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Article #1308

Question about NetInfo aliases

#1308
From: Brian Willoughby
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1992 05:10
38 lines
2195 bytes
While browsing through NetInfo, I noticed that there are somtimes multiple  
values for the name property of some of the standard aliases.

For example, the MAILER-AGENT directory has both "MAILER-AGENT" and  
"mailer-agent" in the name property, but only "postmaster" in the members  
property.  Similarly, the Postmaster directory has both "Postmaster" and  
"postmaster" in the name property, and "root" in the members property.

Some of this info seems to be lost when you do a nidump aliases . as shown:
sounds:brianw> nidump aliases .
Postmaster: root
MAILER-DAEMON: postmaster
MAILER-AGENT: postmaster
nobody: /dev/null
usenet: root

So it looks like mail to MAILER-AGENT gets sent to postmaster, but there is  
really only an entry for Postmaster (notice capitolization) that is directed to  
root.

(I actually do have some questions)

1) Is there a problem that nidump aliases . does not reflect the complete  
picture of what is in NetInfo?  I have noticed that mail aliases are usually  
case-insensitive, so why does the NetInfo database have seemingly useless  
information?

2) Can I get a free ride by taking advantage of this?  What I would like to do  
is avoid making an alias for every mispelling of my email name.  If I create a  
directory called brianw and set several values for the name property (including  
"brian" and "brianw") and set the value of the members property to "brianw"?  I  
haven't seen a case where there were duplicates name values which weren't  
simply the same value in lower case.
-- 
Brian Willoughby	Software Design Engineer, BSEE NCSU
BrianW@SoundS.WA.com	Sound Signal Processing Software and Consulting
NeXTmail welcome	- NO EMAIL SOLICITATION without prior permission
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!wupost!gumby!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!uw-beaver!uw-coco!nwnexus!sounds!brianw
From: BrianW@SoundS.WA.com (Brian Willoughby)
Subject: Question about NetInfo aliases
Message-ID: <BvsEDF.10n@sounds.wa.com>
Sender: brianw@sounds.wa.com (Brian Willoughby)
Reply-To: BrianW@SoundS.WA.com
Organization: SoundSoftware, Bellevue, WA, USA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:10:27 GMT
Lines: 38