vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) (08/20/88)
This has been dealt with extensively in years past; apparently we need another round on this topic. # >Nope. Here's the Path: line as it arrived here: # >Path: ulowell!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!ima!minya!jc # # gawd! How could anyone want to reply using that path?!? # # >A reply from here would go to mit-eddie!minya!jc. Not a news path. # # Much better. Score one for smart mailers choosing the best path. What was the "From:" line? "Path:" lines should be changed in the next release of B/C/TMN News, so that they don't look so much like UUCP bang-paths. People get the mistaken impression that these are useful ways to get mail back to the sender of an article. In fact, it often works. The problems? (1) the path is almost guaranteed suboptimal. Netnews articles flow in eddies and currents, and the path an article took to get to your system is always longer than what you'd plan if you were only sending one piece of text from point A to point B. (2) the path may include news-only links, or it may include several Internet/NNTP sites, which are mostly all one mail hop away from each other -- do you want to send to a!b!c!d when "a" can talk to "d" directly, and when "a" can speak NetNews but not Mail to "b"? The solution? Use the "From:" or "Reply-To:" lines. They are designed to be used as targets of "reply". (At least in Netnews they are.) You can either install "smail" and let it find the route in the mail transport using pathalias-generated data, or you can use the "mailpaths" file in the "News B 2.11" software, pointing your "internet" to some well-known host near you that _does_ run something like "smail". The point of all this? Since you aren't supposed to use "Path:" lines to send your e-mail replies to news articles, there is _never_ any good reason for _anyone_ to optimize their pass-through MTA to deal with this type of traffic. This means re-routing MTA's. It means Rutgers. -- Paul Vixie Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013
zeeff@b-tech.UUCP (Jon Zeeff) (08/21/88)
In article <63@volition.dec.com> vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes: > >"Path:" lines should be changed in the next release of B/C/TMN News, so >that they don't look so much like UUCP bang-paths. People get the mistaken >impression that these are useful ways to get mail back to the sender of >an article. In fact, it often works. You contradicted yourself :-). For sites that keep the uucp maps, a good procedure is: 1) Look at the From: line address. If it's in the maps or is a domain name, use it. 2) If #1 fails, use the Path: line, but actively reroute it. This method sometimes works where the From: address fails because someone hasn't sent in a map entry (and believe me, you will never get everyone to do this). Sites that don't keep the maps should just use the From: line and punt to a smarter site. I'd leave the Path: format alone, but I would provide new versions of news with a simple way of creating From: lines of the format "user%sourcesite@registered.site". Just using sourcesite.uucp doesn't help for sites that haven't sent in a map entry. -- Jon Zeeff Branch Technology, uunet!umix!b-tech!zeeff zeeff%b-tech.uucp@umix.cc.umich.edu
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (08/22/88)
In article <63@volition.dec.com>, vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes: > "Path:" lines should be changed in the next release of B/C/TMN News, so > that they don't look so much like UUCP bang-paths. People get the mistaken > impression that these are useful ways to get mail back to the sender of > an article. In fact, it often works. I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now) the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. Doing so would leave an awful lot of small UUCP-only sites (the ones *not* running smail) in the lurch. I think that whole (anti-Path) line of argument reflects a kind of elitism arising from the fact that most of the mail gurus live at sites with expert sysadmins that are already in the domainist/Internet world. I think it's too easy for such people to slip into forgetting the vast majority of small UUCP-only sites and dismissing their needs and concerns as irrelevant -- but *I* don't intend to. I'm still a small site, working one 1200-baud phone line from a desktop. I run smail but it's easy for me to identify with a lot of people who don't have the experience, or time, or even spare disk space, to find a copy, bring it up and administer it. An alternative I am looking into is bundling the smail software with news and arranging the news autoconfigure/install sequence to also configure and install smail. Then everybody really could use From: and Reply-To: lines exclusively.-- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) UUCP: ..!{uunet,att,rutgers!vu-vlsi}!snark!eric @nets: eric@snark.UUCP Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) (08/22/88)
Eric, I _was_ feeling a bit elitist when I posted that note, and on reflection I think I should have put a "half :-)" on my proposal to make Path: lines look less like mail paths. There is no disk space requirement for smail, other than for the sources and the binary. (And if you have room for the netnews software, smail is peanuts in comparison -- which is why you are able to consider bundling it with TMN.) Smail is able to run without a database. Or, rather, with a truncated database: smart-host uunet!%s This assumes that you are one hop from uunet and want to use it to route your outgoing UUCP mail. You could, in your case, say: smart-host vu-vlsi!rutgers!%s Note that the "-" in smart-host may or may not be correct, I don't use it here since I have a full database. Check the smail docs. Registering in the u.* files costs nothing; smail is available for free; you don't need a full database, or a 32-bit machine to run pathalias since you don't need to run pathalias; smail will run on SysV or SysIII or BSD, and probably V7 and Xenix. I don't see that I'm asking anything unreasonable. I hope that you do bundle smail with TMN; it's small, and TMN can then assume its existence. Make sure that smail is only optionally installed, since many sites will already have smail or something equivilent and won't want to have to edit the TMN Makefile to keep their MTAs from being overwritten. -- Paul Vixie Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013
blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson) (08/22/88)
[note redirected followups, this is straying from a mail issue to a news one.] In article <do0ro#3cRrZV=eric@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now) >the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. How about at least defining a standard way to indicate the path is not a valid mail address? (This should be true on moderated newsgroups and articles recieved via recmail.) Would any software break (other than the already broken software that assumes path is a valid mail address) if the string following the last ! was null? (Moderaters who try to ensure the path line contains a uucp mail path to the poster prevent the article going to those sites mentioned.) -- Bob Larson Arpa: Blarson@Ecla.Usc.Edu blarson@skat.usc.edu Uucp: {sdcrdcf,cit-vax}!oberon!skat!blarson Prime mailing list: info-prime-request%ais1@ecla.usc.edu oberon!ais1!info-prime-request
les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell) (08/22/88)
In article <do0ro#3cRrZV=eric@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >> "Path:" lines should be changed in the next release of B/C/TMN News, so > >I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now) >the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. Doing so >would leave an awful lot of small UUCP-only sites (the ones *not* running >smail) in the lurch. > >An alternative I am looking into is bundling the smail software with news and >arranging the news autoconfigure/install sequence to also configure and install >smail. Then everybody really could use From: and Reply-To: lines exclusively.-- The problem is being caused by the news software. Why not fix it there? How about making the news software generate what it considers to be the optimal mail reply address in another header. Sites that can auto-route would use the user@site notation from the Reply-to: line, sites that cannot would construct a path back to the last site that re-routes with whatever notation is required to request that site to re-route. (I think the *real* problem here is that there is no standard way to request a site to perform routing - then explicit paths could always be left alone). In case the news feed does not want to deliver your mail replies (att?), this header could be adjusted to use an alternate route without requiring additional software. Les Mikesell
jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (08/22/88)
In article <do0ro#3cRrZV=eric@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now) >the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. Doing so >would leave an awful lot of small UUCP-only sites (the ones *not* running >smail) in the lurch. That's what the "mailpaths" file is for, Eric. (I hope you provide similar functionality in 3.0 news!) Sites with dumb mailers can still define INTERNET and have mail sent to a smart neighbor for routing. -- - Joe Buck {uunet,ucbvax,pyramid,<smart-site>}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck jbuck@epimass.epi.com Old Arpa mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net If you leave your fate in the hands of the gods, don't be surprised if they have a few grins at your expense. - Tom Robbins
duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Duncan McEwan) (08/23/88)
