Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jetson!john
From: john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: rewriting FROM: lines
Summary: smail, smart-host, etc.
Message-ID: <241@jetson.UPMA.MD.US>
Date: 25 May 89 16:57:03 GMT
References: <31051@sri-unix.SRI.COM> <160@zebra.UUCP> <8535@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: SMART HOUSE Limited Partnership
Lines: 34

In article <8535@chinet.chi.il.us>, les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
> Alternately, the problem is that every machine has to know how to
> find every other machine in the universe.  ("Waddaymean, I have to
> store 6 megs of path information on my laptop and register it and
> stay at the same place forever in order to get send and receive mail..)

> The real problem is that there is no standard way to let another machine
> route and forward mail for you.

Sure there is.  If you run smail and build a paths file by hand
containing one or two paths and a "smart-host" line, it'll hand
everything to the smart-host.  If the smart-host runs smail with
friendly (first-hop) rerouting, it'll get there as well as if you had
the pathalias info yourself.

> There are ways to do this but they
> tend not to produce a replyable path back.

Whether you have your own 1MB pathalias output file or use smart-host
has nothing to do with what the return addresses look like.  The
most common thing that messes up the reply path is an intermediate
site that runs sendmail and adds their uucp name to the From: line.

> If this could be done,
> all you would need is one stable machine to service any number of
> addressable but possibly transient other machines which would not have
> to be individually registered.

Sounds like uunet to me, although they encourage all their customers
to have their own map entries.

-- 
John Owens		john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US		uunet!jetson!john
+1 301 249 6000		john%jetson.uucp@uunet.uu.net