Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Some questions about pathalias and smail
Message-ID: <236@twwells.uucp>
Date: 4 Dec 88 22:54:03 GMT
Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 46

I have just started to do automatic processing of the mail maps so
that I don't have to figure out mail paths for myself.

Anyway, I am a bit dissatisfied with the output of pathalias; I
believe that it is less than optimal, and may also violate some mail
rules. The following line illustrates both:

	3b5node proxftl!novavax!uflorida!gatech!cs.utexas.edu!romp!3b5node!%s

First, I can route my messages to domain names through uflorida, as in:

	3b5node proxftl!novavax!uflorida!cs.utexas.edu!romp!3b5node!%s

I believe that the Internet has a chance to better route the message
than I; I'd rather send my messages that go to the Internet to
uflorida (or uunet, when I get my modem and get connected) than some
further site.

The other thing wrong with this is that it seems to route a message
*through* the Internet, something I understand to be wrong. I had used
the -D option on pathalias, hoping to discourage this; it didn't work
(unless there was no other path?).

So, here are my questions:

    1) Is there a way to tell pathalias to route a subset of domain
       addresses through one site?  I don't want to route all of them
       there, as I don't think it understands all domains that are in
       use; at least I've had trouble routing stuff to the .uk domain
       through there. I could use smart-host, but that does a little
       more than I want.

    2) Does my example violate any mail rules?

    3) If it does, how do I prevent pathalias from generating such
       paths?

    4) Before starting to use these maps (with smail 2.5), what else
       should I be aware of that is likely to cause problems?

If these are already overly-discussed issues, please reply by e-mail
rather than posting.

---
Bill
{uunet|novavax}!proxftl!twwells!bill