Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!lll-winken!uunet!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!mcb
From: mcb@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Stuck with .UUCP forever?
Message-ID: <252@ncis.tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 20 Jun 89 17:44:05 GMT
References: <9426@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> <300@capmkt.COM> <9436@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> <233@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> <1320@avsd.UUCP>
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, Pleasanton CA USA
Lines: 39

In article <1320@avsd.UUCP> childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) writes:
> mcb@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch) writes:
> >This totally misses the point of the previous discussion.  "Forwarding", 
> >in this context, MEANS "Internet forwarding". A UUCP-only site, by definition
> >is not on the Internet, and, ipso facto, is unable to do Internet forwarding.
> >In order to do Internet forwarding you have to be ON the Internet, so
> >that Internet hosts using the Domain Name System that receive MX
> >records pointing at your host can contact you to send mail that is to
> >be forwarded to the UUCP universe. It does not mean just "passing mail on".
> 
> What about playing with your sendmail.cf so that it recognizes Internet
> addresses and forwards them to an Internet site that _can_ forward them,
> in a classic Internet sense ?

If you're talking about doing this on the UUCP side, that's presumably
what UUCP-only sites are doing already in order to participate in the
Domain Name System (specifically, the ability to mail to
fully-qualified domain addresses that do not belong to one's UUCP
neighbors.)  This is an alternative to using the pathalias data from
the UUCP map, but really should only be used to send to actual Internet
sites, since otherwise the system may be used to go UUCP->Inet->UUCP,
which violates the rules of *some* Internet component networks.
The problem is that there's no way to tell, given a domain-type address,
whether it is or is not on the Internet *without* having access to an
Internet name server.

I don't run a UUCP-only site, so don't have a sendmail.cf that does
this.  Someone around here undoubtedly does.  All it really has to do
is take any host address that has a dot in it where the domain isn't
your own and isn't ".UUCP" and send it to a relay host which is on the
Internet that can resolve arbitrary domain addresses.  (Presumably
this site is the one that you have arranged incoming Internet MX
service with.)

But this only solves the outgoing mail problem, not the incoming one.

--
Michael C. Berch  
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / uunet!tis.llnl.gov!mcb