Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!alberta!ncc!augate!lyndon
From: lyndon@auvax.uucp (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: can.uucp
Subject: Re: .ca domain weirdness with pathalias and smail
Message-ID: <422@aurora.auvax.uucp>
Date: 27 Dec 88 00:27:13 GMT
References: <314@ontenv.UUCP> <88Dec17.114819est.38035@neat.ai.toronto.edu> <984@dgbt.uucp>
Reply-To: lyndon@aurora.UUCP (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Distribution: can
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 37

In article <984@dgbt.uucp> andrew@dgbt.UUCP (Andrew Patrick) writes:
>
>According to recent discussions in the info-smail mailing list, it is
>the same old story:  "It's fixed in Smail3.1"!  Smail3.1 is still in
>BETA test.

No, it's still in ALPHA test. Anyway, alot of the problem seems to stem
from map entries that point to the top level domain name via an alias
or direct connection. E.g., the map entry for .nexus.ca shows:

alberta	nexus.ca(SOMETHING)
ncc	nexus.ca(SOMETHING)
ncc	.nexus.ca(SOMETHING)

where SOMETHING is a weight I can't remember at the moment, but is
equivelent across these three entries. This will cause pathalias to
generate paths like:

.nexus.ca	...!ncc!%s
nexus.ca	...!alberta!%s

assuming alberta is a closer site than ncc as far as you are concerned.
When smail gets ahold of an address like lyndon@nexus.ca it generates
...!alberta!lyndon, whereas lyndon@ncc.nexus.ca generates a route of
...!alberta!ncc!ncc.nexus.ca!lyndon. 

People may agree or disagree with this behaviour, however it seems
this can be solved by eliminating the entry for nexus.ca from the
map, forcing pathalias to generate fully qualified domain names in
the route in all cases. This shouldn't break anything as any site
advertising itself as a domain gateway should be able to handle
the top level domain name as well as any subdomains. By dropping
the nexus.ca entry, the route generated for lyndon@nexus.ca should be 
...!alberta!ncc!nexus.ca!lyndon.
-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg   Computing Services   Athabasca University
{alberta, attvcr, ncc}!auvax!lyndon  ||  lyndon@nexus.ca