news@bellcore.bellcore.com (news) (10/27/89)
What do people use to do site-wide aliasing? I'd love to support: nrh@bellcore.com (works) nat_howard@bellcore.com nat@bellcore.com (if unambiguous) MRE2L383@bellcore.com (my room number) and so on... Are there standard (hopefully free) packages (including, perhaps, hacks to sendmail)? Combinatorics forbids storing all this stuff in aliases. I'm aware of one used for a large computer group here, but I'm after the "legendary, best of its kind" program to do this (if it exists and is available). If there's interest, I'll summarize the results. Thanks.
cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart) (10/28/89)
Use the Andrew White Pages, which will be available as part of the ``andrew'' contribution to the X.V11R4 tape, to be released in ``late December.'' To find out more, talk to Nathaniel Borenstein, who also is at Bellcore in Morristown. Craig Everhart Andrew message system
news@bellcore.bellcore.com (news) (11/11/89)
I asked some time ago for folks to send me information on how they made "user@site.com" mail go where it was supposed to go, for wide values of "user" and large values of "site". The reason I asked the question was that I wish to support some such thing here at bellcore, so that: nrh@bellcore.com nat-howard@bellcore.com nat-r-howard@bellcore.com n-r-howard@bellcore.com ... and so on all work, even if "nrh" doesn't really have an account on the machine called "bellcore.com". Generating all such possibilities and sticking them in our aliases database is, I suppose, a possibility, but this sounds expensive to me. A little thought convinced me that others must be up against this same problem, so I asked the net about it. I got one note from a person at an Unnamed Institution who had done something like this, and was willing to send me his stuff strictly on a "here, maybe this would help you build your own" basis. I gather he does not wish to be named, and he does not want his software further distributed. Please don't ask me about this -- perhaps he would answer queries on the net, but that's up to him. I got a note saying that "mail addresses at sun.com are aliased, but I don't know what package/hacks they use for it..." I got several notes reminding me that I had said I'd summarize. Finally, I got several messages suggesting I look into the Andrew White Pages system which (I'm told) will be on the X11R4 tape. I plan to do this.
crr@turing.newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Ritson) (11/13/89)
In article <18184@bellcore.bellcore.com> nrh@buzz.bellcore.com writes: >I asked some time ago for folks to send me information on how they made >"user@site.com" mail go where it was supposed to go, for wide values of >"user" and large values of "site". Seeing as the original poster did not seem to get many replies, I attach a description of what we do here at newcastle.ac.uk. Sorry it is so long. This uses a standard PD version of sendmail, and a few small supporting programs. Even the sendmail.cf file was "compiled", though it has since been tweeked by hand. Chris Ritson (postmaster@newcastle.ac.uk) -- ARPA : C.R.Ritson@newcastle.ac.uk JANET: C.R.Ritson@uk.ac.newcastle UUCP : ...!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!C.R.Ritson PHONE: +44 91 222 8175 FAX : +44 91 222 8232 TELEX: uk+53654-UNINEW_G SNAIL: Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU Here is the article we produced for UK consuption.... Centralised Electronic Mail -- The Newcastle Experience ======================================================= This article is an edited version of a message which was originally sent to the distribution list "mailgroup@uk.ac.ucl.cs". No claims of originality are made for the software described or the facilities presented; indeed much of what we have done was suggested by earlier work at the University of Edinburgh. The article is intended simply to illustrate what is possible today for the electronic mail facilities of a typical higher education establishment. The Newcastle University Mail Hub --------------------------------- We have a Sun 4 (uk.ac.newcastle) which acts as mail hub. It has X.25 connections to our CPSE for Grey Book mail to JANET, and to exchange mail with our current main computing service host (uk.ac.ncl.mts). It has Ethernet connections to all of our UNIX hosts, and since Newcastle's Ethernet is linked to that at the University of Durham, it can potentially reach all UNIX hosts on both campusses. SMTP is used between the UNIX hosts and the hub; Grey Book for all external connections, uk.ac.ncl.mts, and a couple of other hosts. The software on the Sun 4 is a modified version of "sendmail". Various parts of what we use are either standard Berkeley UNIX components or extras that were obtained from, or