[comp.mail.uucp] question on mail to UUCP sites

bill@isl.Stanford.EDU (Bill Moore) (07/02/88)

I'm guessing that this is the right group fer my question- if not,
what is?

I'm bill@isl.stanford.EDU" place, meaning (I think) that I'm on the ethernet.
I want to send mail to user@site.UUCP. Any suggestions? Please reply
by e-mail if possible. Thank you.

-bill


PS Why does it say bill@isl.UUCP above? I'm clueless, can anyone explain
what's going on?

jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (07/02/88)

In article <261@isl.stanford.edu> bill@isl.UUCP (Bill Moore) writes:
>I'm bill@isl.stanford.EDU" place, meaning (I think) that I'm on the ethernet.
>I want to send mail to user@site.UUCP. Any suggestions? Please reply
>by e-mail if possible. Thank you.

Your address, since it is a domain address, doesn't say anything
about whether you are on the Arpanet, a local Ethernet, or are a
UUCP-only site.  It means that there is a domain registry named
.stanford.edu that knows how to reach your site.  Many sites with
domain addresses are not reachable by TCP/IP from the Internet.
Also, many sites on the Internet have old mailers and don't
understand domains, but expect every site to appear in the host
table.  These sites need to use the "magic %" convention to go
through a gateway:  UUNET is the most heavily used gateway for UUCP
sites, though there are others.  

.UUCP is a "fake" domain, but it has a well-defined de facto meaning:
the site by that name in the official UUCP map.  If the site in
question is on the UUCP map, you can reach them by mailing to

	user%site.UUCP@uunet.uu.net

If they aren't, you're out of luck; if they just got news source from
somebody and didn't register their site, the routers can't find them.

>PS Why does it say bill@isl.UUCP above? I'm clueless, can anyone explain
>what's going on?

As posted, "rn" assumes your domain is ".UUCP".  In your case it
isn't.  It's an easy change to the Rmail and Pnews shell scripts to
fix this.  Pester your system administrator until he or she changes
it to ".stanford.edu"; otherwise our replies to your articles will
not work.  



-- 
- 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

david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (07/02/88)

In article <2257@epimass.EPI.COM> jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes:
>In article <261@isl.stanford.edu> bill@isl.UUCP (Bill Moore) writes:
>.UUCP is a "fake" domain, but it has a well-defined de facto meaning:
>the site by that name in the official UUCP map.  If the site in
>question is on the UUCP map, you can reach them by mailing to
>
>	user%site.UUCP@uunet.uu.net

Please don't do this.  While it will work, Rick has said a number of
times that if uunet starts being used as a dumping ground like seismo
was that he'll fix the mailer there to NOT do any routing.


-- 
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy                         <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- ska: David le casse\*'      {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- I'm not bad, I'm just coded that way!