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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ulysses.UUCP
Path: utzoo!decvax!bellcore!allegra!ulysses!smb
From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.news.config
Subject: Re: name change
Message-ID: <1109@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Feb-85 09:27:06 EST
Article-I.D.: ulysses.1109
Posted: Fri Feb 15 09:27:06 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Feb-85 23:50:00 EST
References: <484@digi-g.UUCP> <lsuc.405>, <604@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 36

> From: matt@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP (Matt Crawford)
> Subject: Re: name change
> Message-ID: <604@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP>
> Date: Thu, 14-Feb-85 17:05:37 EST
> Article-I.D.: oddjob.604

> Haven't you heard?  Mark Horton, on behalf of the "UUCP Project",
> wants us all to keep our host names down to 6 characters.  Why?  I
> don't really know, but I understand that a certain large unix vendor
> sold a binary-only uucp implementation which only allows six char-
> acters.  This could be coincidence of course.

Do you think you could possibly control your paranoia for a while?  The
six-character limit (which, by the way, is that the name be unique in
the first six characters, not that it be six characters only) came with
System V, about two years ago.  That far antedates the UUCP project.
What the hell do you want Mark to do (and it's not just Mark, incidentally;
there was a large group involved in discussing the subject), pick a
solution that will break half the machines on the net?  The Prime Directive
of the project was that no solution would be considered that demanded
universal co-operation, because we know damned well that we *can't* (not
won't, can't) get it.

> Meanwhile, AT&T-BL, through their gateway site ihnp4 (one of the
> truly greatest boons to the net) wants sites such as "gargoyle" *not*
> to truncate their uucp name at all.

The six-character truncation was a mistake.  Everyone involved agrees.
So what did AT&T Bell Laboratories do?  We fixed it.  The new uucp (called
honey danber, for its authors) is what's being run on ihnp4, ulysses, cbosgd,
and a host of other sites.  I'm told it's available to the outside world
now, through the usual AT&T Technologies licensing channels.  (I should point
out, of course, that historically uucp limited site names to 7 characters --
remember that famous hack in mail to expand 'researc' to 'research'?  And
of course, early versions (V7, 4.1bsd, maybe some others) had problems if
any site name was a prefix of another....)