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Mailing out to Internet through several platforms
Date: Sun, 7 May 89 03:38 PDT
From: Eric Buckman <BUCKMAN@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com>
Subject: Mailing out to Internet through several platforms
To: "eagle::Capshaw"@kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com, "EAGLE::SLUG%Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM"@kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com,
"EAGLE::\"snicoud%atc.boeing.com\""@kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of 4 May 89 16:01 PDT
Supersedes: <19890505170628.5.BUCKMAN@JOHN.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com>
Comments: Retransmission of failed mail.
Message-ID: <19890507103838.1.BUCKMAN@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com>
Postal-Address: 2760 160th Ave SE, MS 7L-64; Bellevue, WA 98007
Eric,
I noticed the rather interesting path your message took to get to
internet. The reason I'm responding is that we (and others) have
difficulty sending and receiving mail when we have to go through various
DECNET and TCP/IP networks.
If it's no trouble, I'd be interested to know what kinds of machines
(e.g. VMS-VAX, Symbolics, Ultrix-VAX, ...) you have to send your mail
through to get to the Internet. Knowing the protocols (e.g. DECNET,
TCP/IP) involved and the vendors (e.g. Wollongong tcp/ip, Excelan
tcp/ip) of them would be useful too. Also, how did you have to specify
the To: field?
Thanks,
Steve Nicoud
<snicoud@atc.boeing.com>
Steve,
So, the mail you saw originated on a symobolics, we are using DECNET, and immdiately forward the
mail to a local vax running vms (this vax is defined in our Symbolics namespace as a host). That vax then
sends the mail (via decnet) to a (I think) a Sun that is running the internet software. It parses the domain
address, and sends it out.
so, to mail this I used (from my symbolics): "EAGLE::\"snicoud%atc.boeing.com\""@KAHUNA
it proceeded as follows,
1)the Symbolics saw the @kahuna (which is a known vax), and using the decnet link
sent the mail there for Kahuna to figure out what to do with it.
Notice that I needed to put quotes around everything to the left of the @kahuna, because
that address is intended for the VAX mailer to look at, and without the quotes, the symbolics
would barf on it.
2)now Kahuna gets the mail, and strips off the quotes, and then needs to figure out what
to do with:
EAGLE::"snicoud%atc.boeing.com"
(Note, I had used \"snicoud%atc.boeing.com\" because if from the Symbolics I didn't backquote
the internal quotes, then the Symbolics would again barf. i.e. if you need to include more than one
set of qoutes in the original address, you need to use the backslash on them so that the
symbolics doesn't notice those qoutes.)
Well, any way, Kahuna has the address above, which is standard decnet syntax of
Host::user, with the user enclosed in the quotes because Kahuna, not being our
internet host would not know how to parse that address, but since its in quoutes, it
ignores it, and just passes it on.
3)Finally, the sun EAGLE, gets the address snicoud%atc.boeing.com which it recognzes as
an internet address, and sends it out.
I don't remember why I use the % instead of the @, here, but I think I figured that one
out by trial and error, i.e., once again, the symbolics will barf if it sees more than one
@ in the to: adress, even though the @ is in quotes, but the % seems to be an OK substitute
for any internal @'s in the original address.
I can't tell you more about the eagle link to Internet because I didn't set that up.
Dave Capshaw here at Lockeed is our Network guru, I'll send him a copy of this and you can
ask more about the EAGLE mail server. He's should be at: capshaw@eagle.decnet.lockheed.com
A final note on all this adressing stuff, so that the typical user doesn't have to deal
with this we use the mailboxes.text file found in >mail>static on the symbolics mail server
to create aliases,
for intance, for slug the entry is:
(define SLUG (mailbox "EAGLE::SLUG%Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM" kahuna))
so that all a user needs to do is mail, To: slug
Hope, this helps.
eric buckman (buckman@alan.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com)