glc@akgua.UUCP (G.L. Cleveland [Lindsay]) (07/04/84)
Recently this backbone site (akgua) has had a rash of mail thru
here which has failed due to truncated "To:" routes. I realize
that it is the result of people replying to news article which
have followed a long path to their site.
However, the "vanilla" versions of mail and uuxqt have hard-coded
buffers of 100 bytes (and an "fget" for 100 bytes). This was
designed back in the days before 17-hop mail addresses were ever
envisioned! As a result, only the first 100 bytes of the mail
path is getting supplied to the next system. This affects both
originating mail and "pass-thru" mail.
May I encourage all administrators who are fortunate to have a
source license to check the "mail.c" and "uuxqt.c" code for such
buffers (try "sendto" and "xcmd") and recompile with larger sizes.
Those with binary-only licenses I hope may have some other
recourse. Your users and those "upstream" will appreciate having
their news replies make it all the way to the addressee.
Cheers,
Lindsay
Lindsay Cleveland (...{ihnp4|mcnc|sdcsvax|clyde}!akgua!glc)
AT&T Technologies/Bell Laboratories ... Atlanta, Ga
(404) 447-3909 ... Cornet 583-3909phil@amd.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (07/14/84)
but do we want to encourage users to be lazy and waste other
sites' money? perhaps requiring paths less than 100 characters
is a good way to encourage people to optimize their paths.
--
Phil Ngai (408) 982-6554 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd!philglc@akgua.UUCP (G.L. Cleveland [Lindsay]) (07/15/84)
phil@amd.UUCP says: >but do we want to encourage users to be lazy and waste other >sites' money? perhaps requiring paths less than 100 characters >is a good way to encourage people to optimize their paths. Well, I certainly agree it is laudable to encourage other sites to upgrade their sofware, especially if it is supplied to them in net.sources. However, the reality is that we stand a better chance of getting a recompile at a "not all that knowledgable" site than an installation of new software. Candide I'm not! I *know* this is not the best of all possible worlds! Cheers, Lindsay Lindsay Cleveland (...{ihnp4|mcnc|sdcsvax|clyde}!akgua!glc) AT&T Technologies/Bell Laboratories ... Atlanta, Ga (404) 447-3909 ... Cornet 583-3909