🚀 go-pugleaf

|In article <davecb.725923251@yorku.ca> davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown) writes:
|>  Your mail may be unreliable, but mine isn't: mine uses SMTP, 

|>if skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU is losing mail, you should speak to your
|>postmaster: you're on the internet too. 

|I know you meant it as a red herring, trying to deflect the discussion
|from your ridiculous claims about mail reliability, by it is rather
|telling. If you really thought that mail was "reliable" then how could
|skyking be losing it? Your accusation that skyking is losing mail is in
|reality the admission that mail is NOT reliable. 

No, I meant it as a serious comment.  And I don't appreciate your
.plan entry:

========
[skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU] 
Login name: stanley                        In real life: I Found Chfn!
Directory: /usr/users/stanley              Shell: /bin/sh
On since: Sat Jan  2  9:51:29 PST 1993 on ttyp2 from c3d2.cs.colorado.edu
New mail received Sat Jan  2 10:54:07 PST 1993;
  unread since Fri Jan  1  7:39:38 PST 1993
Plan:
To crack every password on nexus.yorku.ca
=============

  I have already responded to the problem of user/administrator error:
you need to consider whether or not you're letting this get too personal.
I'll respond the the factual content of your scenario in another message.

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@CCS.YorkU.CA | lethe!dave
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | 
Willowdale, Ontario,  | York Postmaster and
CANADA. 416-223-8968  | occasional sendfail(8) consultant.

stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
|Even should this be true, here is a very real instance of mail being
|sent and nothing being received as an error:

|	I send mail to a system that is down. 

|	Three days go by...

|	The far end sends an error. 

|	In the intervening three
|	days, however, the disk controller of my mailhost lets the
|	smoke out of one of the smoke containers. Being Christmas Eve,
|	it isn't fixed for four days.

|	Did the mail I sent get through? No.
|	Did I get an error response? No.
|	Has this ever happened? Yes.
|	Do I treat mail as being reliable? Ha. Ha.

  I tend to assume a normal operations secedule of backups when I
discuss mailhubs.  Yes, other things can interfere with mail.  In my
case, a Dash-10 can drop through the roof of my building (I'm under a
landing slope, see) and take out everything.
  However, I'm discussing mail, not acts of god.  Problems outside
the mail system and/or protocol get dealt with by solutions outside
the system and/or protocol.

  My operator restores the backup that cron took, and the mailer
delivers the bounce message. Several days late.

  By the way, we run a 7-day expirey period, just to deal with probabalistic
latency problems like that.

--dave

-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@CCS.YorkU.CA | lethe!dave
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | 
Willowdale, Ontario,  | York Postmaster and
CANADA. 416-223-8968  | occasional sendfail(8) consultant.

DC-B> == David Collier-Brown <davecb@nexus.yorku.ca>

 DC> No, I meant it as a serious comment.  And I don't appreciate your
 DC> .plan entry:

 DC> ========
 DC> [skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU] 
 DC> Login name: stanley                        In real life: I Found Chfn!
 DC> Directory: /usr/users/stanley              Shell: /bin/sh
 DC> On since: Sat Jan  2  9:51:29 PST 1993 on ttyp2 from c3d2.cs.colorado.edu
 DC> New mail received Sat Jan  2 10:54:07 PST 1993;
 DC>   unread since Fri Jan  1  7:39:38 PST 1993
 DC> Plan:
 DC> To crack every password on nexus.yorku.ca
 DC> =============

ckd@loiosh /src/mime2groff > f stanley@skyking.oce.orst.edu@jacobs.cs.orst.edu
[jacobs.cs.orst.edu]
Trying 128.193.32.13...
[skyking.oce.orst.edu]
Login name: stanley                        In real life: I Found Chfn!
Directory: /usr/users/stanley              Shell: /bin/sh
On since: Tue Jan  5 15:34:28 PST 1993 on ttyp6 from watneys.cs.colorado.edu
New mail received Tue Jan  5 16:37:06 PST 1993;
  unread since Mon Jan  4 13:22:37 PST 1993
Plan:
To crack every password on jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU

Cute named pipe trick, actually.  For whatever reason, I get "Service
denied" trying to finger at skyking directly; whoever's being paranoid
should just turn the thing off totally instead of trying to filter it,
because finger u@h1@h2 works fairly often...
--
Christopher K. Davis      | ``Usenet seems to run much like the Kif (or,
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   |   for the TV generation, Klingon) high command.
System Administrator, EFF |   Whoever takes action and can be heard wins.''
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   |   --Peter da Silva <peter@ferranti.com>