Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!eneevax!umd5!vrdxhq!bms-at!stuart From: stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: map feedback from failed mail Message-ID: <650@bms-at.UUCP> Date: 6 Apr 88 17:30:22 GMT Organization: Business Management Systems, Inc., Fairfax, VA Lines: 46 Keywords: auto feedback pathalias **** Background **** Quite often, I get failed mail sent back to me. It seems to me that failed mail is a valuable source of information. First, I maintain a file of exceptions, one per line. I currently extract these manually from failed mail. Each failed mail indicates a dead link. Certain hosts with nasty rerouting habits are also listed. I list uunet as 'dead' because I don't pay for it and I'm sure my net neighbors aren't anxious to pay for me. These exceptions are fed to pathalias on the command line with the '-d' option and shell magic. (If the exception file gets large, I will modify pathalias to take a '-f' parameter. Isn't having source wonderful!) This system corrects for the propagation delay in distributing the maps. **** Ideas and Questions **** Is there a way to correct smail without rerunning pathalias? Perhaps a paths exception file? The exception file would be cleared the next time pathalias is run. Currently, I just wait until the next pathalias run to retry manually. When should exception entries be removed? When a new map entry is received listing a connection? When the #W line changes on the map entry(ies) listing the connection? Can this be done automatically in any way? What about positive feedback? Is it worthwhile to extract paths from all news and mail to find unpublished connections to add to the database? This would have to be automatic. There is too much volume for manual scanning. Can smail simply recognize failed mail? It could then copy it to a spool directory. At the next pathalias run, this mail could be analyzed (manually or automagically) to extract dead links and merge them with the exception file. At completion of pathalias, the failed mail could be retried. Mail where failure was not caused by a specific dead link would not be retried, but returned to the sender. Please reply by E-mail as well as or instead of posting. Our machine has a fixed 30 Meg spool news file system and drops news on heavy flow days. -- Stuart D. Gathman <..!{vrdxhq|daitc}!bms-at!stuart>