via, Brunel, Nottingham and Cambridge. The credit for putting it all together goes to Andy Linton. He has since left us to take up a post at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, so our current Postmaster and hub manager is now Chris Ritson. The UNIX hosts represent quite a range of hardware. Most are Sun 3's, but there's a MicroVax, 2 Encores, and a Gould. The common link is that all run sendmail. A network of Xerox workstations is also linked to the mail hub via a gateway machine. Mail facilities at Newcastle are a cooperative venture between both the Computing Science department and the Computing Service. Chris Ritson is attached to the former whilst I am part of the Newcastle team of the NUMAC Computing Service. Mail hub functionality ---------------------- The mail hub performs two main functions in addition to normal mail relaying: (a) For inbound messages of the form <personal-name>@uk.ac.newcastle, it resolves that into a <username>@<host> delivery address. This is usually local so that, for example: J.A.Hunter@uk.ac.newcastle -> cl40@uk.ac.ncl.mts C.R.Ritson@uk.ac.newcastle -> crr@uk.ac.ncl.turing You won't find the second machine, or any of our many Sun local mail servers, registered in the NRS. One of the many advantages of running a central mail service is that we can keep our host registrations within reason. We hope this makes it obvious to remote users that Postmaster@uk.ac.newcastle is the place to send e-mail queries. (b) For outbound messages with <username>@<host> addresses, the hub resigns the message with a central site (uk.ac.newcastle) address. This is a many-to-one mapping, so that for Chris Ritson's entry: crr@uk.ac.ncl.turing crr@uk.ac.ncl.colman cra3@uk.ac.ncl.mts (and several others) get resigned as C.R.Ritson@uk.ac.newcastle . Chris can send mail out from any of these hosts. The resignature means that, through process (a), replies will come back to him at his preferred host. The User's View --------------- The mailers which sign plain <username>@<host> are just the standard UNIX "elm" and "mail" utilities. We do have one mailer, "emu", which performs the resigning itself; it has access to a secure copy of the hub tables to do this. The source data for the mail hub delivery and resignature tables is maintained with a file editor as a series of files at present, but we plan to augment this up with a full-screen forms-filling utility for more convenient use by our computer operators or reception staff. The individual files are checked and used to generate the hub's online directories each night. The great advantage we obtain from this set-up is that all of our users get simple addresses based on their personal name and a single host name, uk.ac.newcastle, rather than cryptic and unmemorable addresses of the "XYZ123@uk.ac.ncl.something" ilk. Re-signing of outgoing mail is a crucial part of this. Many systems provide a personal name address for incoming mail but sign user-unfriendly <username>@<host> addresses on outgoing messages. It should be noted here that the University of Edinburgh have been performing hub resigning for some years, through the work of Sandy Shaw. A similar facility is available at the University of Reading, due to Adrian Pell (now at HP Labs, Bristol). Registration of Users' Personal Names ------------------------------------- At present we have personal names registered for about 3000 users, a mixture of staff and students. Newcastle is a medium sized university and hence has over 9000 registered students at any one time. We are fortunate in having access to machine-readable student records providing a mapping between personal name and student number. A simple algorithmic mapping provides the username of each student from their student number, allowing us to predict the <username>@<host> details for the computer account that they will be given. As a consequence we intend to register electronic mail names en masse for all of our students as from October/November 1989. Exposure to information technology is encouraged by most departments, and in the Computing Laboratory use of electronic mail facilities is considered to be part of an undergraduate's education. For University staff, names are registered on an individual basis. The staff member simply sends a message to Postmaster. He or she is encouraged to do this, because the mail hub will not allow mail off-campus for users who do not have a personal name registered. Name Recognition ---------------- For inbound messages, apart from the mandatory case-independent recognition, name matches must be exact to deliver. We have a community of several thousand users, and it wouldn't be a good idea to have, say, a professor's mail fall into the hands of an undergraduate through a misplaced fuzzy match. Failure to