dpk@brl-vgr.arpa (Doug Kingston) (02/29/84)
We have decided that we would like to add a facility to the MMDF local channel, to allow users to have mail delivered to a file other than there regular mailbox simply by having the mail addressed with a slightly different "mailid". We already have the facility for have mail delivered to arbitrary files and processes, but due to the security implications, this kind of delivery is under the control of the system management. This new facility should be one that can be invoked by the user without bothering the management. It must also be sufficiently restricted that outside users cannot create random files or destroy same. Our strawman proposal for implementing this facility calls for they following syntax to be recognized: "user" deliver to user's regular mailbox (/disk/user/mailbox) "user=h-p" deliver to alternate mailbox hp (/disk/user/mailbox=h-p) We chose "=" as the magic character to trigger this, since it did not appear to have any magic properties anywhere else we could think of. Can anyone think of any problems this would cause, and if so, what suggestions do you have for altering the syntax to be more useable? We are not wedded to = or even the precise syntax used here. We would be interested in hearing what other systems may have implemented such a facility and what syntax they have used. Fighting the 150 message a day habit, -Doug-
RWK%SCRC-YUKON@MIT-MC.ARPA ("Robert W. Kerns") (02/29/84)
I don't understand. This seems to be purely an internal issue between your system management and the users you want to restrict to creating mailboxes with only certain names. Any system I've had much truck with has always let people create mailboxes under any name whatsoever. Why do we need a convention for the sake of sites that want to be restrictive? Anyone sending to this user's special mailbox has to know the name of the special-purpose mailbox anyway, and agree to use that name. Presumably he has to be told anyway. People do this all the time with mass-mailing lists, with names like SMITH-JUNK, etc.
greep@SU-DSN.ARPA (02/29/84)
I modified the delivery part of Rand MH to do something similar, although I used "." instead of "=", e.g. "greep.foomail" means user greep, mailbox foomail. What then happens is that if the recipient has specified his own program to handle his incoming mail (this was already part of MH), one of the arguments that is passed to that program is the mailbox, in this case "foomail". The program can do whatever it wants with the message. If the address consists of a user name with no mailbox, then the argument defaults to "inbox". If the user does not have his own program to handle incoming mail, then the part after the period is ignored and the mail all goes in one place. This is how we handle bboards. For example, "dsn-WorkS" is aliased to "news.works". There is a fake user called "news" which has a shell file to handle incoming mail. The shell program makes sure that the mailbox specified exists and then puts the message in it. If the mailbox isn't valid, the program returns a non-zero return code which tells the mailer to notify the sender of the error by sending back a message, which will include any error messages that were output by the program.