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- From: moderators-request@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
- Newsgroups: news.lists,news.admin.misc,news.answers
- Subject: How to Construct the Mailpaths File
- Supersedes: <mailpaths.n_839643118@uunet.uu.net>
- Followup-To: news.admin.misc
- Date: 25 Nov 1996 18:16:25 -0500
- Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA, USA
- Lines: 157
- Sender: tale@uunet.uu.net
- Approved: newgroups-request@uunet.uu.net
- Expires: 25 Jan 97 11:16:25 GMT
- Message-ID: <mailpaths.n_848963785@uunet.uu.net>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.lists:4586 news.admin.misc:58884 news.answers:87940
-
- Archive-name: mailpaths/part1
- Original-author: Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu)
- Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
- Last-change: 25 Sep 1996 by moderators-request@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
-
- UNIX News software after B-news version 2.10 -- including C news and
- INN -- has been designed to make it simpler to submit articles to
- moderated newsgroups and to reply via mail to posted articles. For
- these functions to work, the file "mailpaths" must exist in the news
- library and contain current information. This file describes the
- syntax of the contents of the file and how to construct it for your B
- News or C News system.
-
- INN's method is described in the moderators(5) and inn.conf(5) manual
- pages; if you do not have locally moderated groups to worry about it
- is probably easiest to simply define moderatormailer in inn.conf as
- one of the machines listed below.
-
- Some systems may not work in precisely the manner described here. In
- particular, some user-agent programs may consult a file of moderator
- addresses directly. The system news administrator should consult the
- documentation and man pages to determine if this description applies
- to the local configuration and modify it accordiningly.
-
- You can test submissions to moderated newsgroups by posting to the
- newsgroup misc.test.moderated. If your article successfully reached
- the moderator of the group then you should receive an automated reply
- back confirming the appearance of your message. There is also a
- regular posting in the group that shows the apparent source of
- submissions, which may help in diagnosing why your mail was not
- returned.
-
- Syntax
- ------
- All lines in the file consist of a keyword followed by whitespace,
- followed by a printf-style format string which is used to encode a
- mail address. The format string should be constructed so that there
- is a single "%s" in the field, and other information necessary to
- construct a valid address to the appropriate site (see below).
-
- The keyword field consists of either the word "internet", the word
- "backbone", or some newsgroup pattern. These are examined by the
- software to determine which format-string to use. Note that the FIRST
- appropriate line matched is the one used -- thus, the "backbone"
- keyword line should be placed last in the line if regional or local
- moderated groups are supported.
-
- Also note that the match software quits if it runs out of newsgroup
- pattern, and if the pattern present matches the newsgroup. Thus,
- having the entries:
- comp.foo foo@nowhere.edu
- comp.foo.bar bar@someplace.org
- would always send mail to the moderator of "comp.foo" and not to the
- moderator of "comp.foo.bar", no matter which of the two newsgroups was
- specified! For proper operation, you would need to list them thusly:
- comp.foo.bar bar@someplace.org
- comp.foo foo@nowhere.edu
-
- Addresses that end up with both "!" and "@" symbols in the resulting
- address get converted so that only "!" symbols appear in the final
- address. An address of the form "foo!bar!baz@barf" will get converted
- to "foo!bar!barf!baz" and then mailed. This should work properly for
- "dumb" mailers but you should test it to make sure; "smart" mailers
- should have the format fields encoded as a simple "%s". Note that
- *any* address with more than a single "@" in it is illegal.
-
- Submissions to moderated groups
- -------------------------------
- When you attempt to post to a moderated newsgroup (indicated by the
- letter "m" in the 4th field of the "active" file for that group),
- the action of "inews" is to mail the submission to the moderator.
- This is done by searching through "mailpaths" file for a keyword
- matching the newsgroup being posted to, or, by default, the keyword
- "backbone". Matching occurs as in the "sys" file -- thus,
- "world" and "all" will also match everything, while "news" or
- "news.all" will only match articles posted in the "news" category.
- This feature can be used to support local moderated groups.
-
- Once a line has been matched, the name of the moderated group is
- transformed into an address. This is done by first turning all the
- imbedded periods within the newsgroup name into hyphens (e.g.,
- "news.lists" becomes "news-lists") because many mailers mishandle
- addresses with periods in the username (periods are supposed to be
- delimiters only in the host/domain part of RFC822 addresses, but some
- mailers "overreact"). Next, the transformed group name is encoded into
- an address using the format-string present on the line matched from
- "mailpaths" and the article is mailed. Thus, a posting to "news.lists"
- from a site with the line
- backbone emory!gatech!%s
- in the mailpaths file would have the article mailed to
- "emory!gatech!news-lists". Likewise, a line like
- backbone %s@gatech.edu
- would result in the article being mailed to "news-lists@gatech.edu".
- To make the mechanism for moderated postings simpler, a subset of the
- best-connected sites (plus some others) have committed to keeping a complete
- up-to-date set of mail aliases for the moderated groups. Therefore, to
- build this line in your "mailpaths" file, you need only construct
- an address to get the mail to one of these sites. In turn, once the
- submission reaches that site, it will be forwarded on to the
- appropriate moderator's mailbox.
-
- The sites currently maintaining these lists are given in the following
- list. Pick the one that is "closest" to your site and use it in your
- "backbone" format string:
-
- agate.berkeley.edu isgate.is
- funet.fi linus.mitre.org
- moderators.univ-lyon1.fr moderators.switch.ch
- nac.no ncren.net
- news.belgium.eu.net news.cs.washington.edu
- news.germany.eu.net philabs.research.philips.com
- pipex.co.uk relay.eu.net
- rutgers.edu sunic.sunet.se
- ucsd.edu uunet.uu.net
-
- The hostname moderators.uu.net is a pointer to all of the above sites.
- If you do not want to depend on any particular site above, you can use
- it instead. However, it will almost certainly be less reliable than
- using uunet.uu.net, which originates the forwarding aliases.
-
- All EUnet customers should use their feeding EUnet news server as
- 'backbone' for posts to moderated groups. For example, German EUnet
- customers would use news.germany.eu.net. Non-EUnet sites in Europe
- may forward through pipex.co.uk (aka pipex.net).
-
- Internet Mail
- -------------
- If you define the "INTERNET" flag when you build 2.11 news, the
- software will use the internet-style "From:" header when addressing
- replies mailed to postings. If your mailer does not have this capability,
- you can still (possibly) achieve the same thing by defining the
- "internet" line in your "mailpaths" file to forward such mail to
- a host that does have a mailer which understands internet-style addresses.
-
- The format of this line is very similar to the "backbone" line. As an
- example, consider:
- internet emory!gatech!mcnc!%s
- Thus, if "INTERNET" was defined when this version of news was built,
- any reply to a news article would not travel along the "Path:", but
- would instead be sent to "mcnc" for interpretation and remailing.
- For example, to reply to this article, the mail would be sent to
- "emory!gatech!mcnc!tale@uunet.uu.net" ->
- "emory!gatech!mcnc!uunet.uu.net!tale"
-
- Note: This is being provided as a service to sites which do not
- have routing mailers or which have difficulty replying to articles.
- It is *NOT* intended for everyone to pass mail to other sites to send.
- Excessive use of this feature may result in severe problems for
- the sites doing the relaying, so please simply define this field to
- be "%s" if your mailer understands domain-style (internet-style)
- addressing.
-
- The following sites will accept internet-format mail for forwarding:
-
- beaver.cs.washington.edu decwrl.dec.com kddlab.kddlabs.co.jp
- math.waterloo.edu ncren.net ucsd.edu
- uunet.uu.net
-