Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!clyde!cbosgd!cblpf!cbstr1!Karl.Kleinpaste From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Bracketing in mail addresses - NO NO NO NO NO Message-ID: <272@cbstr1.att.com> Date: Wed, 17-Jun-87 11:29:39 EDT Article-I.D.: cbstr1.272 Posted: Wed Jun 17 11:29:39 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 11:08:41 EDT References: <16238@amdcad.AMD.COM> <3546@cbosgd.ATT.COM> Sender: karl@cbstr1.att.com Lines: 161 Keywords: Bad hypothetical failure examples Summary: smail does it all just fine, thanx. Xref: mnetor comp.mail.misc:370 comp.mail.uucp:635 Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.44.1 of Mon May 18 1987 on cbstr1 (usg-unix-v) In-reply-to: jpn@teddy.UUCP's message of 15 Jun 87 21:05:43 GMT jpn@teddy.UUCP writes: > >>Objection: There is no problem with precedence because @ always has > >>the highest precedence, and anything to the left of that is only > >>interpreted by the site named after the @. > >> > >>Response: This is pure chauvinism. > > > >There ARE good reasons for doing it this way -- because that's the approved > >standard, mostly; if you do it this way your mail will get through and mail > >forwarded through your system will get through. This is not chauvinism. > > I think it's chauvinism. > [long examples of hypothetical foul-ups...] > Maybe I'm just confused... Yes, you are confused. The means by which remote gateways are reached are very straightforward; smail handles it quite neatly. Consider not a hypothetical example, but a real, working arrangement: this site. This is cbstr1.att.com. We talk nothing but UUCP. We don't know anything about other networks aside from the info gleaned from pathalias and smail. You can run smail with the -d (debug) flag, in which case it makes routing decisions but doesn't attempt any delivery (uux is not called). I have found the command smail -d user@site.domain.spec < /dev/null to be so useful that I have an alias set up for it. Consider the output of this command on some sample properly domainified addresses: "mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu," a very real address I type all the time. Note that cbosgd is the local gateway (as far as my system's understanding is concerned) to reach the .edu domain. I believe it, in turn, hands it off to seismo. But I don't know for sure, and I don't care - the mail gets there. This is as it should be: users care about addresses, and back-end, low-level software cares about routes. resolve: parse address 'mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu' = 'mbj' @ 'spice.cs.cmu.edu' (DOMAIN) getpath: looking for '.spice.cs.cmu.edu' getpath: looking for 'spice.cs.cmu.edu' getpath: looking for '.cs.cmu.edu' getpath: looking for 'cs.cmu.edu' getpath: looking for '.cmu.edu' getpath: looking for 'cmu.edu' getpath: looking for '.edu' route: 'spice.cs.cmu.edu' (edu) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99) resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' = 'spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) resolve 'mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu' = 'spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux - cbosgd!rmail '(spice.cs.cmu.edu!mbj)' From Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Jun 17 10:41:24 1987 remote from cbstr1 Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3) id AA05995; 17 Jun 87 10:41:24 EDT (Wed) Date: 17 Jun 87 10:41:24 EDT (Wed) From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Message-Id: <8706171041.AA05995@cbstr1.att.com> To: mbj@spice.cs.cmu.edu "joe@random.commercial.site.com," a hypothetical, but syntactically correct address. Cbosgd is again the route taken. resolve: parse address 'joe@random.commercial.site.com' = 'joe' @ 'some.random.commercial.site.com' (DOMAIN) getpath: looking for '.random.commercial.site.com' getpath: looking for 'random.commercial.site.com' getpath: looking for '.commercial.site.com' getpath: looking for 'commercial.site.com' getpath: looking for '.site.com' getpath: looking for 'site.com' getpath: looking for '.com' route: 'random.commercial.site.com' (com) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99) resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!random.commercial.site.com!joe' = 'random.commercial.site.com!joe' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) resolve 'joe@random.commercial.site.com' = 'random.commercial.site.com!joe' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux - cbosgd!rmail '(random.commercial.site.com!joe)' From Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Jun 17 10:51:18 1987 remote from cbstr1 Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3) id AA06242; 17 Jun 87 10:51:18 EDT (Wed) Date: 17 Jun 87 10:51:18 EDT (Wed) From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Message-Id: <8706171051.AA06242@cbstr1.att.com> To: joe@random.commercial.site.com "romig@ohio-state.edu." Local pathalias info tells smail that ohio-state.edu is the same host as osu-eddie. So that is the route taken, but the user doesn't even have to know that; "ohio-state.edu" is quite sufficient. resolve: parse address 'romig@ohio-state.edu' = 'romig' @ 'ohio-state.edu' (DOMAIN) getpath: looking for '.ohio-state.edu' route: 'ohio-state.edu' (ohio-state.edu) = 'osu-eddie!%s' (99) resolve: parse route 'osu-eddie!romig' = 'romig' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP) resolve 'romig@ohio-state.edu' = 'romig' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP) COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux - osu-eddie!rmail '(romig)' From Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Jun 17 11:09:45 1987 remote from cbstr1 Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3) id AA06689; 17 Jun 87 11:09:45 EDT (Wed) Date: 17 Jun 87 11:09:45 EDT (Wed) From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Message-Id: <8706171109.AA06689@cbstr1.att.com> To: romig@ohio-state.edu "person@relay.csnet." My CSNet gateway is Ohio State, an X.25 CSNet site. Ohio State acts like a proper domain host these days, so I could modify our local pathalias data to use it for all .com, .edu, and .gov addresses if I cared to, but methinks that would be asocial. resolve: parse address 'person@relay.csnet' = 'person' @ 'relay.csnet' (DOMAIN) getpath: looking for '.relay.csnet' getpath: looking for 'relay.csnet' getpath: looking for '.csnet' route: 'relay.csnet' (csnet) = 'osu-eddie!%s' (99) resolve: parse route 'osu-eddie!relay.csnet!person' = 'relay.csnet!person' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP) resolve 'person@relay.csnet' = 'relay.csnet!person' @ 'osu-eddie' (UUCP) COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux - osu-eddie!rmail '(relay.csnet!person)' From Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Jun 17 10:53:01 1987 remote from cbstr1 Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3) id AA06306; 17 Jun 87 10:53:01 EDT (Wed) Date: 17 Jun 87 10:53:01 EDT (Wed) From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Message-Id: <8706171053.AA06306@cbstr1.att.com> To: person@relay.csnet In summary, smail does exactly what it should do. Other sites in this dept that don't have UUCP set up to talk to Ohio State can still reach osu-eddie as a CSNet gateway, by way of cbstr1 or cbrma. I don't care about the intervening hops - smail takes an ADDRESS and generates a ROUTE, just like a pure transport agent should. Do you realize that, if every UUCP site ran smail, no one would ever again ask, "How do I get mail from UUCP to BITNET?" in comp.mail.misc? Gee, I don't know how I get there, let's find out: "zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet," an acquaintance at the University of Wyoming: resolve: parse address 'zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet' = 'zsyjkaa' @ 'wyocdc1.bitnet' (DOMAIN) getpath: looking for '.wyocdc1.bitnet' getpath: looking for 'wyocdc1.bitnet' getpath: looking for '.bitnet' route: 'wyocdc1.bitnet' (bitnet) = 'cbosgd!%s' (99) resolve: parse route 'cbosgd!wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' = 'wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) resolve 'zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet' = 'wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa' @ 'cbosgd' (UUCP) COMMAND: /usr/bin/uux - cbosgd!rmail '(wyocdc1.bitnet!zsyjkaa)' From Karl.Kleinpaste Wed Jun 17 11:22:17 1987 remote from cbstr1 Received: by cbstr1.att.com (smail2.3) id AA06986; 17 Jun 87 11:22:17 EDT (Wed) Date: 17 Jun 87 11:22:17 EDT (Wed) From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com Message-Id: <8706171122.AA06986@cbstr1.att.com> To: zsyjkaa@wyocdc1.bitnet I've been told that Harvard gets involved in that route, but it's at some point down the line that I really don't care about. So get off smail's case, try installing it and running it for a couple of weeks with valid pathalias information, and see how long it is before you forget how to type a `!' in a mail destination string. Karl