[7661] in Athena Bugs
vax 7.2R: write
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mhpower@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jun 13 16:34:09 1991
From: mhpower@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 91 16:33:57 EDT
System name: clive-barker
Type and version: CVAXSTAR 7.2R
Display type: SM
What were you trying to do?
Communicate with other users on an MITnet subnet that had lost
outside network connectivity. I tried using commands of the form:
/bin/write mhpower@18.62.3.126
What's wrong:
No message was sent. Instead, the write program terminated with
"Bus error".
What should have happened:
Ideally, a message should have been sent, just as if
/bin/write mhpower@clive-barker.mit.edu
had been used. Specifying the numerical IP address should make it
possible to exchange messages among IP-connected hosts, whether
or not there is IP connectivity to the relevant name servers.
Currently, this does not happen in either case.
If inter-host write is not intended to be usable, the argument
"mhpower@18.62.3.126" still should not generate "Bus error".
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
write(1) (which doesn't document inter-host write)
RFC 1123, Section 2.1:
Whenever a user inputs the identity of an Internet host, it SHOULD
be possible to enter either (1) a host domain name or (2) an IP
address in dotted-decimal ("#.#.#.#") form. The host SHOULD check
the string syntactically for a dotted-decimal number before
looking it up in the Domain Name System.
