[comp.mail.sendmail] Hiding behind NIC hosts

cantrell@eemips.tamu.edu (Pierce Cantrell) (09/01/90)

The latest release of Mips RISC/os 4.5 uses sendmail 5.61
and a sendmail.cf version 1.34 from Berkeley dated Jan 1989.

This sendmail.cf hides non-registered hosts behind a
NIC registered host when the destination is to domain
.arpa. Is this still necessary? I don't see other
sendmail.cf's doing this, and the README file from
Berkeley said the need to do this would be going away.

In addition, all mail for the csnet domain is forwarded
to the csnet relay machine. Is this still necessary or
does dns work to csnet?


--
Pierce Cantrell                           Internet: cantrell@eemips.tamu.edu
Department of Electrical Engineering        
Texas A&M University                           tel: (409) 845-7441
College Station, Texas 77843-3128              fax: (409) 845-6259

brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (09/01/90)

In article <7891@helios.TAMU.EDU> cantrell@eemips.tamu.edu (Pierce Cantrell) writes:
>The latest release of Mips RISC/os 4.5 uses sendmail 5.61
>and a sendmail.cf version 1.34 from Berkeley dated Jan 1989.
>This sendmail.cf hides non-registered hosts behind a
>NIC registered host when the destination is to domain
>.arpa. Is this still necessary?

There aren't any .ARPA hosts any more, but this might not be a bad idea
for hosts in .MIL, since many of those still do not use the domain name
system and probably never will.  That way, at least you'd be able to
correspond with them.

We STILL rewrite outgoing mail from UCSD as user%localhost@ucsd.edu
because of this; there are quite a few instances where ucsd.edu being
the only campus host in the NIC hosts table has prevented people from
communicating unless they used this form.

>In addition, all mail for the csnet domain is forwarded
>to the csnet relay machine. Is this still necessary or
>does dns work to csnet?

I don't believe .csnet exists any more either.  That's obsolete and probably
can be deleted.  As I recall, all csnet hosts went to real domain names
a while back.

	Brian Kantor
		UCSD Network Operations
		UCSD C-024, La Jolla, CA 92093-0124 USA
		brian@ucsd.edu	BRIAN@UCSD ucsd!brian

rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (09/05/90)

In <7891@helios.TAMU.EDU> cantrell@eemips.tamu.edu (Pierce Cantrell) writes:
>In addition, all mail for the csnet domain is forwarded
>to the csnet relay machine. Is this still necessary or
>does dns work to csnet?

CSNET is all domain names, and the fake ".CSNET" domain can really
truly be removed.

Not an official CSNET statement, but a fact nonetheless.
	/r$
-- 
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.

Makey@Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) (09/05/90)

In article <18254@ucsd.Edu> brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes:
>There aren't any .ARPA hosts any more

This is a popular myth.  While it is true that hosts in the .ARPA
domain are being renamed to other domains, the process is not yet
complete.  There are currently about 100 hosts whose primary names
end with .ARPA.  Almost all of these holdouts are MILNET hosts
with .NAVY.MIL aliases, but I noted one or two entries in HOSTS.TXT
with only .ARPA names.  In addition, there are about 800 hosts with
non-.ARPA primary names that maintain .ARPA aliases.

To answer the original question, it should be plenty safe to remove
the sendmail.cf rule that rewrites "user@subdomain.host.arpa" as
"user%subdomain@host.arpa" unless you know of a specific case in which
this is required (I actually benefited from the rule once when my host
was named LOGICON.ARPA).

                           :: Jeff Makey

Department of Tautological Pleonasms and Superfluous Redundancies Department
    Disclaimer: All opinions are strictly those of the author.
    Internet: Makey@Logicon.COM    UUCP: {nosc,ucsd}!logicon.com!Makey