jeff@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Stearns) (05/26/88)
I have found what looks like a design problem in pathalias. It can create multiple routes to the same site. This happens when the sitename is longer than the 7 (or 8 or even 6) characters which are significant to uucp. For example, our pathalias output file contains two routes to site microsoft, depending on how you spell it: microsoft microsoft!%s 205 microsof uw-beaver!rutgers!ncar!ico!ism780c!microsof!%s 1185 (This is probably the result of one lone reference to "microsof", in the map data file "d.usa.ca.1": ism780c microsof(DEMAND), microsoft(DEMAND)) One could, of course, declare pathalias aliases of the form microso = microsoft microsof = microsoft but the total number of these things would be large. It would also be changing constantly. Is there a cleaner solution? I wonder about teaching pathalias the limitations of uucp names. Or about asking map moderators to check for this situation before posting map data. For amusement I wrote an awk script which truncates uucp sitenames to seven characters and then prints routes to sites which share the same name. Following is a *partial list*. Question: Which are simply duplicate routes to the same site and which are actually different sites? cerlctt tikal!uiucuxc!ctt!cerl!cerlctta!%s 1200 cerlctt tikal!uiucuxc!ctt!cerl!cerlcttb!%s 1200 cg-atla uw-beaver!rutgers!mit-eddie!ulowell!cg-atla!%s 890 cg-atla uw-beaver!rutgers!ncar!ico!ism780c!cg-atlas!%s 1185 csula-p uw-beaver!rutgers!moss!ihnp4!escher!csula-pc!%s 1515 csula-p uw-beaver!rutgers!hplabs!csun!csula-ps!%s 1095 estevax sun!pyramid!fauern!estevax!%s 3755 estevax sun!pyramid!fauern!estevax!estevaxb!%s 3780 heimdal thebes!pilchuck!uunet!mcvax!diku!dkuug!%s 1045 heimdal thebes!pilchuck!uunet!munnari!heimdall.dmt.oz!%s 1199 laserwr sun!laserwr!%s 705 laserwr uw-beaver!rutgers!sunybcs!decvax!decwrl!laserwrite!%s 1080 leonard uw-beaver!rutgers!gatech!mcdchg!motmpl!leonard!%s 1490 leonard thebes!pilchuck!uunet!mcvax!i2unix!leonardo!%s 1520 prometh thebes!pilchuck!uunet!mcvax!ariadne!theseas!prometheas!%s 6510 prometh thebes!pilchuck!uunet!vsedev!softdev!prometheus!%s 1150 valhall thebes!pilchuck!uunet!enea!urd!valhall!%s 30009998 valhall sun!texsun!edsr!valhalla!%s 7266 -- Jeff Stearns Domain: jeff@tc.fluke.COM Voice: +1 206 356 5064 If you must: {uw-beaver,microsoft,sun}!fluke!jeff USPS: John Fluke Mfg. Co. / P.O. Box C9090 / Everett WA 98206
honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman) (05/27/88)
this is not a pathalias bug. furthermore, at least one version of uucp allows host names to be 14 characters long, so truncation at seven would be a disservice. as for microsof and similar problems, this is a "garbage-in, garbage-out" problem. bang on the appropriate map coordinator. peter