[HECnet] VMS/RSX Guest accounts

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2020-04-23 05:20, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
> Yes, that's what I've been doing, but I need a little local storage for 
> data capture, control files and some other odd and ends, so I was hoping 
> to get my own personal account.  However, when I went to send you some 
> Mail-11 about it, the 20's mail agent crashed, so I guess that's one 
> request you never got.

Right. Haven't seen that one. But I'll set that up tonight. I'll contact 
you directly.

> I can't really remember what else spoke SMTP over DECnet.  I know Ultrix 
> could have done it, but it has that losing bind interface, so you'd have 
> to change some code in sendmail to make it work. The Tops-20 mailer uses 
> the unified JFN interface, so all you have to do is open the connection 
> and away you go, more or less.

You'd have to change more than just some small things. DECnet's 
communication layer is a bit different than TCP, so you'd have to do 
some brain surgery on sendmail for that.
That said, I know that Ultrix could talk MAIL-11 as well as SMPT, since 
it did act as a gateway many times.

> Be aware of the following: my testing is extremely unlikely to crash 
> anything.  Unless it does.  It could also leave some crud around from 
> broken connections.  So, you might have some scrubbing to do; that's not 
> a problem is it?

I don't think that would be any kind of problem. But if there is, I'd 
like to know about it.

> Once I fix the MMAILR crash, I'll contact you about Mail-11.  I'm fine 
> being a purist about the matter.

Excellent. I'll probably start off with a bit of information about this 
more specifically as well, in a separate mail.

   Johnny

> 
> On 4/22/20 11:12 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2020-04-23 04:49, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>>> I've had my fill of FAL and DAP for the moment and have turned to 
>>> some other things as sort of a 'break'.  The Tops-10 NFT client 
>>> breaks on certain file names that the 20 sends it, so there is going 
>>> to be some debugging to track that down.  Fortunately, a very patient 
>>> person gave me PPN on one of their 10's.
>>>
>>> Right now, I'm working on bringing the Tops-20 mail system a bit more 
>>> up to date with respect to DECnet communications.  These were largely 
>>> put aside when full Internet connectivity happened. Still, the PANDA 
>>> distribution has some bit rot because I know that certain Columbia 
>>> changes for DECnet (to support CCnet) are not there.  I can't imagine 
>>> that we didn't send them to MRC; that would have been unthinkable.
>>>
>>> Fortunately, I was able to remember enough to put some of them back 
>>> so that I got SMTP over DECnet working well, again.  It had been 
>>> suffering from about two minute timing delays and now it's 
>>> instantaneous between 20's, like I remember.   Oddly enough, I don't 
>>> remember what else ran SMTP over DECnet; I'm certain that RSX and VMS 
>>> could have done it.  I think some VMS site might have.
>>>
>>> However, most non-SMTP DECnet hosts on CCnet were running Mail-11, 
>>> which the 20 also groks.  In fact, it can convert Mail-11 addresses 
>>> to SMTP and route over other transports such as PUP, Chaos and TCP/IP 
>>> as well as DECnet.  We did a lot of mail routing for CCnet to the 
>>> Internet on CU20B, back in the day.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, there is some bit rot in some of the Tops-20 Mail-11 
>>> code, so I've got some tinkering to do.  Does anyone have a VMS or 
>>> RSX system that they'd care to give me a guest account on?  It 
>>> doesn't need any special capabilities; I'm just going to be sending 
>>> mail and looking a few raw headers over.
>>
>> Just log in to Mim.Update.UU.SE (MIM::). There is a guest account, 
>> with password guest. That should do it, I think.
>>
>> With that said, RSX definitely do not speak SMTP over DECnet. And we 
>> should also actually go into some detail about how to speak MAIL-11. 
>> Even VMS cheats...
>>
>>   Johnny
>>

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol