Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 07:20:54 -0500 
From: John Anthony Chanak <jc79@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
Subject: ICS automail, was: Re: cowboy crushes scratchy on ics
	<BxMLs6.EsJ@world.std.com>
Distribution: world

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.chess: 12-Nov-92 Re: cowboy crushes
scratchy.. Elliott C Winslow@world. (1285)

> In article <BxM4Fn.GnD@news.orst.edu>
> linb@ucs.orst.edu (Benjamin Lin) writes:
> > In article <CUBAN.92Nov12091222@w20-575-31.mit.edu>
> > cuban@athena.mit.edu (Federico A Garcia) writes:
> >> How did you manage to get an automail/mail listing of that game on
> >> ICS?  Neither of the two commands has worked in weeks.  Is this going
> >> to be fixed any time soon?
> > Nope, I couldn't use automail/mail either :-(
> > I just copied the moves from the screen.  That is why the game I posted
> > was incomplete...
> Just to note one of the nic things about the GIICS program (from 1.51 on),
> there is a utility provided, xtract, *with* source, that will extract the
> games from the file giics.log. (which contains all sessions appended, so i
> hope youze guys are remembering to kill it off every now and then! :-)

> It chokes ever so easily, and dumps the games out in the dreaded computer
> algebraic notation, but hey!  It works.  It was "the tool for the job"
> appearing miraculously in the midst of my grousing about the end of
> automail.

The version of xboard available for FTP from valkyries allows games to
be saved... (And replayed, of course) It will only save games you play,
though.  (Working on the others...) You can parse backwards/forwards
through the moves you have played while playing, etc.

Just to clear things up on automail for once and for all....
The standard mail system here at CMU operates through a suite of "post
office" (po) machines for handling external mail. All mail sent
externally goes through them. This is generally acceptable- however,
when Valkyries started to appear way, way, way, way on the top of the
logs (with ~7000 messages/week) we were "asked" not to bother the po
machines with something that is, after all, just a game. (they said:
"Quit sending mail, or we'll pull the plug") This does not in itself
keep valkyries from sending mail- it can do so on its own like any
"real" workstation. However, Valkyries is configured to run as a
"standard andrew workstation".  The key words here are "standard
andrew." "Standard" means that each time it reboots, it
auto-reconfigures into a standard state- a state where all external mail
goes through the po machines. The other nasty word is "andrew," short
for "Andrew File System." (AFS).  AFS is a large-scal distributed file
system. AFS does not do mail the normal way- it relies on gateways (the
po machines) to interface with the "standard" mailing systems. What this
all boils down to is that valkyries must not only learn how to send mail
on its own, but it must be able to maintain this information through a
reboot.  This is not a *real* difficult task, but it takes time to
implement and test.  I haven't had that much free time on my hands
recently, so progress has been slow. (Actually, we're quite close- we
can send mail to external sites, but we can't send mail to cmu... and
that's unacceptable, since valkyries's non-chess mail all goes to cmu.)

> Hats off to Tony, the guys @valkyries.andrew.cmu.edu, and of course Michael
> Moore, who got us started on this weird trip...

Gee, thanks...

> [and nash@nisus and anyone else I'm forgetting...]


> --elliott
>   Elliott Winslow IM
>   ekw@world.std.com
>   Assistant Editor
>   Chess Life USCF

Thanks for playing... 

-John
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess