Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!utastro!werner From: werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: smail wants you to register a domain (using Path: for replies) Message-ID: <3053@utastro.UUCP> Date: 29 Aug 88 16:01:06 GMT References: <70@volition.dec.com> <71@volition.dec.com> <12307@ncoast.UUCP> Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX Lines: 136 let me say up-front, that it drives me batty, too, when e-mail replies bounce or get lost in black holes somewhere .... In article <12307@ncoast.UUCP>, allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: > As quoted from <71@volition.dec.com> by vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie): > +--------------- > | WHAT IF I DON'T GET A DOMAIN NAME? Then you'll be one of the thousands of > | sites that outputs "From:" lines with "@myhost.UUCP" in it. Big deal. > | Nobody will be able to reply to your mail unless they run pathalias and > | smail (and unless certain sites stop rewriting into > | on UUCP pass-though mail). That's about it. > +--------------- > I should note that the screwup was doubled when I recently replied to a > message that came through sun -- not only did it blow up by misparsing the > address that it had itself generated when it sent the original mail to me > (CWRU's software is now working correctly, I've checked) but it also decided > to reroute the return mail since the return hop was to "cwjcc". Bad move; > it routed to "mandrill", but that machine is now "cwjcc" and CWRU's mail > admin had to field the bounced mail and send it to me. (grrr -- sun is a > direct neighbor to mandrill/cwjcc, why the h*ll haven't they changed their > map entry yet? Ed Rynes has been warning neighbor sites for a month now.) > > I suspect the folks at sun just don't give a d*mn what their mail system > does, as long as it works over their Internet connections. I'm getting a bit tired of this bashing of SUN by Paul and others and I wonder if they care to present a "fair" picture of the problems (can you say "both sides of the coin"? I knew you could). My only claim to expertise with mailer-problems is as a user of (and wrestler with) e-mail for many years, so my words do not reflect expert knowledge of any particular mailers, but rather wisdom of old age based on "net-folklore" and years of mailer-abuse .... (-: So, for what it's worth, here are my 2 cents worth ... 1) SUN.COM does an incredibly valuable service to it's direct UUCP-neighbors (and their cousins several UUCP-hops away) by functioning as an gateway. no criticism should be voiced without, at least, throwing in a "thanks, SUN" also ... there is something like "good will" and a hard-working "postmaster" behind all this, you know, and the bean-counters at SUN may even frown on him spending any resources which benefits other companies, mainly, so he may be "sticking his neck out" and be putting in some of his own time to make gateway-services possible at all. BTW, I don't think SUN is a "official gateway" (what ever that might be defined as) guaranteeing service of any kind to others - and the fact that some aspects of a gateway seem to work should not be construed that there exists a right to demand that all aspects work flawlesly ... not to say, one can't ask the postmaster in a friendly tone, sending him a (perceived) trouble-report, with a "pretty, please, could it be made to work somehow, that replies which my mailer generates to messages which came routed through your machine, reach the intended recipient?" There are also DEC-machines with the connectivity to serve as gateway, but try to use them sometimes and see what response you get when you send a "friendly" trouble report to the postmaster there... "we are not a gateway" is a friendly version. 2) now to respond to the particular gripe of Paul, mainly that SUN.COM converts addresses of the format "user@site.UUCP" to "site!user@SUN.COM". it is my understanding that UUCP is *NOT* a domain, and that, therefore, and address "user@site.UUCP" is not correct for an Internet site, and that, therefore, it would be incorrect for SUN.COM to forward mail to me on RASCAL.ICS.UTEXAS.EDU (no UUCP-connections, strictly Internet) as coming from "user@site.UUCP" and that changing this to "site!user@SUN.COM" is the correct thing to do. The problem is that "site" should not send out addresses in domain-notation, if it is not a site in a valid domain! (at least from the Internet RFC-882 point of view). So, when RASCAL gets "gatewayed" mail from SUN.COM, I'd have a *RIGHT* to complain if the return-address was not in the form that SUN provides... so what is SUN to do? try to figure out a valid return-bang-path to "site" on the fly, when it forwards the message to RASCAL? well, that would be nice, and might even be possible, but I don't know anyone that does it! Alternatives? SUN might send it as "user%site.uucp@sun.com", which even might work as a reply-address, but then, I think I have seen that even RASCAL has a sendmail.cf file which converts every address "user@site.uucp" into "site!user" .... so, one can probably disagree about that. 3) From a practical point of view, it is, of course, an incredible nuisance to have to worry about the validity of a reply-address which my mailer generates but I've learned to live with mail bouncing at various sites and then hand-knitting a path that works and trying it again. I only wished all sites would bounce things back to me as fast as SUN.COM... (-: Sure it would be nice, if every UUCP-mailer could grock an address like "site!user", even if "site is not an immediate neighbor, but it would require a query to an "up-to-date" UUCP-sites database, or the smarts to forward the message to a site that has one for resolving the address.. Maybe you get the drift, Paul and Brandon: you are getting something for free here from SUN and others, so when you report some "perceived" problem, why bash on people/sites in public the way you do? why not send a private e-mail message to the postmaster of the site you perceive as having a problem and "ask IF" the symptoms you have noticed MIGHT indicate a problem they did not know about yet or if they could clarify to you what you might be doing wrong that causes the problem .... it's all in the tone of voice, selection of the words, phrasing of the sentence, that generates the (what we called "good vibes" in the '60s) the good will towards others which has brought UUCP-mail into being and which is needed to keep it going, to get problems fixed, to get things improved. Otherwise, you can use a pay-as-you-go service, where you PAY for the right to yell at someone for not providing the service to which (you think) you bought a right to expect... I can forgive anyone words spoken in frustration and anger, but I will ignore anyone who cannot be calmed down enough to have a friendly discussion with. I am convinced that both Paul and Brandon are the type of people that would put "their money where their mouth is" and do the work themselves to fix whatever might need fixing to make the (perceived) problem at SUN go away; but, alas, that is not possible, so how about calming down and finding a way to make peace with this imperfect world? how about an effort to put some more "good vibes" into your posted articles and a little less "foam from the mouth"? that might even move someone from SUN to post their view of the problem .... (-: Cheers, ---Werner PS: ....OF COURSE, you can ignore my articles but "at your own risk" ...(-: MAIL flames to me, POST rational follow-ups to the group, please. -- -------------------->PREFERED-RETURN-ADDRESS-FOLLOWS<--------------------- (INTERNET) werner%rascal.ics.utexas.edu@cs.utexas.edu (DIRECT) werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1) (UUCP) ...{backbone-sites}!cs.utexas.edu!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner