From: wewila@iwsd01.itwol.bhp.com.au (Alan Wilkie)
Newsgroups: vmsnet.mail.mx
Subject: Re: Q: MX over DEC UCX 2.0 - summarize?
Date: 27 Jan 93 08:14:10 +1000
Organization: BHP Information Technology

In article <00967119.602113E0.27667@hal.hahnemann.edu>, "Anthony J. Rzepela" <rzepela@hal.hahnemann.edu> writes:
> Hi all,
> 
	[introduction deleted]
> 
> At our site, we are abandoning the recently abandoned CMU-Tek, with which
> we successfully used MX 3.0 for more than a year.  Now we are on UCX 2.0
> (CSLG license).  For the sole reason that we have published user manuals and
> done training using MX, we do not want to abandon it as our VMS system mailer.

I have recently abandoned UCX 2.0 SMTP mail in favour of MX for a couple of
reasons (detailed below).  What sort of training, etc have you done?  If you're
worried about having to use SMTP% instead of MX% for specifying the protocol,
VMS mail allows any transport to use any prefix by defining a (system) logical
like:

	$ DEFINE/SYSTEM MAIL$PROTOCOL_xxx <transport_image_filename>

Basically, you can make MX% use the UCX SMTP transport, or vice-versa.

> 
> UCX, as of 2.0, ships with an SMTP<-->VAXMail interface, and unless someone can
> warn me of a hidden hell with UCX' SMTP mail, the manuals/training thing
> will remain the only reason.
> 
> Can someone answer:
> 
> * Do I have to use the MX SMTP server? Can't MX communicate with the UCX
>   SMTP server?

The sending and receiving of SMTP mail are quite different things.  It is not
really possible for the UCX SMTP server to pass things on to MX (since it
doesn't know anything about it) - the SMTP server calls the mail callable
interface directly to deliver the message to the user.

> 
> * To test it, do I have to install from scratch? The MX CONFIG programs don't
>   seem able to give me a working MX that will fly with UCX.
> 
> (NB: I *have* been trying different things, testing, and RTFMing.  I'm
> not supplying excessive detail because I'm just looking for general
> advice and/or warnings.)
> 

I suspect you have to use the original install kit to get the correct version
of the NETLIB support.  When you install MX, it links a lot of the programs
against a shareable image which provides the TCP/IP mechanisms.

> 
> From reading the docs, it seems to me that there should be a way to
> just have MX handle the VMSMail interface, and let SMTP service, routing,
> et al., be handled by UCX, but am I wrong?
> 

I can't think of a way to make this work (but you could be right :-).

The reason I switched from UCX SMTP to MX is simply that MX is quite a
bit richer than UCX.  In fact, I read somewhere in the UCX doco that the
SMTP mail implementation is a fairly "minimal" implementation - it handles
sending and receiving SMTP mail, but is not very sophisticated when it
comes to routing, etc.

MX allows me to do a few key things which I couldn't find a way to do
with UCX.

The first was the ability to define routing paths.  This allowed me to
define some "intelligent" routing paths, so that local mail got delivered
locally, while other mail goes out through our corporate mail server.  It
also let me set up mail so that our domain name is the mailing address -
i.e. my e-mail address is wewila@itwol.bhp.com.au instead of
wewila@<machine>.itwol.bhp.com.au on each machine where I have an
account.  With MX, it was as simple as defining the path "iwtol.bhp.com.au"
as "Local".  I couldn't find a way to do it with UCX (has anyone else?).

The other nice feature of MX is address rewriting.  This lets me use the
MX machine as a gateway to other machines which don't have direct SMTP
mail capability.  Even without using "SMTP over DECnet" (a feature
provided by MX, but not UCX), I can get mail delivered to DECnet nodes
by address rewriting.

In general, MX is more complete than UCX SMTP, easier to configure,
more flexible, and much better documented.
-- 
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Alan Wilkie, Analyst/Programmer, Process & Engineering Section    / / /\
                BHP Information Technology, Wollongong Australia / / /  \
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Newsgroups: vmsnet.mail.mx