Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!decwrl!bacchus.pa.dec.com!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: novice question re mail maps/bang paths. Message-ID: Date: 26 Aug 90 20:00:02 GMT References: <6745.26c97d33@vax1.tcd.ie> <1990Aug20.210800.21492@cbnews.att.com> <67708@sgi.sgi.com> Sender: news@wrl.dec.com (News) Followup-To: comp.mail.misc Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 27 In-Reply-To: lear@turbo.bio.net's message of 26 Aug 90 19:41:02 GMT I havn't been following this discussion, so bear with me -- but if... [Eliot Lear] >> In general you can look at RECEIVED lines to figure out what happened to a >> message. If a message is dropped without error, it gets a little more >> complicated, but not impossible. Possibility of debugging approaches zero as the log files you need to peer at start to be on machines you can't log into. Also, there are a lot of mail relays that either don't put Received headers on, or they put them on in a strange order (at bottom rather than at top). There are enough reasons just in this one little area -- debugability -- to give one pause in consid- ering the question of "whether to reroute?". I still don't see that the supposed benefits of rerouting outweigh even these costs, let alone the many others I've identified here and elsewhere in years past. The main supposed advantage is that pathalias data gets out of date, and there are a lot of cheap solutions -- that is, solutions without bad side-effects like those mentioned above -- to this problem. Why reroute? (Don't worry, everybody, I'm just back from vacation. I'll go back to work shortly, this is not the beginning of another flame fest -- at least not one I plan to be part of.) -- Paul Vixie DEC Western Research Lab Palo Alto, California ...!decwrl!vixie