Summary: bitnet mail forwarding

From: Shouben Zhou (zshouben@pcs.cnu.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 24 1994 - 23:23:24 CDT


Thanks for

 Yves Lepage <yves@CC.McGill.CA>
 Rich Schultz <rich@ccrwest.org>
 "Patrick L. Nolan" <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>
 Malcolm Chapman <malcolm%nygate.undp.org@nygate.undp.org>
 rauthenberg@HHI.DE (Stefan Rauthenberg)
 Rich Holland <holland@engg.ksu.edu>
 Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de (Eckhard Rueggeberg)
"Jeff Victor (Jedi Apprentice)" <victoj@hopper.Sage.EDU>

Who have given me a great help! Now my system has been setup so that when
people send to user@node.bitnet will automatically be rewrite to
user%node.bitnet@node.internet!

Basically, there are three ways to approach this goal.
        1) Using sendmail 8.6.9. I haven't tried this. Like Yves wrote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
        
Hello,

The easiest way to do that is to get, compile and install
sendmail 8.6.9.

It has bitnet mail forwarding implemented already in a real easy way to
configure.

Yves Lepage
yves@cc.mcgill.ca

PS: you can get sendmail 8.6.9 from ftp.cs.berkeley.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

        2) Do it through DNS. Sounds interesting, but I haven't tried
this yet. Like Rich wrote:
You can do it through sendmail.cf, but you can also do it through DNS, which is
what I do. I make my DNS server primary for the BITNET zone, which consists of
a bunch of MX records for my favorite bitnet-to-Internet gateways. Probably
better would be along the lines Paul Vixie described in netnews:

> From: vixie@vix.com (Paul A Vixie)
> Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
> Subject: Re: MX records for .BITNET?
> Date: 27 May 94 22:12:03
> Organization: Vixie Enterprises
> Lines: 21
> Distribution: inet
> Message-ID: <VIXIE.94May27221203@office.home.vix.com>
> References: <2s1k8s$b59@raffles.technet.sg> <2s2gio$i34@lll-winken.llnl.gov>
> <2s46lv$c7o@raffles.technet.sg>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: office.home.vix.com
> In-reply-to: mathias@solomon.technet.sg's message of 27 May 1994 07:15:11 GMT
>
> >I only thought that cunyvm et al would have published an MX record (or maybe
> >several) for .BITNET as a service for the net in general. Or is there a
> >trap somewhere?
>
> I don't like static relays, so I don't compile a single relay into my
> sendmail.cf files. I prefer to use the MX RR information published by
> the BITNIC, which is already in "DNS Zone" format but needs some SOA and
> other massaging. uucp-gw-1.pa.dec.com (my old host) is still a primary
> name server for "BITNET.", and if you set your name servers up as secondary
> servers using 16.1.0.18 as the primary's address, you can then let your
> $*<@$-.BITNET> pattern fall through to the $#tcp mailer. The advantage
> here is that there are a lot of dual-homed (BITNET, Internet) hosts and
> the MX RR for each BITNET host in this bogus zone is set to have the
> "closest" such dual-homed machine as its primary MX. Thus you can get
> your mail delivered faster, in a more distributed way, and using less
> internal bandwidth on the BITNET network.
> --
> Paul Vixie
> Redwood City, CA
> decwrl!vixie!paul
> <paul@vix.com>

Rich Schultz
rich@ccrwest.org

-----------------------------------

        3) Modify the sendmail.cf file to setup rewrite rule. Many people
recommended different ways to setup rewrite rules. Finally what I have
setup is different from all. The line I put in, at least I think it makes
clearer to me, since I used to tell people instead of type name@node.bitnet,
they had to type name%node.bitnet@node.internet, is:

        R$*<@$*.bitnet> $1%$2.bitnet<@$B> user%node.bitnet@$B

$B is our BITNET relay.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Shouben Zhou | *
* Department of Physics | e-mail: zhou@pcs.cnu.edu *
* and Computer Science | *
* Christopher Newport University | Phone : (804)-594-7749 *
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*

The following are the mails recommanding diferent ways to setup rewrite
rules:
>From pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU Fri Oct 21 15:37:44 1994
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 12:41:02 -0700
From: "Patrick L. Nolan" <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>
To: zshouben@PCS.CNU.EDU
Subject: Re: bitnet mail forwarding
Content-Length: 2101
X-Status:

>
> Could anybody tell me how to configure the sendmail.cf file, so that
> the bitnet e-mail "name@node.bitnet" will be automatically sent to the
> bitnet mail gateway, whose internet address is "node.internet".
>
> People here now have to type:
>
> name%node.bitnet@node.interent
>
> instead of:
>
> name@node.bitnet
>
> I know this can be done through configuring sendmail.cf file, but don't
> know how.
>
In our sendmail.cf file we have these additions:

1. At the top there is a DF line to define the name of the gateway.
In your case I think it would be
DFnode.internet

2. In ruleset 8 there is an added rule. The section looks like this:

# convert old-style addresses to a domain-based address
R$+^$+ $1!$2 convert ^ to !
R$-!$+ $@$>6$2<@$1.uucp> host!user (uucp)
R$+%$+ $@$>6$1<@$2> user%host
R$-.$+ $@$>6$2<@$1> host.user
R$-.$+!$+ $@$>6$3<@$1.$2> host.domain!user
R$-:$+ $@$>6$2<@$1> host:user
R$-=$+ $@$>6$2<@$1.bitnet> host=user

(I think the function of this is to translate host=user to user@host.bitnet
in case anyone uses such an odd syntax.)

