joe@petsd.UUCP (Joe Orost) (05/22/85)
As moderator of the mail.compress discussion group, I often need to send a
rather large message to many recipients like this:
To: v!x!y!z, v!a, v!x!a, v!x!g!a, ...
My problem is that my mail handler (MH) or /bin/mail sends multiple copies
of my message to system "v" instead of just sending one. This causes system
"v" to send multiple copies to system "x", etc.
This greatly increases the cost (to many) of my mail-outs.
Any suggestions? Please send email; I will summarize.
BTW, I am running a V7 system.
regards,
joe
--
Full-Name: Joseph M. Orost
UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!joe
ARPA: vax135!petsd!joe@BERKELEY
US Mail: MS 313; Perkin-Elmer; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724
Phone: (201) 758-7284 <<--NEW NUMBER 4/15/85-->>
Location: 40 19'49" N / 74 04'37" Wglc@akgua.UUCP (G.L. Cleveland [Lindsay]) (05/29/85)
>As moderator of the mail.compress discussion group, I often need to send a >rather large message to many recipients like this: > > To: v!x!y!z, v!a, v!x!a, v!x!g!a, ... > >My problem is that my mail handler (MH) or /bin/mail sends multiple copies >of my message to system "v" instead of just sending one. This causes system >"v" to send multiple copies to system "x", etc. > >This greatly increases the cost (to many) of my mail-outs. > >Any suggestions? Please send email; I will summarize. Since this is used quite a bit, I though I would post a small bit of enlightenment. The "vanilla" UNIX mailer uses the "uux" command for mailing to and/or thru a remote site. When it gets arguments of: mail site1!x site1!y site1!z site1!site2!r it internally generates the following: uux - -n site1!rmail x <temp-file-with-mail-text uux - -n site1!rmail y <temp-file-with-mail-text uux - -n site1!rmail z <temp-file-with-mail-text uux - -n site1!rmail site2!r <temp-file-with-mail-text This makes uucp send four copies of the mail text to "site1". If you want to send to more than one user at one site, the method below could be used: mail site1!'x y z' which results in /bin/mail executing the following: uux - -n site1!rmail x y z <temp-file-with-mail-text The above ends up sending only one copy of the mail text. For mail passing thru one site to another, the quoting still does the job for you: mail site1!'x y z site2!r site3!s' which results in /bin/mail executing the following: uux - -n site1!rmail x y z site2!r site3!s <temp-file-with-mail-text I have tried the above samples on my systems and they work as shown. We are running System V, Release 2.0 on AT&T 3B20A's. Multi-hop mailing makes for somewhat more complicated quoting, and different versions of "shell" may mess up your plans there, so I won't try to suggest anything as unwieldly as: mail site1!'site4!\\\"t u site5!v\\\"' or mail site1!'site4!t\\ u\\ site5!v' because it doesn't work on my systems and I don't have the time to experiment with what would work. I'll leave that for some of the really expert wizards! Hope this helps a bit. Cheers, Lindsay Lindsay Cleveland (akgua!glc) (404) 447-3909 Cornet 583-3909 AT&T Technologies/Bell Laboratories ... Atlanta, Ga
gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (06/03/85)
I hacked sendmail here to do this automagically. Anybody can do it by putting in the 'M' flag in the uucp mailer definition; the problem is then that the length of the command line generated can exceed the maximum for uux (on the remote site, where you can't fix it). I added an L= parameter that specifies the maximum command line length. Bill Nowicki has merged these changes with the pre-4.3BSD sendmail and hopefully Eric&friends will accept them back for 4.3.