Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1031 news.sysadmin:564
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!acornrc!bob
From: bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Problems with pathalias
Message-ID: <615@acornrc.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 88 22:36:59 GMT
References: <590@acornrc.UUCP> <2057@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Organization: Acorn Research Centre, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 32
Summary: Pathalias -i flag considered harmful

In article <2057@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>, greg@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel) writes:
> I can only help with one of the problems described here, so I waited to
> see if anyone could help him with both of them.  Since nobody has, I'll
> explain the one that I can and hope someone else will offer the other.
> 
> In article <590@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
> >I've been having problems with pathalias lately.  ....
> >Site 'iconet', for example, disappears without a trace ....
> 
> I can't help with this problem; not enough information.

It turns out to be my own damn fault for running pathalias with the
"-i" (fold all names into lowercase) switch.  It turns out that
recently, the Olivetti sites in Italy have banded together into a
network called ICOnet; i.e., in the u.ita.1 file, there's an entry

    ICOnet = {iconet,icocae,icodap,...}!(LOCAL)

By folding the *network* name ICOnet with -i, the *site* name iconet
was lost.  Moral: don't run pathalias with -i.  I was confused because
the man page claims -i folds "host names" into lowercase, and doesn't
say anything about network names.

And Greg's explanation of the other problem was correct.  Peter Honeyman
is considering a change to do what I (and others) want.  (See the referenced
articles if you're interested.)

-- 
Bob Weissman
Internet:	bob@acornrc.uucp
UUCP:		...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | apple }!acornrc!bob
Arpanet:	bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.gov