vskahan@lgnp1.LS.COM (Vince Skahan) (04/28/89)
Is there a recommended configuration for unix mail in a local internet of multiple rings ??? It seems a little dumb to link all the /usr/spool/mail directories to one place but then again, if you don't, to send mail from node A to node B on another ring, you'd have to know which node was the other guy's gateway. We've had to set up /mail to point to one place for DPSS mail but once again, it's a little scary. We don't want to knock out mail for 50 nodes or so if one native ethernet gateway goes down. We've kind of made a local standard against linking across rings with the exception of finding the master registry and one or two specific applications such as Cadre Teamwork (folks on lots of rings have to share the same models so we link them all to one dc_server). Also, I added mailers for unix <--> DPSS mail for the SR10 nodes and would like to know if it's possible to interface DPSS mail with a *remote* unix mail location...I can send DPSS to user@unix but what I'd really like to do is to mail to user%nodename@unix or something like that. By the same token, I'd like to not link DPSS across rings and get the ability to mail to user%nodename@dpss, etc. if that's the smartest way to do it. I have an old picture of Apollo's corporate network that came in the mail one time on the wall and it looks huge...how do you folks handle mail (do you use DPSS or unix or both) ??? Also, I seem to remember someone from Mentor asking about mail a few weeks ago. How do you folks handle multiple rings ??? Thanks for any help... -- Vince Skahan - please reply to skahan@boeing.com or bcsaic!psev!bcs212 Note: any comments expressed above are mine and have no relation to Boeing or the real nice folks who let me read news on their system...
nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley) (05/02/89)
In article <1537@lgnp1.LS.COM> vskahan@lgnp1.LS.COM (Vince Skahan) writes: > >I have an old picture of Apollo's corporate network that came in the >mail one time on the wall and it looks huge...how do you folks handle >mail (do you use DPSS or unix or both) ??? > Some people use sendmail, but most of the sites have a link to a post office site local to a particular ring in the network. Which postal site mail arrives at is not visible to the sender. The saving grace to this system is that the version of DPSS used internally supports store and forward, so if the network is down the mail still gets sent eventually. To forestall any questions, no there are no plans to release that version of DPSS (nor do I think you would really want it - personal opinion only). I don't really know enough about how to set up sendmail configurations to recommend what to do in that area, but I'm sure someone on the net has dealt with the same problem. -- ### User Environment, Apollo Computer Inc. ### Public Access ProLine BBS ### ### {mit-eddie,yale}!apollo!nazgul ### nazgul@pro-angmar.cts.com ### ### nazgul@apollo.com ### (617) 641-3722 300/1200/2400 ### I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.
dennis@peanuts.nosc.mil (Dennis Cottel) (05/02/89)
In article <42f7c091.1b147@apollo.COM> nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley) writes: >... the version of DPSS used internally supports store and forward, >so if the network is down the mail still gets sent eventually. We use Berkeley Mail and sendmail with all nodes linked to a single /usr/spool directory. One problem with this: during the time the node with this directory is down, users can't even launch messages with Mail. This is currently a general problem with spoolers on the network, also including PRF (at SR9 anyway). If the spooling disk is unavailable, the user can't complete the task and go on to something else. I would think that what you want to do is to spool the job onto the boot disk (which is guaranteed to be available since you are running on it), and then have a daemon process collect and process it. The only way around this that I can see for the mail issue is to run a sendmail daemon (and /usr/spool directory) on every node. I have resisted this because (a) it seems like more admin work, (b) it's nice to have a single address for all the Apollo users, and (c) Apollo told me to do it the other way ;-). Maybe I should rethink this. Dennis Cottel Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA 92152 (619) 553-1645 dennis@nosc.MIL sdcsvax!noscvax!dennis