match does invoke fuzzy match software, however. This is used to send a message back suggesting a list of addresses which might contain the intended recipient. A message to: hunter @ uk.ac.newcastle would return an error report giving my e-mail address together with those of the other five of that clan. Again, Edinburgh and others have been doing this since before we were; we claim no originality. Staff on Sabbatical Leave ------------------------- We have the capability to set up a personal name to deliver to any <username>@<host> address in the e-mail world. It is therefore a simple matter to arrange that mail is routed to the relevant local host when a staff member takes sabbatical or similar long-term leave. Applicability ------------- Note that while most of our hosts are bsd UNIX based, they aren't all. In fact the system could work just as easy with VAX/VMS or VM/CMS if the relevant machines' NRS tables are set up to route all messages to the mail hub, and the mail hub has available the relevant resignature information. Distribution Lists ------------------ We handle distribution lists through normal sendmail facilities on the hub. The source for each list is held in user-owned files in a special directory on another public UNIX host, and the changed versions are copied to the hub once an hour. We don't let anyone log into the hub itself other than to maintain the mail system. Expansion of the list proceeds via a series of filters which add a "Sender:" field of <listname>-request, and, if not already present, a "Reply-to:" field. o The addition of the "Sender:" provides a facility originally associated with DARPA Internet lists, and is intended to route list expansion error reports to the list owner, who can fix the problem, rather than the message originator, who usually can't. o The "Reply-to:" addition copies the "From:" field, and is intended to prevent group-reply mailers from replying to the list without manual intervention on the part of the mail user. Telex -- For the Destinations Other Mailers Cannot Reach -------------------------------------------------------- One recent addition which might be of interest is that we now provide a Telex service for direct access by users. The software/hardware is a commercially-available package running on a Microvax, though users don't need to know that. They just send to addresses like: british.ambassador@telex.938+20651-uk_rep This is a fake address for a non-existant person on a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean. However, I think the ATTN: field, international and internal codes (938+ and 20651) and answerback field (UK REP) should be fairly obvious. Telex, being a very old facility, can reach many more parts of the world than academic and commercial e-mail. The outstanding connectivity outweighs the disadvantage of the restricted upper-case only character set. Since it is a chargeable resource, Telex has an authorisation package associated with it. Only users specifically registered for Telex may send such messages, and these are never undergraduates, though we do allow students access to all other facilities. Further Information ------------------- For general information contact: J.A.Hunter@newcastle.ac.uk For details of mail hub software contact: C.R.Ritson@newcastle.ac.uk Alan Hunter Computing Laboratory The University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle NE1 7RU, England ========================================================================= (Alan Hunter is my co-postmaster here, and the original author of this note. He does not read news). Chris Ritson -- ARPA : C.R.Ritson@newcastle.ac.uk JANET: C.R.Ritson@uk.ac.newcastle UUCP : ...!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!C.R.Ritson PHONE: +44 91 222 8175 FAX : +44 91 222 8232 TELEX: uk+53654-UNINEW_G SNAIL: Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU ARPA : C.R.Ritson@newcastle.ac.uk JANET: C.R.Ritson@uk.ac.newcastle UUCP : ...!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!C.R.Ritson PHONE: +44 91 222 8175 FAX : +44 91 222 8232 TELEX: uk+53654-UNINEW_G SNAIL: Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU
haral@ashtate (Haral Tsitsivas) (11/15/89)
In article <18064@bellcore.bellcore.com> nrh@buzz.bellcore.com (Nathaniel Howard) writes: >What do people use to do site-wide aliasing? I'd love to support: > > nrh@bellcore.com (works) > nat_howard@bellcore.com > nat@bellcore.com (if unambiguous) > ... Why not use the "mkfnames(8)" script that comes with smail? You can use this either with smail (in which case incoming mail will be aliased with the fullname database), or you can generate an alias list (with minor formatting changes) for inclusion in your /usr/lib/aliases file. --Haral Tsitsivas (213) 538-7692 ...!uunet!ashtate!haral