Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: registering UUCP sites
Message-ID: <144@minya.UUCP>
Date: 26 Nov 88 15:25:19 GMT
References: <1165@fig.bbn.com> <124@minya.UUCP> <1218@fig.bbn.com>
Organization: (none)
Lines: 60

> >  Why should their internal use of uucp for file transfer
> >obligate them to fill out papers for some outside email authority 
> >that they've often never even heard of?
> 
> It doesn't require any outside authority:
> 	No mail?  No domain name necessary.
> 	Domain name necessary?  Ask your local authority.

Actually, what I was talking about is perhaps best exemplified by a
scenario (with names changed to protect the innocent ;-):

While working in their lab, Joe & Mary make a few uucp links via some null 
modems, including links to their development machine ("dev") that is a Sun 
or some other BSD system on which /bin/rmail has been replaced with a little
monster that sends uucp mail to sendmail.  They need to get some stuff from
test machine "x" to test machine "y", which aren't directly connected.  They 
know that "uucp foo dev!y!tmp/bar" doesn't work, though they haven't spent
the time trying to figure out why, and it's just an ASCII source file, so
they decide to try "mail <foo dev!y!root" instead.

On dev, as usual, nobody has yet quite figured out how to get sendmail to
work right, so when the mail reaches dev and rmail drops it in sendmail's
lap, sendmail bounces it to some SNMP forwarder in Texas or Palo Also or 
Hong Kong, because there's a "q.y.foo.bar" in /etc/hosts.  Thirteen hops 
later, the mail has passed through Bitnet and Decnet routers, and falls 
into the grip of one of the UUCP Mapping Project's mailers, who notes mail 
coming from a machine "x" at a place it hasn't seen an "x" before.  Somehow, 
the mailer figures out a path back, and a couple days later, after they've 
forgotten all about the puzzle of the lost mail, Joe and Mary get a notice 
that they are supposed to register their machine "x" with the mapping project.
They also get similar mail from each of the other email systems, and spend
some time being somewhat amused before bringing it to the attention of the
guru@dev, who also finds it amusing.

Of course, the main reaction of Joe and Mary is to ask "What the @#*$@&^ is
going on here; who ARE these people?" and then to go back to work (or drinking
coffee or playing hack or whatever).  Meanwhile the flames rage outside.  But
they are oblivious to it all, and will go on to offend the email world a few
more times before the project's done.  Eventually someone installs usenet on
dev, and they read a few articles in some of the email newsgroups, don't find
them interesting, and unsubscribe without realizing that people were talking
about them.

Perhaps guru@dev figures out a way to make it work.  Likely he/she discovers
that saying "y.uucp" corrects the problem, and they use that, except when
they forget.  After a while, the uucp links are torn down and/or switched
around to other configurations.  The test machines have their board shuffled,
and their network names change 8 or 12 times.  Some of the new names elicit
requests for registration, some don't.  The folks in the lab spend a little
time digging through manuals for an explanation, don't find it, shrug and
go about their business.

As I said, it's not at all hypothetical.  However, it is at least mildly
amusing.

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)

[Any errors in the above are due to failures in the logic of the keyboard,
not in the fingers that did the typing.]