On Thu, 12 Apr 90 13:00:46 EDT Michael R. Gettes said:
>On Thu, 12 Apr 90 12:29:45 LCL Darryl E. Marsee said:
>>.... it looks like  it just tacks .BITNET onto every  non-domained nodeid it
>>tries to  send mail  to, which for  us is  fine if the  nodeid really  is on
>>BITNET, but a real pain if it's not.
>
>The problem  is getting  listserv to  recognize what a  local host  (from the
>local domain) is.  This is annoying... there are two  methods to resolve this
>problem -- I recommend the FIRST.
>
>(1) Insure  that ALL mail  hitting listserv  is in domained  form. converting
>    your campus  to using domained mail.  We did this at  Princeton. It works
>    well.
>
>(2) Until we got around to doing 1 above, I modified LSVNADDR to look up
>    in a LOCAL NODES file, which was an extract of all local nodes in
>    all possible local domain forms.
 
I didn't (and still don't) like  the .BITNET-hack for reasons explained in the
past :-). On the other hand I understand the desire to support *local* nodes -
strictly meaning LOCAL.
There are two things I think are easily missed:
a) LISTSERV  provides more than  mail service.  If you convince  LISTSERV that
   PIGSFEET is a valid address (because  MAILER forwards to SMTP) then what do
   you expect  will happen  if CATSHEAD@PIGSFEET sends  LISTSERV a  "GET FANCY
   MODULE" ?
b) Even more important is automatic command forwarding.
   1) You have a peered list.  Above CATSHEAD@PIGSFEET sends a REVIEW command.
      The request  is forwarded to  the peers.  Now *they* will  have problems
      sending to PIGSFEET.
   2) The  user sends  a SUBSCRIBE FarAway-List.  Since your  LISTSERV doesn't
      host  the list  but knows  that  it's at  OTHRNODE the  request will  be
      forwarded to  [log in to unmask] What  would you  expect should  be done
      then?
 
Without modifications to LISTSERV you can't  prevent local node users to "slip
out" into  BITNET appearing as  having a valid  NJE address. LISTSERV  was not
designed as  gateway or double-headed  server. Thus  every site not  on BITNET
must send  to LISTSERV with  domained addresses. And it  would be a  good idea
that these addresses (you can choose  your local ones) a resolvable everywhere
in BITNET, i.e. they should be reachable via one of the upper level domains.
 
Christian