[net.mail] Programmer Kills Self Over Dispute with PATHALIAS Program

jeff@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Stearns) (09/13/86)

Ok, so I haven't done it yet....  But I'm thinkin' about it!

Here I'm trying to be Mister Progressive Administrator and install smail.
I thought our modest little network was pretty simple (I still do), but I'm
having mondo trouble getting pathalias to believe it.

The setting:
    I have a bunch of vaxen and Suns, all Ethernetted together.
    Together they comprise the "fluke" domain.  This is the uucp name
    we present to the outside world.

    Because some machines are administered by different groups of people,
    we can have username conflicts.  This is easily handled by grouping
    the hosts into subdomains.  We only have two -- "tc" and "mis".

The problem:
    Communicate this configuration to pathalias.

The truth as I see it:
    I'm trying to tell pathalias the following:
	- We are named "FLUKE.UUCP".  (Soon to be FLUKE.COM, but
	  that's irrelevant here.)
	- The "FLUKE" domain comprises the subdomains {.TC, .MIS}.
	    - The "FLUKE" domain is handled by the host "fluke".
	    - The "TC.FLUKE" subdomain is also handled by the host "fluke".
	    - The "MIS.FLUKE" subdomain is handled by the host "evtmis1".

    So I claim that:
	Mail to user@FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
	Mail to user@TC.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
	Mail to user@MIS.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!evtmis1!user.

	Of course, there are other acceptable address formats; I really don't
	care what is used, so long as they're correct.

I know what output I want from pathalias -- something sorta like this:
	fluke       ...!fluke!%s
	.fluke       ..!fluke!%s
	.tc.fluke   ...!fluke!%s
	.mis.fluke  ...!fluke!evtmis1!%s

I've tried many, many permutations of the pathalias input data, but can't come
up with anything which will produce a set of legal paths.

I'm playing with variations on this theme:

    fluke      .fluke		/* host "fluke" 
    private   {.tc, .mis}
    .fluke = @{.tc, .mis}(LOCAL)
    .mis      evtmis1
    fluke @evtmis1(LOCAL), microsoft(DIRECT), ...<many other uucp connections>


The $65535 question:
    DOES ANYBODY OUT THERE KNOW A STRAIGHTFORWARD WAY TO COMMUNICATE OUR
    CONFIGURATION TO PATHALIAS?
-- 
	Jeff Stearns       (206) 356-5064
	John Fluke Mfg. Co.
	P.O. Box C9090  Everett WA  98043  
	{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!jeff

greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel) (09/24/86)

To my surprise, I haven't seen an answer to this.  Usually, requests of this
nature cause an avalanche of replies......  I have taken the liberty of using
fluke.com; fluke.uucp is similar.  Since smail strips the ".uucp" suffix
before resolving the name, using the .com domain is a better example.

In article <356@tc-jeff.fluke.UUCP> jeff@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Stearns) writes:
>    I'm trying to tell pathalias the following:
>	- We are named "FLUKE.UUCP". [ to become FLUKE.COM ]
fluke	= fluke.com	# machine fluke is also known as fluke.com
>	- The "FLUKE" domain comprises the subdomains {.TC, .MIS}.
>	    - The "FLUKE" domain is handled by the host "fluke".
fluke	.fluke.com	# fluke is the gateway for the FLUKE.COM domain
>	    - The "TC.FLUKE" subdomain is also handled by the host "fluke".
fluke	.tc.fluke.com	# This could be combined with the previous line
>	    - The "MIS.FLUKE" subdomain is handled by the host "evtmis1".
evtmis1	= mis.fluke.com	# machine evtmis1 is also known as MIS.FLUKE.COM
evtmis1	.mis.fluke.com	# evtmis1 is the gateway for MIS.FLUKE.COM

And we presume that fluke talks to evtmis1.....
fluke	evtmis1(LOCAL)	# Note that this should be bang routed

>I know what output I want from pathalias -- something sorta like this:
>	fluke       ...!fluke!%s
>	.fluke      ...!fluke!%s
>	.tc.fluke   ...!fluke!%s
>	.mis.fluke  ...!fluke!evtmis1!%s

The above lines (plus a dummy line to route from me to fluke) produce:
	fluke		fluke!%s
	fluke.com	fluke!%s
	.fluke.com	fluke!%s
	.tc.fluke.com	fluke!%s
	.mis.fluke.com	fluke!evtmis1!%s
	mis.fluke.com	fluke!evtmis1!%s
	evtmis1		fluke!evtmis1!%s
This seems to be what you want.

>	Mail to user@FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
Yep.
>	Mail to user@TC.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
Yep.  Actually, since tc.fluke.com is not directly in the pathalias output,
this will go to ...!fluke!tc.fluke.uucp!user, so locally you should also alias
	fluke	= tc.fluke.com
to cause it to be deliverd.
>	Mail to user@MIS.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!evtmis1!user.
Sure does.

>I'm playing with variations on this theme:
>    fluke      .fluke		/* host "fluke" 
>    private   {.tc, .mis}
>    .fluke = @{.tc, .mis}(LOCAL)
>    .mis      evtmis1
>    fluke @evtmis1(LOCAL), microsoft(DIRECT), ...<many other uucp connections>

It is also possible to do it this way, but it requires a level of understanding
so great that, as far as I can tell, only Peter Honeyman can make it work.  It
also requires global knowledge of other domains to avoid naming conflicts --
not even the "private" declaration is sufficient in general.
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA