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99)
resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' =
'spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP)
resolve 'mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu' = 'spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' @ 'cbosgd'
(UUCP)
COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux  - cbosgd!rmail '(spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj)'
From Karl.Kleinpaste  Wed Jun 17 10:41:24 1987 remote from cbstr1
Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3)
        id AA05995; 17 Jun 87 10:41:24 EDT (Wed)
Date: 17 Jun 87 10:41:24 EDT (Wed)
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com
Message-Id: <8706171041.AA05995@cbstr1.att.com>
To: mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu

"joe@random.commercial.site.com," a hypothetical, but syntactically
correct address.  Cbosgd is again the route taken.

resolve: parse address 'joe@random.commercial.site.com' = 'joe' @ 'some.random.commercial.site.com' (DOMAIN)
getpath: looking for '.random.commercial.site.com'
getpath: looking for 'random.commercial.site.com'
getpath: looking for '.commercial.site.com'
getpath: looking for 'commercial.site.com'
getpath: looking for '.site.com'
getpath: looking for 'site.com'
getpath: looking for '.com'
route:  'random.commercial.site.com' (com) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99)
resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!random.commercial.site.com!joe' = 'random.commercial.site.com!joe' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP)
resolve 'joe@random.commercial.site.com' = 'random.commercial.site.com!joe' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP)
COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux  - cbosgd!rmail '(random.commercial.site.com!joe)'
From Karl.Kleinpaste  Wed Jun 17 10:51:18 1987 remote from cbstr1
Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3)
        id AA06242; 17 Jun 87 10:51:18 EDT (Wed)
Date: 17 Jun 87 10:51:18 EDT (Wed)
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com
Message-Id: <8706171051.AA06242@cbstr1.att.com>
To: joe@random.commercial.site.com

"romig@ohio-state.edu."  Local pathalias info tells smail that
ohio-state.edu is the same host as osu-eddie.  So that is the route
taken, but the user doesn't even have to know that; "ohio-state.edu"
is quite sufficient.

resolve: parse address 'romig@ohio-state.edu' = 'romig' @
'ohio-state.edu' (DOMAIN)
getpath: looking for '.ohio-state.edu'
route:  'ohio-state.edu' (ohio-state.edu) = 'osu-eddie!%s' (99)
resolve: parse route 'osu-eddie!romig' = 'romig' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP)
resolve 'romig@ohio-state.edu' = 'romig' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP)
COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux  - osu-eddie!rmail '(romig)'
From Karl.Kleinpaste  Wed Jun 17 11:09:45 1987 remote from cbstr1
Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3)
        id AA06689; 17 Jun 87 11:09:45 EDT (Wed)
Date: 17 Jun 87 11:09:45 EDT (Wed)
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com
Message-Id: <8706171109.AA06689@cbstr1.att.com>
To: romig@ohio-state.edu

"person@relay.csnet."  My CSNet gateway is Ohio State, an X.25 CSNet
site.  Ohio State acts like a proper domain host these days, so I
could modify our local pathalias data to use it for all .com, .edu,
and .gov addresses if I cared to, but methinks that would be asocial.

resolve: parse address 'person@relay.csnet' = 'person' @ 'relay.csnet' (DOMAIN)
getpath: looking for '.relay.csnet'
getpath: looking for 'relay.csnet'
getpath: looking for '.csnet'
route:  'relay.csnet' (csnet) = 'osu-eddie!%s' (99)
resolve: parse route 'osu-eddie!relay.csnet!person' = 'relay.csnet!person' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP)
resolve 'person@relay.csnet' = 'relay.csnet!person' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP)
COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux  - osu-eddie!rmail '(relay.csnet!person)'
From Karl.Kleinpaste  Wed Jun 17 10:53:01 1987 remote from cbstr1
Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3)
        id AA06306; 17 Jun 87 10:53:01 EDT (Wed)
Date: 17 Jun 87 10:53:01 EDT (Wed)
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com
Message-Id: <8706171053.AA06306@cbstr1.att.com>
To: person@relay.csnet

In summary, smail does exactly what it should do.  Other sites in this
dept that don't have UUCP set up to talk to Ohio State can still reach
osu-eddie as a CSNet gateway, by way of cbstr1 or cbrma.  I don't care
about the intervening hops - smail takes an ADDRESS and generates a
ROUTE, just like a pure transport agent should.

Do you realize that, if every UUCP site ran smail, no one would ever
again ask, "How do I get mail from UUCP to BITNET?" in comp.mail.misc?
Gee, I don't know how I get there, let's find out:

"zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet," an acquaintance at the University of
Wyoming:

resolve: parse address 'zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet' = 'zsyjkaa' @ 'wyocdc1.bitnet' (DOMAIN)
getpath: looking for '.wyocdc1.bitnet'
getpath: looking for 'wyocdc1.bitnet'
getpath: looking for '.bitnet'
route:  'wyocdc1.bitnet' (bitnet) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99)
resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' = 'wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP)
resolve 'zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet' = 'wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP)
COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux  - cbosgd!rmail '(wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa)'
From Karl.Kleinpaste  Wed Jun 17 11:22:17 1987 remote from cbstr1
Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3)
        id AA06986; 17 Jun 87 11:22:17 EDT (Wed)
Date: 17 Jun 87 11:22:17 EDT (Wed)
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com
Message-Id: <8706171122.AA06986@cbstr1.att.com>
To: zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet

I've been told that Harvard gets involved in that route, but it's at
some point down the line that I really don't care about.

So get off smail's case, try installing it and running it for a couple
of weeks with valid pathalias information, and see how long it is
before you forget how to type a `!' in a mail destination string.

Karl