jordan@UCBARPA.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (02/24/87)
(glad i put a '?' next to it ...) -- the sndmsg balks stuff is from Wollongong's VMS mailer ... egged-face, /jordan
cetron@UTAH-CS.ARPA.UUCP (02/25/87)
In article <8702242033.AA21637@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU> jordan@UCBARPA.BERKELEY.EDU (Jordan Hayes) writes: >(glad i put a '?' next to it ...) -- the sndmsg balks stuff is from >Wollongong's VMS mailer ... > >egged-face, > >/jordan Don't feel quite so bad, the software tools mailer is somewhat similar: After it receives the 'terminating' <cr><lf>.<cr><lf> it spawns off a subshell which attempts to send the receive message header information to a mailer daemon....if the send works (address is valid, header info complete, etc) then it returns and the SMTP server responds with the OK message. If not, it sends the appropriate error code (syntax error in address - see RFC 822, date missing etc...). There IS a window where the remote mailer could time out, but to date I have never seen this actually happen - remember, it is NOT trying to deliver the message, just verify the headers and queue it for delivery..... -ed cetron cetron@utah-cs.arpa
ken@HAMLET.CALTECH.EDU.UUCP (02/26/87)
>In article <8702242033.AA21637@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU> jordan@UCBARPA.BERKELEY.EDU (Jordan Hayes) writes: >>(glad i put a '?' next to it ...) -- the sndmsg balks stuff is from >>Wollongong's VMS mailer ... Wollongong's SMTP server spawns a subprocess (called SNDMSG) to pass the message off to VMSmail. If the subprocess exits fatally, you get the `sndmsg balks' error. > Don't feel quite so bad, the software tools mailer is somewhat similar: > >After it receives the 'terminating' <cr><lf>.<cr><lf> it spawns off a subshell >which attempts to send the receive message header information to a mailer >daemon....if the send works (address is valid, header info complete, etc) then >it returns and the SMTP server responds with the OK message. If not, it sends >the appropriate error code (syntax error in address - see RFC 822, date missing >etc...). There IS a window where the remote mailer could time out, but to date >I have never seen this actually happen - remember, it is NOT trying to deliver >the message, just verify the headers and queue it for delivery..... Correction. The Software Tools SMTP receiver does not spawn a subshell and does all of the verification as the headers come in. It then queues the message to the mailer daemon which does little more than expand aliases and copy the file into the delivery queue directory before returning a success status to the SMTP receiver, which is then free to return a response to the SMTP partner. Any delay seen between <CR><LF>.<CR><LF> and the response code is due to the time it takes the mailer daemon to copy the file into the queue. If this is not done syncronously then a machine failure might cause lost mail. I'd rather get two than none. Kenneth Adelman Caltech