rll@SCRC-RIVERSIDE.ARPA (Richard Lawhorn Jr.) (11/15/85)
Could someone send me some private mail explaining how they get ARPA mail onto their VMS system? We run IP/TCP in-house on all our equipment except for VMS which we talk to using DECNET (we have many Lisp Machines, several 4.2BSD Unix Vaxen, and 2 VMS Vaxen). Some of the users have asked to VMS regularly to read mail and use several VMS software products on one machine (running VMS of course), except that I have never had any software that reliably allowed us to put mail on the VMS machines. Has anyone used DEC's ALL-IN-ONE product? What's good and bad about it? Again, private mail please. -Rick
stokes%cmc.cdn%ubc.CSNET@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (Peter Stokes) (01/24/86)
I hate to clutter info-vax with old stuff but I only recently started using the VMS MAIL utility (ugh) and am driven crazy by the following: On logging into the system VMS tells me I have new mail but after checking mail there are 'no new messages'. The false new mail notice is always in the form of "you have one new mail message". Why is this so and is there a fix? Send replies directly to me if you wish to not clutter the BB. Thanks Peter Canadian Microelectronics Corporation
art%mwvms@MITRE.ARPA (01/25/86)
-------- >On logging into the system VMS tells me I have new mail but after >checking mail there are 'no new messages'. The false new mail notice >is always in the form of "you have one new mail message". Why is this >so and is there a fix? The databases have gotten out of sync. The easiest way to get them back in sync is to type MAIL>SELECT/NEW MAIL>exit This should then reset the databases back to zero. Note: this can be caused by machine crash, User deleting a file he should not have, or system manager reading the mail file of a user a deleting a message. I understand that it will automatically reset the pointers during a purge/reclaim operation but they generally do not take place very often.
JOHNSON%nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu@RELAY.CS.NET ("I am only an egg.") (11/06/86)
I had a conversation via the net with one Jon Callas from VMS
developement about vms mail rumors. His replies are published here
with his permission.
Q 1: What about FORWARDs and distribution lists?
R 1:
Chris:
Since I'm the probable source of this rumor, let me squash it.
Distribution lists will *not* be pulled from V5. It would be
silly for us to do so.
Let me explain where I think the rumor came from. In V4, with
mail forwarding, you could do something like this:
SET FORWARD XYZ_TEAM "JIM,SUE,BOB,DENISE,BRAD"
And mail send to FOO::XYZ_TEAM would go to all four people. Most
of the time. If all mail gets delivered properly, then all four
people get the mail. But suppose that something goes wrong
delivering mail to BOB. Suppose he's over disk quota, or he's
set forwarding to go to another node and that node is down, or
something. What will happen is that you'll get an error
delivering mail to BOB, and MAIL won't even try to deliver to
Denise and Brad. They won't get the mail and you won't know that
they didn't get it.
At San Francisco DECUS, someone asked at the Advanced Q&A
session if this was going to be fixed. I said, "No. As a matter
of fact, this was an unintended feature, and we're taking it
away." I explained that the MAIL-11 protocol (which is the
network protocol that mail uses) is a very simple protocol and
assumes only one message per transaction (aside -- you can find
the protocol specification in PROTCOL.TXT in the MAIL section of
the VMS microfiche). When it gets an error delivering mail to
XYZ_TEAM it has no way of knowing that XYZ_TEAM fans out to
multiple users. So it stops sending. This is wrong. It is
totally unacceptable to not deliver mail. But there's nothing
that we in VMS can do to unilaterally change the protocol.
What we are removing from V5 is the ability to SET FORWARD to
multiple people. If you were using this feature, we're sorry. It
isn't a feature, it is a bug (bet that's the firt time you've
heard that line). We're fixing that bug.
If you need mailing lists (true arpa-style mailing lists -- a
mail stop that fans out to multiple users, not simply VAX Mail
distribution lists), then we have layered products that handle
this problem. Talk to your sales person. Or, you could write
your own mail server that does this properly. It's been done
before, and much of the information on how to do it has been
talked about on Info-VAX.
I'm sorry that this answer got garbled into a rumor that
distribution lists are going away. They aren't.
Sincerely,
Jon Callas
VMS development
Workstations and Human Interfaces
---------------------------------- ----------------------------------
Q 2: Will vms mail be enhanced?
R 2:
Yes, I do happen to know whether VAX Mail is going to be
improved. It is. Lot's of good stuff. CC, deleting ranges,
default transport, default print forms, lots of other stuff that
I don't use, myself. It will also be easier for you to build
improved mail systems out of ours. Mail will be callable.
Could you do me a favor and send a message to Info-VAX that
distribution lists will *not* be going away, but SET FORWARD to
multiple users will?