In article <do0ro#3cRrZV=eric@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now) >the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. Doing so >would leave an awful lot of small UUCP-only sites (the ones *not* running >smail) in the lurch. Not so, if news 3.0 supports a feature like the "internet" entry in news 2.11's "LIBDIR/mailpaths" file. Then small sites can use the Internet "From: " address without having to run smail, pathalias, or receive comp.mail.maps. The introduction of a totally new version of news is too good an oportunity to correct past mistakes -- we shouldn't repeat them in the name of backwards-compatibility if there is a reasonably easy way to avoid them. >An alternative I am looking into is bundling the smail software with news and >arranging the news autoconfigure/install sequence to also configure and install >smail. This would be a good thing to do anyway, since larger sites should not rely on the "internet" entry in "mailpaths" to dump all their mail onto one internet host. Duncan
dan@maccs.McMaster.CA (Dan Trottier) (08/24/88)
In article <70@volition.dec.com> vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes: > >Registering in the u.* files costs nothing; smail is available for free; >you don't need a full database, or a 32-bit machine to run pathalias since >you don't need to run pathalias; smail will run on SysV or SysIII or BSD, >and probably V7 and Xenix. The point is that many users out there are not motivated enough or lack the sources of information that we (administrators of large sites) have access to. I personally know several people who have Unix workstations/computers that have never used the C compiler. A lot more software is being sold as binaries and that is what these people run. Isn't it time that one of the big Unix distributors (AT&T, Berkeley) (-: -- Sun is just a Value Added Reseller -- :-) bite the bullet and add a smart mailer to their distribution. This wouldn't make their Unix incompatible or in any way change base functionality. All they would need is an rmail that was smart enough to look in a file for a forwarding host. Dan Trottier -- A.I. - is a three toed sloth! | ...!uunet!mnetor!maccs!dan -- Official scrabble players dictionary -- | dan@mcmaster.BITNET
aad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) (08/25/88)
In article <70@volition.dec.com> vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes: >Registering in the u.* files costs nothing; smail is available for free; >you don't need a full database, or a 32-bit machine to run pathalias since >you don't need to run pathalias; smail will run on SysV or SysIII or BSD, >and probably V7 and Xenix. We're registered in the u.usa.ct.1 file because it's free, and I have a copy of smail2.5 (3.x seems to be a myth as far as I can tell) because it's free. The skimpy documentation that I got with smail does seem somewhat elitist: From the smail 2.5 Read.me file: Prerequisites: A properly registered domain name for your organization, such as ATT.COM. (It is possible to run smail using a domain name under .UUCP, but since this can't be officially registered, it is appropriate only for testing.) From the defs.h file: ** full domain name is 'hostname.uucp' (get registered!) and /* * .UUCP here is just for testing, GET REGISTERED in COM, EDU, etc. * See INFO.REGISTRY for details. */ I'm still trying to figure out how to use .UUCP because GETTING REGISTERED isn't free. It's $150 a year as far as I can tell. Believe it or not, we don't communicate directly with an internet site, so we'd have to subscribe to uunet, $35 a month plus phone costs. And of course there isn't even an INFO.REGISTRY file there for me to see. Now, please don't see this as a flame. Smail is a good thing, and pathalias is a good thing, but trying to explain to the management that's cut spending to the bone that we need to spend a couple hundred dollars a year for something intangible is impossible. -- @disclaimer(Any concepts or opinions above are entirely mine, not those of my employer, my GIGI, or my 11/34) beak is beak is not Anthony A. Datri,SysAdmin,StepstoneCorporation,stpstn!aad
jordan@zooks.ads.com (Jordan Hayes) (08/26/88)
What i'd like to see is an alternative "for the rest of us" ... I can't turn on INTERNET, because I don't bother to route user@host.UUCP, but I hate to see all those bang paths go out in replies ... i'd like it to look for a domain, like INTERNET does, and if it's "UUCP" (*ugh*), give the bang path (you lose anyway), but if it's not, give it to me domain-style, since I have an MX-able sendmail installed and am on the Internet. Has anyone done this? /jordan
vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) (08/26/88)
2 of 5 for today.
In article <1382@maccs.McMaster.CA> dan@maccs.UUCP (Dan Trottier) writes:
# Isn't it time that one of the big Unix distributors (AT&T, Berkeley)
# bite the bullet and add a smart mailer to their distribution.
Oddly enough, for all their faults, ISC does provide smail and sendmail
with their UNIX V/386 product. I was amazed. I'd like to see other
vendors do this, but they're all waiting for X.400 in 1995 before they
decide which way to jump.
--
Paul Vixie
Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP
Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul
Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013