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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: pathalias bug?
Message-ID: <496@hao.UCAR.EDU>
Date: Fri, 16-Jan-87 13:04:48 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.496
Posted: Fri Jan 16 13:04:48 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Jan-87 06:36:17 EST
References: <486@hao.UUCP> <1292@ncr-sd.UUCP> <489@hao.UUCP> <1304@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 43
Keywords: sendmail, smail
Summary: Yes, you have to hack sendmail.cf, and it's UGLY!


  I would like to thank all those who wrote me or posted articles in response
to my questions about pathalias. The two questions and their answers are:

1) Is it a bug in pathalias that appears to make a path like second!third!user
   cost less than third!user@second? Answer: No, it is deliberate behavior.
   Peter Honeyman (princeton!dwon!honey, one of the authors of pathalias) tried
   to explain his reasoning to me, but I'm afraid I did not understand it.
   But at any rate, it is a deliberately designed feature, not a bug.

2) It turns out that question #1 was moot in my situation, because question #2
   is: can I make smail(8) correctly route messages that are supposed to go
   via connections other than uucp? Answer: no, I have to hack sendmail.cf,
   and it is a HORRIBLE kludge but it works. The kludge in ruleset S0 involves 
   defining a class of domains that have to be routed through a different 
   machine on our local Ethernet. It looks something like this:


# Domains that must gateway via hao-hw
DGcsnet
CGarpa csnet ncarnet
# Class "M" are machines on the NCAR hyperchannel (ncarnet) network

R$=M!$+				$2%$1@hao-hw		ntwkhost!user
R$+@$=M				$1%$2@hao-hw		user@ntwkhost
R$+<@$=M>			$1%$2<@hao-hw.LOCAL>	u<@ntwkh>
# route CSnet mail via hao-hw
R$+@$+.$=G			$1%$2.$3@hao-hw		u@Gdomain
R$+<@$+.$=G>			$1%$2.$3<@hao-hw.LOCAL>	u<@Gdomain>

This converts an address of the form user@ncarhost to user%ncarhost@hao-hw,
and user@host.csnet to user%host.csnet@hao-hw. These addresses are parsed to
be deliver via Ethernet to hao-hw, which is what I wanted. HW knows that '%'
should be converted to '@'. 

As Leonard Pinth Garnell would say: Awful, awful, COULDN'T be wuss! RAILLY
sucks! And I must say, I myself programmed this VEDDY badly...  

--Greg
--
UUCP: {hplabs, seismo, nbires, noao}!hao!woods
CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet  ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
INTERNET: woods@hao.ucar.edu