From: CRDGW2::CRDGW2::MRGATE::"SMTP::UTKCS2.CS.UTK.EDU::SHUFORD" 15-SEP-1990 23:18:59.67 To: MRGATE::"ARISIA::EVERHART" CC: Subj: No Subject Received: by crdgw1.ge.com (5.57/GE 1.73) id AA01156; Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:44:02 EDT Resent-From: @UTKCS2.CS.UTK.EDU:shuford@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu Received: from UTKCS2.CS.UTK.EDU by DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU; Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:32 EST Received: by utkcs2.cs.utk.edu (5.61++/2.3-UTK) id AA03432; Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:31:51 -0400 Resent-Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:33 EST Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:31:51 -0400 From: shuford@UTKCS2.CS.UTK.EDU Resent-To: VMSNET-LIST@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU To: vmsnet@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU Resent-Message-Id: <339CB0DAD8AF004C18@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> Message-Id: <9009160231.AA03432@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> X-Envelope-To: everhart%arisia.decnet@CRDGW1.GE.COM X-Vms-To: vmsnet@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU The following text constitutes the first VMSnet RFD, where "RFD" stands for "Request for Derision", analogous to you-know-what. Feel free to send me (or post) derisive (or merely insightful) comments. ---------- RFD-001 Heuristics for Corresponding between BITNET and DECUS UUCP Sites by Richard S. Shuford Department of Computer Science University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996 shuford@cs.utk.edu ---------- In recent experience installing DECUS UUCP at several small colleges in North and South Carolina, one thing that the faculty and staff have always asked is, "How can we send mail to and from colleges that are on BITNET?" Certainly it is not too hard to go from the UUCP network \to/ BITNET: the gateway at PSUVAX1 seems to handle it nicely. But the ease with which somebody on BITNET can send mail back to UUCP seems to be unpredictable; so much depends on the local software configuration at the BITNET site. For one of these DECUS UUCP sites, Lenoir-Rhyne College, I composed some instructions on how to correspond with BITNET users, giving a locally pertinent example, which will be included below in their entirety. To make things easier for mail outbound to BITNET from VMS Mail, the DECUS UUCP configuration file MAIL_REWRITE.RULES contains the following section: #___________________________________________________________________________ [OUTBOUND-TO] # # Any outbound containing a "!" after translation will NOT be processed # by the PATHS router. # *@*.BITNET mcnc!psuvax1.edu!\002.BITNET!\001 # #___________________________________________________________________________ (Lenoir-Rhyne's machine, "lrc", has a direct UUCP link to "mcnc", which is on the Internet as "mcnc.org".) A user on the VAX at Lenoir-Rhyne can use this address within VMS Mail: To: UUCP%"USER@HOST.BITNET" and the address-rewrite routines will pass to the transport mechanism the address mcnc!psuvax1.edu!HOST.BITNET!USER The instructions to the users follow: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Network Gateways: From UUCP to BITNET (and back, if you're lucky!) Lenoir-Rhyne now has access to the outside world through UUCP electronic mail. But the UUCP network is only one of many different interorganization networks (IONs) in the world that together constitute what you might call "WorldNet". It is likely that some of the people to whom you might want to send "e-mail" use computers that are connected to some different network, such as BITNET or "The Internet". In \some/ cases, it is possible to use a network "gateway" to cause a message to jump from one network to another to reach a recipient. Someday, we may be able to get registration of an official Internet domain, which will be called "lrc.edu". This will make use of gateways more simple, but, as of mid-September 1990, THIS DOMAIN DOES NOT YET EXIST. So for the time being you'll have to use the following rules of thumb. Suppose that you wanted to send a message to a friend at Appalachian State University who has BITNET access. If your friend is named Jane M. Doe, she might have an e-mail address like DOEJM@APPSTATE or possibly DOEJM@APPSTATE.EDU It would be possible to send a message to her from Lenoir-Rhyne using the regular VMS Mail program, giving it the "To:" address: UUCP%"DOEJM@APPSTATE.BITNET" Probably, Miss Doe will need to know how to send a reply back to you, and, unfortunately, there is no single way that will always work to send mail from BITNET back into the UUCP network. Assuming that your username on Lenoir- Rhyne's VAX is JOEBEAR, have her first try the following "To:" address IN%"lrc!joebear@mcnc.org" If this works, it indicates that Appalachian has done a good job in setting up its software for gateway use. If it doesn't work, tell Miss Doe to ask her local computer experts for advice; they may know the local incantations that cause the right thing to happen. In the last need, Miss Doe may have to do the following cumbersome procedure. (You may call this procedure "Invoking BSMTP by Hand", where BSMTP is the "Batch Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". It has been known to work from BITNET sites that use the JNET software. I'm warning you; it's cumbersome. Use the Extract command in the ANU News reader to put this article into a file, and study it carefully before you try it.) 1. Create a text file that contains the message text that she wants to send to you. 2. At the very beginning of this text file, put some obscure but important commands, which we'll see in a minute. This string of commands will cause a gateway-computer mail agent to take the file and place it in the mail system on behalf of the person sending the file. (The mail agent is usually an automatic process, not a person.) (Remember, we are assuming that your VAX username is JOEBEAR and she is sending from the account DOEJM on the computer called APPSTATE (here we are also assuming that the text file is called JOE.TXT). Here is an example of what the file should look like, beginning at the first line: HELO INTERBIT.BITNET VERB ON TICK 1234 MAIL FROM: RCPT TO: DATA Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 23:59:59 -0400 From: DOEJM@APPSTATE.BITNET To: lrc!joebear@mcnc.org Subject: whatever the subject is Dear Joe, Thank you for sending me the message. I'm glad Lenoir-Rhyne is connected to the UUCP network now. Let me know if you get this. Best regards, Jane . QUIT Be sure to substitute the proper values for the fake usernames we are using here and the "Date:" line. Be sure to spell the first command as "HELO"--don't try to improve it. There should be a blank line after the "Subject:" line and before the main part of the message. Following the message text, there should be one blank line, a line containing \only/ a period, and then a line containing the word "QUIT" in uppercase, as shown. The number after the TICK command is not important, as long as the sender makes it different for each message sent. Be sure to put the < and > before and after the addresses in the "MAIL FROM" and "RCPT TO" commands. Oh, yes, really these commands should be flush against the Left margin--they are indented here only to set them off from this commentary. 3. Jane then does \not/ use the usual MAIL commands to dispatch this file to you. Remembering that the file containing both the commands and the message is called JOE.TXT, she should use the following command to send the file from APPSTATE across BITNET to a gateway mail agent. $ SEND/FILE JOE.TXT SMTP@INTERBIT INTERBIT is the name of the gateway computer. When the mail agent, here called SMTP, receives this file, it will take everything between the DATA command and the period line and send it through various networks and gateways until it reaches the mailbox called JOEBEAR (specified as in the BSMTP commands). It is possible that at a given BITNET site the SEND command may have some other name. Users should ask their local experts how to do the same thing. It may be that you will not really need this for users at Appalachian, but if you correspond often with many users on BITNET you will eventually hit a case where the only way to get mail through is to invoke BSMTP by hand. John Quarterman and Josiah Hoskins observed in their paper "Notable Computer Networks" (Communications of the ACM, vol. 29, num. 10, October 1986, p. 932), "...there is no magic formula to get mail between any two points in Worldnet. It's a jungle with trails that may cross and conflict, lead to the wrong place, or become overgrown." What we have seen here is a specific case of the general principle that sometimes there are difficulties associated with gateways leading from one interorganization network to another, and some one-way paths exist. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ .....RSS