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- Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!tweek
- From: tweek@netcom.com (Michael D. Maxfield)
- Subject: Re: problems with the UUCP maps--duplicate n
- Message-ID: <1993Jan27.033211.29069@netcom.com>
- Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
- References: <1993Jan23.170110.25032@blilly.uucp> <1993Jan26.010957.28527@til.til.com>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 03:32:11 GMT
- Lines: 70
-
- In article <1993Jan26.010957.28527@til.til.com> erik@til.com writes:
- >In article 25032@blilly.uucp, bruce@blilly.uucp (Bruce Lilly) writes:
- >>
- >>Would you like to be on the receiving end of 10,000+ such
- >>monthly cron jobs?
- >
- >Not if I had to weed through them by hand. To what extent can this entire
- >procedure be automated? To what extent are the current map entries checked
- >by the rutgers team? I suspect that they aren't checked at all - for
- >evidence of this, look at the latitude and longitude values. If this is the
- >case, it's pretty easy to automate the job. It's still a lot of email to
- >handle, but only a computer needs to look at it.
-
- I just recently received a reminder from the u.usa.ca map coordinator to
- send in a new version of my map as my current one was two years old. I
- don't know if this was an automated request, or the coordinator hand
- addressed all the requests, but I would assume that since he (or she??) was
- updating the entire sequence of u.usa.ca.* maps (about 1.5meg) that it was
- an automated request... so, onto part b......
-
- >
- >>If it's a cron job, and the person administering the machine
- >>leaves, but the obsolete entry continues to be submitted by
- >>cron (the assumption is that the replacement admninistrator is
- >>either ignorant about the cron job or the maps, or incompetent),
- >>how is the problem solved?
- >
- >Automatic submission by cron handles the problem of making the map entry for
- >machine <x> die when machine <x> leaves the uucp network - because either the
- >machine is no longer executing *at all*, or because it's disconnected and the
- >automatically emailed map entry no longer makes it off the machine. It does
- >not *automatically* handle the job of updating the map entries list of sites
- >that machine <x> talks to. I think that this could be done, at least partially,
- >by an sed script looking at the /etc/uucp/poll file (for a Sun, at least).
- >
-
- A site specific cron job does raise some concerns. If a specific system
- chose to have the system automatically make up an accurate map listing,
- then that, if guranteed to be a correct entry, should be possible... but
- why have cron send out the map monthly. If the maps are not updated but
- once every two or three months, then you are adding 200-300% more data then
- is needed and wasting bandwidth and system time (esp. at the sites near the
- coordinaring site.)
-
- A cron job also could lead to confusion at sites where the sysadmin changes
- over (as stated by Bruce), however, if there was a basic standard set
- throughout the UUCP world that had an optional cron tier standard for
- compiling the map (if so desired by a particular site) then at least a
- new sysadmin would have a data trail to follow.......
-
- The standard I suggest... a simple mail account on every uucp system.
- Instead of limiting system accounts to root, postmaster, newsadmin, etc.,
- add one more called something like mapper/mapping/uumaper (or whatever.)
- That account could be set up to send out the current map for the site to
- any person/daemon that mails the account. All it should take would be a
- few simple lines on most UN*X systems. It should be able to work on
- Waffle systems as well with the alias file. I would assume that UUPC,
- FSUUCP, and the other DOS packages can handle this too.
-
- If a sysadmin then wanted to have cron automate the map creation process,
- there is at least a hook there for a new sysadmin to be able to grab onto
- and see what is happening.
-
- So? Do I make sense, or do I speak crazy like? It sure makes sense to me.
-
- tweek@netcom.com tweek@tweekco.uucp WWIVNet 5@5058 4@5056
- I'd rather get my cable service from the phone company,
- than my phone service from the cable company.
-
-
-