john@ektools.UUCP (John H. Hall) (11/15/85)
Can anybody help us with the following problem?
We need at least a minimal capability to transfer mail between our
Ultrix-32 VAX and a VMS VAX.
Any solution must meet the following constraints:
1. The minimal acceptable capability would allow one specific
user on the Ultrix VAX to send mail to any user on the VMS VAX.
Any user on the VMS VAX could send mail to that one ULTRIX user.
2. The ability to serve more than one ULTRIX user would be nice, of
course, but is not necessary. Neither is would the ability to
relay mail back and forth between remote systems in the VMS DECNET
and ULTRIX uucp domains.
3. Communication must be via asynchronous, RS-232 connections
using either a direct wire, a dial-up, or a Sytek LocalNet-20(tm)
broadband connection.
4. As we are a binary ULTRIX-32 licensee, no source hacking
is allowed.
5. The VMS end should be changed as little as possible.
6. Low cost is important.
We are aware of the DECnet-ULTRIX(tm) product. It only supports Ethernet
as its data-link and physical-link layers. The distance between the two
systems, and the low anticipated volume of traffic make it hard to
justify an Ethernet connection. If DECnet-ULTRIX would work over
serial lines (DDCMP?), we'd buy it today!
Our best idea so far is:
1. Set up a dummy account on the VMS VAX for each user on the
ULTRIX system to send or receive mail.
2. Fix our sendmail.cf to stick mail to 'vmsvax!user' or
'user@vmsvax' into a special spool directory.
3. Write a daemon that will:
a. Call the VMS VAX, and log in under one of the dummy accounts.
b. Run the VMS mail system, just like a user,
c. Read any waiting mail, copying them into files
on the Ultrix system.
d. For every file in the special spool directory, mail it
to the appropriate VMS user.
e. Logs off the VMS system.
f. Re-mail any messages that were received to the ULTRIX user.
4. Have 'cron' run the daemon at regular intervals, once for every
dummy account on the VMS system.
It seems possible, but it's not very pretty, and it would take a lot of
work. Is there a better way?
Given the number of sites that run both VMS and UNIX, somebody
must have done this before.
--
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John Hall
Supervisor, Software Tools Laboratory
Product Software Engineering
USPS: EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY, 901 Elmgrove Rd., Rochester, NY 14650
VOICE: 716 726-9345
UUCP: {allegra, seismo}!rochester!kodak!ektools!john
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