[comp.mail.uucp] hostnames

bill@astph.UUCP (Bill Dripps) (02/15/91)

Using Myname in the Permissions file allows us to change our uucp
gateway machine name without asking the world to change the way they
address mail to us. Wonderful!

But I have a question.

How will this affect mail and news? If mail is addressed to astph!bill
but is delivered to "crafty" which uses Myname to masquerade as
"astph", will it be delivered to crafty!bill where I really am? If
not, what can I do to get it delivered? Do I need to do anything to
news?

We are running ISC 2.2 with sendmail and "C" news.

Thanks
-- 
Bill Dripps         | attmail!astph!bill | astph!bill@attmail.com | 
814-234-8592 ext.31 | psuvax1!astph!bill | astph!bill@psu.cs.edu  | 

fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (02/20/91)

bill@astph.UUCP (Bill Dripps) writes:
> Using Myname in the Permissions file allows us to change our uucp
> gateway machine name without asking the world to change the way they
> address mail to us. Wonderful!
>
> How will this affect mail and news? If mail is addressed to astph!bill
> but is delivered to "crafty" which uses Myname to masquerade as
> "astph", will it be delivered to crafty!bill where I really am? If
> not, what can I do to get it delivered? Do I need to do anything to
> news?

Should be fine.  Your neighbors will think they're talking to astph, and
will just send the mail on through.

Your e-mail and news software should know about the masquerade too.  The
"MYNAME=astph" trick is only at the UUCP level, not at the e-mail or news
level.  To get e-mail to work right, mail will still have to leave your
system with "From ... remote from astph" and "From: xxx@astph.UUCP" in it.
If you put in "...remote from crafty" and a neighbor tries to bounce it,
it will get confused.

News should make sure that locally posted articles get "Path: astph!xxx"
and "From: xxx@astph.UUCP" rather than crafty, or bad things will happen:
people will be unable to reply to your articles, and your neighbors will
feed you things that you've just given them, because they don't realize
you've already gotten it.  C-news identifies the local host by the
contents of the /usr/lib/news/whoami file.

---
Tom Fitzgerald   Wang Labs        fitz@wang.com
1-508-967-5278   Lowell MA, USA   ...!uunet!wang!fitz