jsq@im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman) (04/03/86)
At noon on Friday, 28 March 1986, most hosts in the UTEXAS.EDU
domain of the ARPA Internet changed their names to reflect their
departments (e.g., zotz.utexas.edu became zotz.cs.utexas.edu).
While this should not have directly had a great deal of effect
on UUCP mail, nonetheless we forgot to properly make obeisance
and burn votive candles in recognition of
->> RULE NUMBER ONE <<-: Nothing! concerning sendmail configuration
files is ever! straightforward!
It appears likely that the situation is now straightened out
(largely by tossing sendmail into the sacrificial fire as an
offering to its replacement sm on most of our machines).
Nonetheless, it is possible (nay, likely!) that any mail sent
from or to any hosts including ut-sally, im4u, or anything
else at the University of Texas at Austin between noon Friday
and now may have been lost. Prudence indicates checking with
any correspondents on the affected hosts as to receipt of mail.
In the ARPA Internet, some hosts which use static host tables
instead of nameservers have not yet updated them to notice our
changes and will not be able to converse civilly until they do so.
A certain major BITNET gateway is among their number.
--
John Quarterman, UUCP: {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET: jsq@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, jsq@sally.UTEXAS.EDUjsq@im4u.UUCP (04/08/86)
I've received several mail replies to my posting which remarked
that we had replaced sendmail with sm on many of our machines.
Sm is a small, fast mailer written at LucasFilm. It is described
in a paper in the Portland (Summer 1985) USENIX Proceedings.
It was written for a relatively simple networking environment.
We hacked it locally to know about domains. However, it trades
flexibility for speed and simplicity, and we have not replaced
sendmail with it on our two main relay machines, im4u and sally.
I have no idea whether LucasFilm ever intends to make sm
generally available. Can't help you there, sorry.
--
John Quarterman, UUCP: {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET: jsq@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, jsq@sally.UTEXAS.EDU