3. In ruleset 0 there is an added rule. The section looks like this:

# resolve UUCP names we can handle locally
R<@$=V.uucp>:$+ $:$>9 $1 First clean up, then...
R<@$=V.uucp>:$+ $#uucp $@$1 $:$2 @host.uucp:...
R$+<@$=V.uucp> $#uucp $@$2 $:$1 user@host.uucp
 
R$*<@$*.bitnet>$* $#tcp $@$F $:$1%$2<@$F>
R$*<@$*.uucp>$* $#tcp $@$U $:$2!$1<@$U>
R$*<@$+.$+>$* $#tcp $@$2.$3 $:$1<@$2.$3>$4
R$*<$*$=w>$* $1<$2>$4 thishost
R$*<$*.>$* $1<$2>$3 drop trailing dot
R<@>:$* $@$>29$1 retry after route strip
R$*<@> $@$>29$1 strip null trash, retry

>From malcolm@nywork1.undp.org Fri Oct 21 20:35:45 1994
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 20:40:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: Malcolm Chapman <malcolm%nygate.undp.org@nygate.undp.org>
To: Shouben Zhou <zshouben@PCS.CNU.EDU>
Subject: Re: bitnet mail forwarding
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 579
X-Status:

Here is how we do it, through Columbia Univ., one of the Bitnet gateways.
In ruleset 0 in the /etc/sendmail.cf, include a line such as:

R$*<@$+.bitnet>$* $#ddn $@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu $:$1<@$2.bitnet>$3

Replacing cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by whichever gateway you prefer.

Cheers

_______________________________________________________________________________
Malcolm G. Chapman Phone: +1 (212) 906-6585
United Nations Development Programme Fax: +1 (212) 906-6365
Div. for Admin. & Information Services E-mail: malcolm@undp.org

>From rauthenberg@HHI.DE Sat Oct 22 06:02:22 1994
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 11:09:36 --100
From: rauthenberg@HHI.DE (Stefan Rauthenberg)
To: zshouben@PCS.CNU.EDU
Subject: Re: bitnet mail forwarding
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
Content-Length: 1008
X-Status:

Dear Shouben,

your problem boils down to a rewrite rule which captures <user@node.bitnet>
and forward it to the bitnet relay.

The place to insert the rule is in ruleset S0 somewhere before the `ddn'
mailer line

S0
...

# Pass other valid names up the ladder to our forwarder
#R$*<@$*.$=T>$* $#$M $@$R $:$1<@$2.$3>$4 user@domain.known

# Replace following with above to only forward "known" top-level domains
#R$*<@$*.$+>$* $#$M $@$R $:$1<@$2.$3>$4 user@any.domain

#--
# forward user<node.bitnet> to our bitnet relay given by macro `B'
### YOU NEED TO SET DByourBitnetRelay at the beginning of sendmail.cf ###
### My line is:
### DB mail.cs.TU-Berlin.de
#--
R$*<@$-.bitnet>$* $#ddn $@$B $:$1<@$2.bitnet>$3 user@any.domain

# if you are on the DDN, then comment-out both of the the lines above
# and use the following instead:
R$*<@$*.$+>$* $#ddn $@ $2.$3 $:$1<@$2.$3>$4 user@any.domain

...

I hope this may free your users from the `name%node.bitnet@node.internet'
blotch.

Good luck,
Stefan

>From Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de Mon Oct 24 03:02:37 1994
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 08:06:05 --100
From: Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de (Eckhard Rueggeberg)
To: zshouben@PCS.CNU.EDU
Subject: Re: bitnet mail forwarding
X-Sun-Charset: ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 541

This is what I have in our mail relayer's sendmail.cf file
  R$*<@$*.bitnet> $#ether $@VM.OP.DLR.DE $:$1<@$2>
It's in ruleset 0, just before the lines "Pass other valid names
up the ladder".
Tjis is a Sun 3 running 4.1.1, but others should be similar. In
case you can't read sendmail.cf syntax, it means : Given an adress
with anything@something.bitnet, use the mailer ether to send this mail
to VM.OP.DLR.DE (which is our bitnet node).

Hope this helps. If not, feel free to ask me directly.

Eckhard Rüggeberg
eckhard@ts.go.dlr.de
>From victoj@hopper.Sage.EDU Mon Oct 24 09:51:22 1994
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 09:04:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jeff Victor (Jedi Apprentice)" <victoj@hopper.Sage.EDU>
Subject: Re: bitnet mail forwarding
To: Shouben Zhou <zshouben@PCS.CNU.EDU>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 1343

On Fri, 21 Oct 1994, Shouben Zhou wrote:

> Could anybody tell me how to configure the sendmail.cf file, so that
> the bitnet e-mail "name@node.bitnet" will be automatically sent to the
> bitnet mail gateway, whose internet address is "node.internet".
>
I just did this two weeks ago!

You're right, it's a couple mods to sendmail.cf:

First you must define bitnet as a top-level domain:

# valid top-level domains (default passes ALL unknown domains up)
CT arpa bitnet com edu gov mil net org
CT us de fr jp kr nz il uk no au fi nl se ca ch my dk ar

Then add your nearest bitnet relay:

### BITNET relay
### cunyvm.cuny.edu This one's closest to us.
###
DBcunyvm.cuny.edu

And finally add the following rule to ruleset zero:

# Add bitnet gateway if necessary:
R$*<@$+.BITNET>$* $#$M $@$B $:$1<@$2.BITNET>$3 user@host.BITNET

These do assume some other things are set up correctly, but they're normal
stuff. If this doesn't work for you, let me know.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Victor The SageNet `Net Sage' victoj@hopper.sage.edu
Network Administrator 518-270-2354
The Sage Colleges Any opinions detected here are
Troy, New York probably your imagination running wild.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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