wollman@SADYE.UVM.EDU (Garrett Wollman) (01/30/91)
I am presently telling the AMS programs to verify user names via WP,
which I assemble by hand (or at any rate, not manually). Recently, I
found this problem when sending mail to a friend (and potential user)
in CUI:
I enter a To: address of tom.emerson. Upon submission, cui tells me
The name 'Tom Emerson <tree@sadye.uvm.edu>' is ambiguous.
It then lists my alternatives:
"Tree,,," (others) <emerson@sadye.uvm.edu>
Tom Emerson (staff) <tree@sadye.uvm.edu>
I, knowing Tree, direct CUI to send it to the second alternative. Wups!
The name 'Tom Emerson <tree@sadye.uvm.edu>' is ambiguous.
[and on it goes]
Now since we don't run AMDS (and I'm not sure TPTB can ever be convinced
to do so, unless I can solve problems like this before the Users
find out about them), the only way to get out of this situation is
to change the To: address to point to Tree on another machine.
Now my question is:
1) Would AMDS do the same thing (AAAAUGH!)?
2) How can I solve this, preferably without deleting the other
account manually from WP (or changing the nickname)?
As a side issue, is it possible to get the WP-ized version of finger?
-GAWollmanCraig_Everhart@TRANSARC.COM (02/15/91)
Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 29-Jan-91 Another strange WP problem... Garrett Wollman@griffin. (1152) > I enter a To: address of tom.emerson. Upon submission, cui tells me > The name 'Tom Emerson <tree@sadye.uvm.edu>' is ambiguous. > It then lists my alternatives: > "Tree,,," (others) <emerson@sadye.uvm.edu> > Tom Emerson (staff) <tree@sadye.uvm.edu> > I, knowing Tree, direct CUI to send it to the second alternative. Wups! > The name 'Tom Emerson <tree@sadye.uvm.edu>' is ambiguous. > [and on it goes] I'll admit that this is a bit odd. The problem is that the fully-canonicalized address (local name ``tree'') isn't itself unique, since it matches the surname (or complete name) of one account and the userid of another. What do you believe should happen to mail addressed to ``tree''? Yes, it looks weird that CUI asks the question but isn't happy with the answer that you want to give. But maybe I can get away with calling this a problem in the set of local names; maybe not. AMDS wouldn't do this, since the canonicalized address list would look like: "Tree,,," (others) <emerson+@sadye.uvm.edu> Tom Emerson (staff) <tree+@sadye.uvm.edu> and whichever one you chose would have the plus-sign decoration telling AMDS (and CUI) that the preceding entity was a userid, not a user name. I can look into getting the WP version of finger, but it's not a pretty thing. Craig