info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (05/16/85)
From: Kevin Carosso <engvax!KVC@cit-vax> I have a problem that I think many others have seen and (hopefully) addressed. I've set up a system allowing VMS MAIL to be sent and received to/from foreign networks (like ARPA and UUCP). In doing so, I've tried to conform to RFC-822 (ARPAnet standard for message headers). The problem is that I have to be able to handle DECnet addresses in mail that I'm sending out. For example, I have one system set up as a gateway, with the UUCP MAIL software. All other systems in the net can send UUCP mail by addressing mail something like: gate::uucp%"uucp-address-path" Now, when I make up return addresses, if the message is being gated with an address like that above, the return address in the message looks like: reverse-uucp-address-path!node::username This works very well except for the fact the DECnet node names do not conform to RFC-822 because of the "::". Does anyone out there have any good ideas on how I can mangle the address to conform to RFC-822 but still easily handle DECnet users? I've thought of things like having a special cased list of DECnet hosts, but that's stupid. Also, replacing the DECnet address with something in an "@" form brings up the problem of left-to-right vs. right-to-left. e.g. what does: reverse-uucp-address-path!username@decnet-node mean? (I want it to be the same as my previous example, but a reply to that at most sitess would look for a site on the ARPAnet called "decnet-node" and think it should send the message to: reverse-uucp-path!username which is clearly incorrect. Doesn't RFC-822 have any mechanism for allowing foreign network addresses in mail going into and out of the ARPAnet? Domains seem like they may help, but how am I supposed to justify registering every little DECnet with the Internet people as it's own domain? Also, strictly speaking, do UUCP address paths conform in some way to RFC-822? Are they just lucky in that they use "!" rather than "::"? ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /Kevin Carosso engvax!kcv @ CIT-VAX.ARPA Hughes Aircraft Co.
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (05/18/85)
From: Random <decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!rcb@BERKELEY> I have been looking for the information on the VMS MAIL hooks and can't find it anywhere. Could you send the info or tell me where to find it? thanks. Randy Buckland ...!mcnc!rti-sel!rcb Research Triangle Institute
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (05/21/85)
From: greipa!paul@decwrl.ARPA (Paul A. Vixie) I at one time tried to set up a UUCP gateway to VMS - would have succeeded, too, if i had worked there long enough. anyway, my solution was to have the mailer daemon recognize it's own name as a host no matter what the form. thus, if vaxa, vaxb, vaxc and vaxd are vms sites with a unix gateway running on vaxb, and vaxb talks to greipa and politik, then when a message arrives at vaxb from greipa addressed to vaxb!paul, vaxb eats it and queues it up in [usr.lib.uucp.vaxb]; if addressed to vaxb!politik!chris, it gets queued to [usr.lib.uucp.politik]. obviously if addressed to an unknown host it is sent back with an error-message header prepended. now, when the polling happens, it knows whether the site it is polling for is a unix or a vms site. if it is a vms site, it reforms the address to a valid vms one (vaxb!paul becomes vaxb::paul or just "paul" if you want to optimize or if you don't have decnet). each message is passed to the vms mailer via lib$spawn() and then deleted from the spool directory. unix polling is more obvious but somehow i never did get it to work.