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From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Convincing Smail to use FQDNs
Message-ID: <4v/6f2.3i1@smurf.sub.org>
Date: 1 Sep 90 20:32:33 GMT
References: <3890@ralph.Lafayette.LA.US> <as2jn2.1b3@wang.com> <1990Aug30.152241.28240@cbnews.att.com>
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
Lines: 44

In comp.mail.uucp, article <1990Aug30.152241.28240@cbnews.att.com>,
  joe@cbnews.att.com (Joseph Judge) writes:
< 
< 	We have an INTERNET host, so I want pathalias to *use* it.
< 
< 	All I can think of is grabbing all the alias records in the
< 	maps and change the: name = name.alias 
< 	and make it: our_host name.alias (some_low_cost)
< 
I am doing it the other way 'round.

I wrote a Perl script which extensively digests the maps. It finds entries of
"host = some.fq.domain" form, and uses these to generate routes which start with the last FQDN entry. Consider the following map:

one = one.edu
one two
zero one
me one

Then the output would be
zero zero!%s
one one.edu!%s
two one.edu!two!%s

Or at least it would be -- however, I'm using MMDF which allows a lot of short
cuts. For instance, one.edu isn't locally connected. I'm not on the Internet
either, so MMDF will consult its tables recursively to find a route to the
internet, and then append the above routes to "one" and "two" to that.
It also allows me to keep the processing of local and regional maps totally
separate, while considering them together when routing (but still giving
priority to the regional map).

For use with smail, someone would have to add additional postprocessing which
integrates these tables into one smail-style routing table. Any takers?
(This would probably require a 200-line Perl program.)

All of the above presupposes that every FQDN which is advertised in the maps
does have an Internet MX record pointing to it (or to the wildcard of one of
its superdomains). It also assumes that you want to send mail across the
Internet instead of generating ten-bang-paths which tend to get routed to
/dev/null somewhere. :-(
-- 
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de
Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49+721+621127(Voice)/621227(PEP)