Programmer Kills Self Over Dispute with PATHALIAS Program

[Jeff Stearns]

Ok, so I haven't done it yet....  But I'm thinkin' about it!

Here I'm trying to be Mister Progressive Administrator and install smail.
I thought our modest little network was pretty simple (I still do), but I'm
having mondo trouble getting pathalias to believe it.

The setting:
    I have a bunch of vaxen and Suns, all Ethernetted together.
    Together they comprise the "fluke" domain.  This is the uucp name
    we present to the outside world.

    Because some machines are administered by different groups of people,
    we can have username conflicts.  This is easily handled by grouping
    the hosts into subdomains.  We only have two -- "tc" and "mis".

The problem:
    Communicate this configuration to pathalias.

The truth as I see it:
    I'm trying to tell pathalias the following:
	- We are named "FLUKE.UUCP".  (Soon to be FLUKE.COM, but
	  that's irrelevant here.)
	- The "FLUKE" domain comprises the subdomains {.TC, .MIS}.
	    - The "FLUKE" domain is handled by the host "fluke".
	    - The "TC.FLUKE" subdomain is also handled by the host "fluke".
	    - The "MIS.FLUKE" subdomain is handled by the host "evtmis1".

    So I claim that:
	Mail to user at FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
	Mail to user at TC.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!user.
	Mail to user at MIS.FLUKE.UUCP should go to ...!fluke!evtmis1!user.

	Of course, there are other acceptable address formats; I really don't
	care what is used, so long as they're correct.

I know what output I want from pathalias -- something sorta like this:
	fluke       ...!fluke!%s
	.fluke       ..!fluke!%s
	.tc.fluke   ...!fluke!%s
	.mis.fluke  ...!fluke!evtmis1!%s

I've tried many, many permutations of the pathalias input data, but can't come
up with anything which will produce a set of legal paths.

I'm playing with variations on this theme:

    fluke      .fluke		/* host "fluke" 
    private   {.tc, .mis}
    .fluke = @{.tc, .mis}(LOCAL)
    .mis      evtmis1
    fluke @evtmis1(LOCAL), microsoft(DIRECT), ...<many other uucp connections>


The $65535 question:
    DOES ANYBODY OUT THERE KNOW A STRAIGHTFORWARD WAY TO COMMUNICATE OUR
    CONFIGURATION TO PATHALIAS?
-- 
	Jeff Stearns       (206) 356-5064
	John Fluke Mfg. Co.
	P.O. Box C9090  Everett WA  98043  
	{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!jeff