Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!apple!oliveb!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: System aliases
Message-ID: <5745@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 11 Jul 89 14:30:32 GMT
References: <509@wubios.wustl.edu>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 26

In article <509@wubios.wustl.edu> phil@wubios.UUCP (J. Philip Miller) writes:
+we ran into a "administration" problem, rather than a bug, and wonder how
+others have solved it. ...
+The problem occurs if an individual user has an alias defined for that same
+name, the then group list goes to the wrong person, e.g. I as a user may have
+an alias for john that is defined as johna@elsewhere, where the system alias
+file has john defined as john@myhost.  Now these are not only different
+accounts, they may be different folk.
+
+Have we set things up wrong?

Yes, you should have never hired two people with the same first name.
I surprised your payroll people didn't complain about this situation when
the second John was first hired. :-)  :-)

+How do others avoid this type of namespace problem?

I use surnames. And if there's a conflict, I don't use the surname alone
for any sharing it  (lest I mistakenly use the alias for the wrong person)
but rather first initial+surname. In one case I had to use the first
two letters of the first name + surname.
-- 
Rob Bernardo      ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob -or- rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
  Product engineer, UNIX/C Reusable Code Library        Editor, "Go `C' UNIX"
  Office: (415) 823-2417                Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
  Residence: (415) 827-4301                     R BAR JB, Concord, California