paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) (06/29/87)
In article <685@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes: >In article <41000010@umbio> solejni@umbio.UUCP writes: >> >>Paul, I would be grateful for assistance with mailing mail to system >>HASARA5, in Netherlands. I have no knowledge of e-mail, so if you could >>recoommend a source of published information/guidelines/tutorial, I would >>be most grateful. Thanks. >postmaster@lhasa%harvard.harvard.edu will probably work. Aaauuuuggghhhh!! I can't believe I wrote that. I must've been smoking too many sendmail.cf rulesets. I reversed the @ and % above, as John Owens just pointed out in a mail message to me. I really know better, this was JUST A TYPO. Please, don't 500 people all flame me for this! Just a TYPO, okay? :-) -- Paul A Vixie Esq 329 Noe Street {ptsfa, crash, hoptoad, ucat}!vixie!paul San Francisco ptsfa!vixie!paul@ames.arc.nasa.gov CA 94116 paul@vixie.UUCP (415) 864-7013
janowsky@huma1.UUCP (06/29/87)
In article <688@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes:
.>
.>>postmaster@lhasa%harvard.harvard.edu will probably work.
.>
.>Aaauuuuggghhhh!!
.>
.>I can't believe I wrote that. I must've been smoking too many sendmail.cf
.>rulesets. I reversed the @ and % above, as John Owens just pointed out in
What's wrong with postmaster@lhasa.harvard.edu ?
and avoid the @/% problems anyway?
Steve Janowsky (janowsky@huma1.harvard.edu = ...harvard!huma1!janowsky)paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) (07/01/87)
In article <2418@husc6.UUCP> janowsky@huma1.UUCP (Steve Janowsky) writes: >In article <688@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes: >.>>postmaster@lhasa%harvard.harvard.edu will probably work. >.>Aaauuuuggghhhh!! > >What's wrong with postmaster@lhasa.harvard.edu ? > >and avoid the @/% problems anyway? > >Steve Janowsky (janowsky@huma1.harvard.edu = ...harvard!huma1!janowsky) Oh me, oh my. It's begun. Dot (.) is not a routing character, it just sortof looks a little like one. lhasa.harvard.edu would be a site in the '.harvard.edu' mail domain; as far as I know, lhasa is part of a totally different organization. A domain or a subdomain is an absolute, unambiguous way to refer to some group of users or other hosts or other subdomains. If 'lhasa.harvard.edu' works, then 'lhasa.xxxxx' would have to work for any xxxxx that was a domain that knew how to route mail to 'lhasa'. That's not the way it works. Lhasa may have it's own fully-qualified domain name; I don't know. Since I didn't know, and I knew that harvard spoke to lhasa, I specified a relative address -- a source route -- using harvard as a forwarder. That's the way the % and @ are meant to be used -- there is a standard for source routing syntax, but it's kindof a pain to use: <@harvard.edu:user@lhasa> So the 'olde ARPAnet %-kludge' was born. This looks like: user%lhasa@harvard.edu The rule, non-standard but almost universally understood, is to use the @ and parts right of it as the immediate destination of the message; the % furthest to the right is turned into an @ for the next forwarding/parsing operation. When there are no more %'s, the message is probably for a local recipient. UUCP people can just use the !'s: harvard.edu!lhasa!user But sometimes an ARPA site will take the presence of an "!" in an address to mean that the message expects to be forwarded via a UUCP link, and will not attempt to deliver it over an ARPA link. Younger mailers will tend to homogenize -- find the forwarding host/domain regardless of syntax, and deliver it to whichever link will accept it. I believed that Harvard was running the older type of mail forwarder, so I suggested the %-kludge as the address of choice. As others have since pointed out, lhasa wasn't even the right site, so the original question is moot. But I like to foster discussion on mail addressing as often as possible, so I'm following up in detail. I note from your signature... >Steve Janowsky (janowsky@huma1.harvard.edu = ...harvard!huma1!janowsky) ...a possible source of your confusion over the meaning of the '.'. Both forms you give are acceptable addresses for you -- because 'huma1' is a host known to '.harvard.edu', the !-path will work; because the full domain name 'huma1.harvard.edu' will route to the domain server for the '.harvard.edu' domain, which will strip off or otherwise ignore its own domain name and ferret out the 'huma1', the domain name will work. Since both will work, speculation is natural on the actual nature of the addressing syntax. I hope I've straightened you out on this... Anybody got a question about mail? Anybody think I'm wrong about something? Let me have it! We can't both be right, unless one of us is misinformed. Let's argue! Let's discuss! -- Paul A Vixie Esq 329 Noe Street {ptsfa, crash, hoptoad, ucat}!vixie!paul San Francisco ptsfa!vixie!paul@ames.arc.nasa.gov CA 94116 paul@vixie.UUCP (415) 864-7013