michael@fts1.uucp (Michael Richardson) (08/18/90)
A number of Unix people in the Ottawa area, members of a local
user's group are going to be registering a domain: ocug.on.ca
(Ottawa Carleton Unix Group) under which we will be a number
of our sites: mostly single user sites which would otherwise wind
up in .UUCP.
(I've been talking about this since January. The recent header munging
wars spured me onward.)
It looks like Carleton.Ca will be able to MX for us (however they are
shutting down their Vax, and are not yet completely up on the new hardware).
But, we aren't one site, and most of us have other connections, to other
organisations, and out of town links. What I'd like to do, is to have each
host that has another name (.UUCP or otherwise. Not all the hosts have
sent in map entries yet. This is precisely what we are hoping to avoid)
and is willing to run the private maps, claim a 'connection' to .ocug.on.ca: to
the outside, it would appear to be a single black box. i.e. if you can get
mail to ANY ocug.on.ca site, you can get mail to all of them.
Doing the above isn't so difficult: I've been experimenting with
things and I can some pretty respectable routes (pathalias -l uunet,
and including enough of Ontario to include a link to uunet).
[applogies to any sites mentioned that didn't actually
want to be part of it. I'm just experimenting.]
ocug-net = { amiga.ocug.on.ca,
tigris.ocug.on.ca,
julie.ocug.on.ca,
fts.ocug.on.ca,
mdr.ocug.on.ca,
ljk.ocug.on.ca,
gjk.ocug.on.ca,
micor.ocug.on.ca,
alzabo.ocug.on.ca }
julie .ocug.on.ca(LOCAL)
fts1 ocug-net
alzabo ocug-net
fts1.UUCP is in the maps, are alzabo and julie.
Julie, my home machine will always have (probably hand tailored,
I smart-host nearly everything to fts1) the most up-to-date data,
so any new hosts need only be added here. Everyone else will
route to julie if they don't know the route.
The problem is the private maps:
1) by using the net notation, and including that in our
maps (it would probably be in u.can.on.3, difficult to
remove) then our internal maps get the idea that we
ARE fully interconnected. This is not the case [although
it might be a neat idea.] I'm unsure as to the best way
of doing this.
One way is to not use the net notation, and just put
aliases in for each host that has another address.
2) Further problem: 'uux - julie.ocug.on.ca!rmail' isn't
workable. Internally, our maps would have to use the uname's
of the hosts. I've tried varying whether we say 'julie = julie.ocug.on.ca'
vs. 'julie.ocug.on.ca = julie'. I'd like to give the connection
data for the DOMAIN name rather than the uuname.
Modifying uux to do a lookup, or allowing domain names in
Systems is the best solution (and I CAN do that on Julie. Wonders
of having the source for your whole mail system) but that won't work
well elsewhere.
Further, if some _unlisted_ (e.g. not in the UUCP maps, but in
our maps) decides that they want to establish a connection to Tibet.UUCP
it seems to make sense that Tibet.UUCP claim a connection to 'guru.ocug.on.ca',
and if the cost allows it, mail SHOULD be routed through that connection.
I've thought of hacking pathalias to give preference to the non-domain names,
(or make a new target like 'private' and 'dead') in the map file. This would also
allow sites that can change their outgoing domain, but can't recognise their domain
name (e.g. stock AT&T, brain-dead UUPC things) to participate too.
Has anyone else come across such a problem before?
Are there any good solutions? Bad solutions?
Designating a single host as 'ocug.on.ca' (probably carleton.ca) and letting
then take care of ALL routing is one option. We can distribute a file of 'other connections'
and aliases to add to your maps to allow the domains. This means, however, that all external
mail is going to come in via a single site, and the maps there would need to the master.
(which means either they administer it, or they give me access to the system)
:!mcr!:
--
:!mcr!: | 'Golf sucks anyway --- give the land to the
Michael Richardson | Indians' --- recent CANACHAT comment.
Play: mcr@julie.UUCP Work: michael@fts1.UUCP Fido: 1:163/109.10 1:163/138
Amiga----^ - Pay attention only to _MY_ opinions. - ^--Amiga--^les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (08/20/90)
In article <1990Aug18.005655.5102@fts1.uucp> michael@fts1.uucp (Michael Richardson) writes: > 2) Further problem: 'uux - julie.ocug.on.ca!rmail' isn't > workable. Internally, our maps would have to use the uname's > of the hosts. Smail 3 can do what you need here (also, perhaps a combination of sendmail and smail 2.5). It can be configured to allow multiple names to be recognized for the local host, and can do path lookups based on complete or incomplete matches on domain names. The distribution also includes some tools to merge local map info with the published versions so you can force things to go the way you want internally.. Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us
urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) (08/21/90)
In comp.mail.misc, article <1990Aug18.005655.5102@fts1.uucp>,
michael@fts1.uucp (Michael Richardson) writes:
<
< A number of Unix people in the Ottawa area, members of a local
< user's group are going to be registering a domain: ocug.on.ca
< (Ottawa Carleton Unix Group) under which we will be a number
< of our sites: mostly single user sites which would otherwise wind
< up in .UUCP.
<
< ocug-net = { amiga.ocug.on.ca,
< alzabo.ocug.on.ca }
<
< julie .ocug.on.ca(LOCAL)
< fts1 ocug-net
< alzabo ocug-net
<
[ various problems deleted ]
Our solution is to have entries like
host1 .some.domain
host1 = one.some.domain
#
host2 .some.domain(DAILY/3)
host2 = two.some.domain
#
host3 .some.domain(DAILY*2)
host3 = three.some.domain
for all hosts with external connections and which want to carry traffic into
the domain. The cost on these entries approximates general connectivity of
that host into the domain.
Since Pathalias won't generate routes with names in them which start with a
dot, this works nicely.
If you want to allow paths through your domain (somewhere!host1!host3!xyzzy!
!user), you'll still have to include links from host1 to host3. It isn't a
problem if the internal version of these connections isn't direct, as long as
the link cost advertised to the outside world is greater than the internal
cost of that link. If not, you may run into problems with rerouters.
< Has anyone else come across such a problem before?
Yes.
After playing around with Pathalias network notation and stuff, I decided to
drop it. All it says is "All the hosts in there can be reached via this host",
while requiring you to explicitly mention the machines which are reachable
through these secondary links. Domains are supposed not to require outside
knowledge of the hosts in the domain, so...
Your internal map will probably not have to be changed except for equipping
every entry with its domain alias:
host99 = someone.some.domain
< Are there any good solutions? Bad solutions?
NB: Requiring that everyone with more than one link use a smart mailer, has
proven either to be a good solution in itself, or to prevent some problems
from happening which are discussed here every two months anyway. ;-)
--
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de
Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49+721+621127(Voice)/621227(PEP)