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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!amdahl!amdcad!phil
From: phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: I hate smail
Message-ID: <14237@amdcad.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Jan-87 00:47:33 EST
Article-I.D.: amdcad.14237
Posted: Thu Jan  8 00:47:33 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Jan-87 04:47:06 EST
References: <14227@amdcad.UUCP> <32@auspyr.UUCP>
Reply-To: phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 80

People keep asking me "what do you not like about smail?" I already
said what I don't like: my mail bounces all the time now that we
run smail. Before we ran smail, my mail went through with maybe
5% as many problems.

Then people start asking me what particularly is going wrong. I don't
know and I don't want to know. Why should I have to know all this
stuff? My mail used to work great, and I didn't have to know anything
then.

It seems that the problems are all of different natures anyway. The
one that I do sort of understand has to do with getting mail from
ARPAnet sites. I thought this domain stuff worked. Not until after it
is installed that I find out amdcad.amd.com makes sites like lll-crg
puke. Not until after we invest a lot of time in this do we find out
that the use of domains by uucp sites appears to be a disputed issue
in the ARPA world. Well, eventually sun agreed to perform some vital
service the nature of which I don't quite understand which allows me
to receive mail from ARPA sites again. But I feel quite deceived that
smail appeared to be passed off as something easy to use when
important nodes such as decwrl and lll-crg don't even want to talk to
amdcad.amd.com. I get the sense that smail was released to get
innocent sites like mine to run it and put pressure on the sites which
don't hold the same philosophy as the smail project to accept their
notion of the world.

I don't appreciate being used that way. But most of all I don't like
my mail bouncing all over the place.

Anyway, even sun apparently can only handle a limited number of sites.
We were lucky enough to be accepted. What about the sites after us?
ARPA mail used to work just fine. Now we have a system where only the
lucky few with connections at Internet sites can get mail. Some people
are going to be unhappy about this.

In article <32@auspyr.UUCP> joe@auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo) writes:
>
>Well, I too am beginning to dislike smail ... but not becuase my mail get
>bounced around ... but because (because, because, of the wonderful things...)
>it doesn't even come near considering geographic area ... Eg: location!!
>This, ofcourse, could be mostly the fault of pathaliases ... but I won't
>point any fingers (                            ^^    )

In this situation I don't quite blame smail. It looks like the map
data is causing the problems. But there are two points here. One is
that the map data is unreliable. As long as we rely on system admins
who are usually saddled with more work than they can really handle to
provide the map data, there will be bad or out of date paths. If
something like Erik Fair's uucp logfile analyzer were coupled with
software which automatically sent updates to the map data repository,
then there would be some hope.

The problem with mail crossing the country to get next door is of
course due to the map data. It is not even necessarily incorrect.  It
could be faster to cross the country and delay is what pathaliases
optimizes for. If it isn't faster, then the map data is wrong.

The other problem is when rerouting is forced on users. Then bad data
in the map knocks you out. Back when I was routing manually with the
aid of uupath, I could do things like say "ah, it wants to go through
ihnp4 but we know better" and avoid bad sites. Now it does whatever it
pleases.

What I liked to do a lot of was to take an address like
fred@site.dec.com and ship it off to decwrl to handle with
decwrl!fred@site.dec.com.  Now smail says "ah, @ takes precendence".
How am I supposed to dump addresses on a smarter site like decwrl now?

No doubt this article reveals a profound ignorance on the operation of
smail. I don't want to learn it. I didn't have to learn all this stuff
before and my mail worked. I am not especially lazy or unknowledgable
about computers and this is how I feel about smail. How do you suppose
all the other users feel about this mail situation?

-- 
 Butter and salt can make almost anything taste good.

 Phil Ngai +1 408 749 5720
 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,hplabs,allegra}!amdcad!phil
 ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.dec.com