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From: tp@ndmce.uucp (Terry Poot)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: I hate smail
Message-ID: <1127@ndmce.uucp>
Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 10:35:09 EST
Article-I.D.: ndmce.1127
Posted: Fri Jan  9 10:35:09 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Jan-87 22:49:55 EST
References: <14227@amdcad.UUCP> <32@auspyr.UUCP>
Reply-To: tp@ndmce.UUCP (Terry Poot)
Organization: Nathan D. Maier Consulting Engineers, Dallas
Lines: 34

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

>Even though I specify a direct path (quick and fast), all it takes is
>one smail site to reroute the message BACK across the country ... and two
>weeks later my 99K mail gets to me.

Note that this is an installation option.  I use smail, and my site is set
up to use the path you hand it.  I use pathalias to find the path to ONLY
the next site in the path.  If the incomming path tells me to send it to a
machine I am connected to, I will.  If it says to send it elsewhere, I use
pathalias to determine how.  If I can't figure it out, I send it to a
backbone site, in hopes they have better maps (thanks to the
forwarding-relay patch that was posted to the net).  (My software can't
return it, so this actually gives the sender a better chance of getting it
back if it is completely bogus.)  smail offers the ability to configure it
so that it ignores the supplied path and routes to the destination.  I find
this to be extremely anti-social, and I wish that that capability had not
been provided, as it causes exactly the kind of behavior you describe.

By the way, one advantage of always using pathalias to route to the next
hop is that I can keep paths working if a neighbor renames his site, or if
I drop a link.  Pathalias handles these for me.  If I didn't use it, it
would drop the floor.

Now, what I hate is all the sites running sendmail that louse up the From:
line, and the way that mailx louses up my outgoing domain format addresses!

-- 
Terry Poot, Nathan D. Maier Consulting Engineers, (214)739-4741
8800 N. Central Expressway, Suite 300, Dallas, Tx 75231, USA
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