Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp From: tp@mccall.com Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Standard site aliases, are there any? Message-ID: <3375.26c682a3@mccall.com> Date: 13 Aug 90 10:36:18 GMT References: <5376@thebes.Thalatta.COM> Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 45 In article <5376@thebes.Thalatta.COM>, campbell@Thalatta.COM (Bill Campbell) writes: > Has anyone come up with a standard set of aliases such as: > postmaster > support > info > usenet postmaster and usenet are defined by standards, and should be supported by any site following those standards. > This would help standardize requests for information when you > don't know anyone at the site. I have had mail bounced when > addressed to site!postmaster, and I thought that that was > supposed to be universal! postmaster is specified by RFC822. If you are using site!postmaster to reach a site, it is possibly not a registered domain. In this case, there is no reason to expect the site to conform to RFC822. If they run a smart mailer, they might, and if they have a registered domain, they have to (to be in compliance with the standard). Repeat after me: "uucp has no standards". If you know it is a unix system, try "root". If you know it is VMS, try "system". (Note that on many machines, nobody reads mail to these names.) If you know it is an MS-DOS system, your guess is as good as mine. If they have a uucp map entry, there should be at least one valid email address in it. If you know they connect to someone (i.e. the hop before them on the !-path), try reaching someone there. usenet, by the way, is a contact address for news, not mail. It is specified as a standard alias in RFC1036, which defines standards for news transmission. This SHOULD be a valid alias at any site that runs news. Any RFC822 site that doesn't support postmaster or any news site that doesn't support usenet is improperly installed. If you can figure out how to send them mail, tell them so! :-) > Including a standard alias file with smail or other MTAs would go > a long way towards this. But who would the standard alias file point postmaster at! :-) -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA