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From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: is there a right way use to the map
Message-ID: <1815@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 28-Nov-84 03:02:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.1815
Posted: Wed Nov 28 03:02:29 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Nov-84 06:40:06 EST
References: <22@politik.UUCP> <9600006@uiucdcsb.UUCP> <512@cbosgd.UUCP> <560@mulga.OZ>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 24

I have been wondering about a side of this question that nobody has
answered yet.  We all have little sendmail tricks for routing, but I
haven't seen a method of RECEIVING the map data and generating the
routing database that doesn't involve a lot of hand tweaking.

Each posted map article seems to have yet a different format for the
data, plus varying amounts of text on the front and end that confuse
"shar", "par" and other such schemes.  It looks like the articles
mostly contain shell archives containing a Berkeley archive per state
which then contains a file per site which you then have to unravel,
unroll, and unpack before you can do anything with them anyway.

If I was writing the routing database builder I'd want one large input
file with all the sites in it, rather than having to read fourscore
files with random names, unpacking archives as I went.  On the other
hand, for updating the routing data I'd want per-site access, without
necessarily having to know the state/province the site was in.
Something like a dbm database indexed by sitename would do both.

Has someone built a shell script that I can have call from
/usr/lib/news/sys with a line like "map:mod.map::shellscript" that will
maintain some kind of sitename info database automatically?  Such a
database could be used for readnews and inews too, e.g. "Where *is*
this site anyway?".