Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!veritas!tron
From: tron@Veritas.COM (Ronald S. Karr)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Smail3.1.19, Its modifying bang addresses - HELP
Message-ID: <1991Jan18.152756.7335@Veritas.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 91 15:27:56 GMT
References: <243@coplex.UUCP>
Organization: VERITAS Software
Lines: 24

In article <243@coplex.UUCP> dean@coplex.UUCP (Dean Brooks) writes:
>   When given a destination of something like "uunet!joe!wow!fred", it
>will look the address up in the pathalias maps and try and optimize
>the path.  Sometimes this is undesirable if a certain path is desired.

Smail never optimizes paths (unless you have changed the sources).
It only determines the shortest path to the first host in a path.
However, as distributed it does check the paths file before it checks
the set of uucp neighbors produced by the uuname command.  As a result,
if your paths file does not list a single hop to a neighboring host,
then smail will not use it.

The samples/bigsite directory contains examples of the use of the
mkpaths utility, which can be used to create paths files that do
directly send to neighbors.

Alternately, you can switch the precedence of the paths and
uucp_neighbors routers, by copying the samples/generic/routers file
to /usr/lib/smail/routers, and editing out anything that is not
appropriate for your site (i.e., the inet_addrs and inet_hosts
routers for sites that are not on a TCP/IP network).
-- 
	tron |-<=>-|		ARPAnet:  veritas!tron@apple.com
      tron@veritas.com		UUCPnet:  {amdahl,apple,pyramid}!veritas!tron