🚀 go-pugleaf

In <2463@sun.uucp>, Guy Harris writes:
> What guarantees that a neighbor in your domain is the appropriate neighbor
> to route the mail to?  You may be sending to "Large_American_Corporation.COM",
> but the best path to "Large_American_Corporation" may be through
> "University_of_Southern_North_Dakota_At_Hoople.EDU".  

True, if you've heard of "Large_American_Corporation.COM".  But if you've 
never heard of LAC, a reasonable convention would be to dump it on
"Piddlin_Garage_Operation.COM" and assume that any site knows at least
how to find the "smart" router in its own domain.

> > 	And UUCP does not guarantee reliable deivery or message back ...
> > 	mail can vanish into never-never land, which should NOT be
> > 	allowed.
> 
> What does this have to do with mail routing?  The fact that mail can be
> dropped by UUCP is due to several problems:
> 
> 	1) not all UUCPs know how to send undeliverable mail back to the
> 	   original sender - it often goes back to "uucp" on the previous
> 	   machine

To quote the immortal (immoral?) Peter Honeyman, "if not for those cute-as-
a-shithouse mailers...."  Because there already is enough address munging
going on, I will not feel confident about reliable replies (on undeliverable
mail) until:
	1) Every site can somehow handle a path-less domain address, e.g.
		joel@sd.gould.com
	2) The CAAS mailers give up the ghost.  
I've tried the latter myself, using a path-aliased smart mailer and sendmail
BSD 4.2, but the latter starts retching if you try to leave "TO" and "FROM"
lines unmunged, particular when building a UNIX-style "From" line.

> 	2) UUCP doesn't always deal gracefully with out-of-space conditions
> 	   on /usr/spool

About the only practical solution is a quota system (with maybe a dedicated
file system), and allow UUCP to refuse new files until it's under quota
(the reserve disk space.).  You could, I suppose, always send your mail
with reply receipts. 


	Joel West	CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o UC San Diego)
	{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww
	jww@SDCSVAX.ARPA