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