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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!princeton!allegra!ulysses!mhuxt!ihnp4!alberta!ncc!lyndon
From: lyndon@ncc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: I hate smail
Message-ID: <1286@ncc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Jan-87 17:48:52 EST
Article-I.D.: ncc.1286
Posted: Thu Jan  8 17:48:52 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Jan-87 20:52:35 EST
References: <14227@amdcad.UUCP> <532@rayssd.RAY.COM>
Organization: Nexus Computing Corp.,  Edmonton, AB
Lines: 35
Summary: A suggestion...

> 
> I believe that the UUCP-Project is still working on improving smail,
> so if you have some specific suggestions, why don't you spell them out?
> 
> -- 
> Greg Paris ....................... gmp@rayssd.RAY.COM
> {cbosgd,gatech,ihnp4,linus,mirror,uiucdcs}!rayssd!gmp

OK - here's one:

	It would be nice if smail could handle aliases. 

I find smail to be a very nice package - it gives us no trouble
at all. I did try running uumail for a while, specifically to
get the aliasing feature, but quickly switched back to smail
(we had a number of problems that I won't go in to. Most were
configuration problems that will vanish when I can spend some
time with the software).

There has been a problem with sites completely rewriting the bang
path. Our philosophy is to route anything that shows up on ncc in
the form "domain!user", "uucp_host!user", or "user@domain". This
allows us to control access to directly connected sites if there are
problems (well, sometimes :-), and allows us to route for downstream
sites. It *also* allows a downstream user to pick an explicit path
to a site if s/he so chooses.

Recently we added another rule to the above: If a piece of
mail arrives destined for "b!c!d" where "b" is not a machine we
know about, smail attempts to prepend the necessary path to "b".
This seems to help quite a bit when a downstream site tries to
reply to a message with a munged up bang path in the From: line.
-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg - Nexus Computing Corp. - lyndon@ncc.UUCP
UUCP: {ihnp4,ubc-vision,vax135,watmath}!alberta!ncc!lyndon