henry (06/10/82)
To quote from Mark's note: ...it will become important to switch to this syntax to use netnews. Sites on uucp will have to switch over or be left in the dust... If Mark seriously hopes that most of Usenet is going to switch, there had better be software available to cope with the new addresses THAT WILL RUN ON PDP11'S! And I don't mean just under 2.xBSD, either. If this is not done, we are going to be living with mixed addressing conventions for a long, long time. This is not to say I disapprove of the new addressing scheme; I think I prefer it. But *I* sure don't have time to rewrite the software, and software from outside isn't much use to me unless it will run on a PDP11 under a pretty much vanilla V7/3.0/whatever. And I strongly suspect there are an awful lot of other people in the same boat. In ARPAland it is perhaps possible to impose changes by administrative fiat, but that just isn't practical on a net as diversified as Usenet. It's not enough for it to be "important"; it has to be easy.
mark (06/11/82)
I see no reason why sendmail wouldn't run on a PDP-11, even a non-separate 11. The vax binary I have is only 67K text+data, and I'm sure it will be much smaller on an 11. I also wouldn't expect people to switch over without having the software conveniently available. There is no question that the addressing syntax change is going to be a major upheaval, and upward compatibility is going to be strained. (This means that your automatic reply command will probably not work across the boundary between the new and old parts of the world. Actual mailing addresses people type will probably be in a "both old and new syntax work" mode for some time.) But I think we can all assume that there will be versions of sendmail available for all major dialects of UNIX very quickly - certainly 4.2BSD, UNIX 5.0, 2.81BSD, and V7 will be covered. The source will be in the public domain and I expect someone will probably convert it for the various minor dialects and make that available too. But we're talking about a portably written V7 style program - the only porting problems will be local/system conventions like where your mailbox is, where your full name is, and what transport mechanisms are available to talk to other machines. Sendmail is an amazing piece of software - implementing the user.host@domain syntax that was at one time going to be the standard took exactly one line added to a configuration file - you didn't even have to recompile! It understands the various routing syntaxes of uucp, arpanet, berknet, and so on, even to a host sensitive level. It speaks SMTP, or can be invoked directly ala delivermail. It does routing. (Sorry, no windows or floors.) The standard will be finalized within a few months, and sendmail will be out on 4.2BSD this December (if not sooner). At that point new user level software will be made available that understands this syntax (e.g. netnews, MH, and probably Mail) and a massive conversion effort will begin. I think the only unresolved issue is what to do about the routing table. CSNET is said to have some kind of caching scheme in mind, but I don't know how concrete this is or when it will be reality. Sendmail works off a fixed routing table very similar to the foo!bar!%s hacks that have been floating around lately. Somebody is going to have to assemble and maintain a master copy of the routing database, and right now I don't know of any volunteers. Mark