[comp.unix.xenix] Why can't I use UUNET's smail? Smail for Xenix worthwhile?

mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) (09/08/88)

I recently had cause to send E-mail to user "macsmith@athena.mit.edu" on 
ARPAnet for the first time, and since UUNET has smail and I'm directly 
connected, I thought "no problem", it's just:

		uunet!macsmith@athena.mit.edu

But that didn't work.  So I posted a note to comp.unix.questions (the wrong
place, I'm told) asking "How do I send mail to ARPA?" and got back replies

		uunet!macsmith%athena.mit.edu

			and

		uunet!athena.mit.edu!macsmith

			and

		uunet!macsmith%athena.mit.edu.ARPA@UUNET.UU.NET

and one or two others, all of which I tried and none of which
worked.

I don't understand why not.  I thought the idea of smail was to let you
address email by user@site.domain; if I get my mail to uunet, why doesn't
its smail take over from there?  Is there a "precedence" problem; that is, 
does uunet!macsmith always parse as SITE "macsmith"?  And is there a way 
around this?

Even if there is, is there some compelling reason I should be running smail
myself on my single-user 286 Xenix box?  Is there some tweak needed to make
the standard smail distribution work with 286 Xenix?

I had been half-following the 'smail-and-domain-registry' discussion in
comp.mail.uucp not thinking it applied much to me, so ... forgive me if
I'm treading well-worn ground, and thanks in advance.
-- 

Mark McWiggins			UUCP:		uunet!intek01!mark
DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong.	INTERNET:	intek01!mark@uunet.uu.net
						(206) 455-9935

dtynan@sultra.UUCP (Dermot Tynan) (09/16/88)

In article <347@intek01.UUCP>, mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes:
>
>	[Stuff about having mail returned]
>

I find that the best way to check what smail is doing, is to use the
illustrious -A option.  I have found a lot of problems in my paths file
by doing this.  If you are getting mail bounced back, try this;

smail -A anyone@system-x

smail will then print either of two things (at least my configuration will),
	a)	it will show a complete UUCP bang-path, which you can
		check to see if it looks OK, or
	b)	it will show
			anyone@system-x
		meaning it didn't resolve the path.  My mailer will then get
		seriously ill, when it sees the '@'.
This is a good place to start looking for problems.  Also, I experiment with
lots of different variants, and know what my particular configuration will do.
						- Der
-- 
Reply:	dtynan@sultra.UUCP		(Dermot Tynan @ Tynan Computers)
	{mips,pyramid}!sultra!dtynan
	Cast a cold eye on life, on death.  Horseman, pass by...    [WBY]