matt@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Matt Costello) (03/20/87)
I've come across a problem with deciphering a standard UUCP path
such as
comet!fred
The problem is described here in a theoretical manner, but I have just
run into it at ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM. At the current time it only
affects the uupath command, so it is not serious, but it should become
increasingly common as private hosts proliferate.
Assume that our (mythical) host communicates with the following three hosts:
comet.UUCP using UUCP
comet.SanDiego.NCR.COM using XNS across an ethernet
comet.ames.arg.nasa.gov using SMTP
When given the address/path in one of the following forms
comet.uucp!fred
comet.sandiego.ncr.com!fred
comet.ames.arg.nasa.gov!fred
fred@comet # qualified into our domain
fred@comet.uucp
we know exactly which host the address refers to, so everything is just
fine. But what can be do when some poor fool gives us the address
comet!fred
Which of the three hosts does this "comet" refer to? One simple
solution is to say "none of the above". What we have been doing is
assuming that comet.uucp is the correct host, partly because this is
the uucp addressing mechanism, and partly because it just ended up
this way. The problem now is that the "comet" must actually be
comet.sandiego.ncr.com since it is in our domain. In addition, the
general manager will get somewhat annoyed if his mail is delivered
to Oregon.
The only solution that I've come up with is to build a database that
maps the simple host names we communicate with to the fully qualified
domain name of the host the mail should be delivered to. This
database would be used for simple hostnames in paths and nothing else.
Does anybody have a better solution? I'd also be very interested to
hear from anybody who has run into this problem and what they did
about it.
--
Matt Costello <matt.costello@SanDiego.NCR.COM>
{sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!matthmm@laura.UUCP (03/21/87)
The most reasonable thing to do is to assume uucp for bang addresses. xyz!user is ONLY a valid addres in the uucp domain. If someone wants to address a host in another domain, he should use user@xyz or user@xyz.domain. Adding a database which maps every simple name into a fully qualified address makes things unnecessarily complicated both for the administrator and the poor users. Hans-Martin Mosner D