Thanks,
Jon
---------------------------------- ----------------------------------
Chris Johnson
Northeastern UnuiversityROODE%BIONET@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU.UUCP (11/23/86)
I wonder if DEC realizes that this limitation on SET FORWARD being used to specify multiple recipients does not remove the problem. A logical name can be defined to point to a distribution list file, ie "XYZ_TEAM" = "@SYS$PEOPLE:XYZ_TEAM.DIS" Where SYS$PEOPLE:XYZ_TEAM.DIS contains: JIM,SUE,BOB,DENISE,BRAD and the equivalent effect is maintained when XYZ_TEAM is used over MAIL-11. -------
UOWRAK@UOFMCC.BITNET.UUCP (01/26/87)
MGRANOFF@CLARKU.BITNET has asked about sources of information
concerning VMSmail protocols.
WOLFATBBNG has asked for a technique for moving folders of V4 mail.
First, look at the three MAIL*.COM files in SYS$EXAMPLES for some
hints and tricks.
Second, there was an article "Mail Subroutine" in the VAX Professional
for August 1986 which tells how to force stuff into VMSmail without
using the MAIL utility, giving you a kind of backdoor callable MAIL.
(Wouldn't it be nice if DEC created and documented MAILSHR.EXE or
some such).
Jerry - it is possible to transfer V4 folders via the MAIL utility
right now, in a reasonably clean way.
On your source system:
$ SET DIR your_mail_directory
$ MAIL
MAIL>SET FOLDER folder_name
MAIL>EXTRACT/ALL folder_name
! Repeat the above two steps for each folder to be transferred.
MAIL>EXIT
This will generate a number of sequential (V3-type) mail files
in your default directory. They are "good" V3-type files except
that each must have a single line of <FF> added at the beginning.
Use your favourite text editor; automate as much as possible.
The files will be called folder_name.TXT.
Then BACKUP all of these files to you favourite transport medium.
Note: this gives your one sequential file for each folder.
On your target system
Use BACKUP to restore the sequential files into your mail
directory. Then
$SET DEF your_mail_directory
$MAIL
MAIL>SET FILE folder_name.TXT
MAIL>COPY/ALL folder_name MAIL
! repeat the above two steps for each folder
MAIL>EXIT
This will copy mail from the sequential file folder_name.TXT
into a folder in your master V4 mail file MAIL.MAI. If you
did not remember to stick a <FF> at the front of each
sequential folder file, you will lose a bit of header info in
the first piece of mail in each folder.
Don't forget that you can write command files to do all this
stuff for you. Details for this I leave to you.
Roger Kingsley
Computer Services
University of Winnipeg
PS - I have used the tricks described in VAX Professional to
do the following:
1) my BITNET mail arrives on an Amdahl system and stops there
2) I forward it to my VAX over a HASP link as card images (punch
queue output)
3) I "receive" VMSmail with a modest (200-line or so) FORTRAN
program which copies my "card deck" over single-node DECnet.
I have not done anything fancy to get my mail out of VMS to BITNET;
I just log onto my Amdahl host, and send out of Big Blue software.
=====robert@jimi.cs.unlv.EDU.UUCP (03/25/87)
>I am a heavy user of VMSmail, and a modest user of All-in-One >mail. I am of the opinion that, while All-in-One provides >some nifty things like multiple classes of delivery, its filing >system is no better than the one in VMSmail, and a lot more >work to use. Well, I am the one who called vms mail braindamaged - perhaps I should be a bit more specific. I don't know anything about all-in-one execpt that the headers look obnoxious, what I use is the Rand MH system, which I beleive someone was porting to vms, I was hoping someone would have some info on this.... Here are some things mh does, in which I feel VMS Mail is dificient. MH comes with many utilities, such as "burst" which allow me to expand digests into individual messages (or combine many messages into one) MH and MMDF (or MH and sendmail) work well together, so that I can have mailing lists get automatically refiled into their own folders, so I can look at them at my leisure. In fact I can do this based on the To Cc:, From:, and Subject fields, or have all messages processed by one or more utilities. Note that I don't have to invoke any commands to do this, it happens when the mail is delivered. With mh, I don't have to see obnoxious mail headers such as Received-From, Resent, X-VMS-To, etc, etc, etc. The only headers I see are From To, Cc, Date, and Subject. If I send mail to a machine that is currently down (for backups perhaps) the mail will be queued, also I don't have to wait wail mail makes a connection, it will simply take care of things, and mail me a message informing me of any problems. With mh, If I go on vacation, I can have mh automatically mail each person who sends me mail (but only once) a form letter telling them I am gone, and when I will respond. It is very easy for me to write a utility (as a normal user) that will get to process each message, or classes of messages (as per .maildelivery in mmdf) I think aliases are handled in a better fashion from within mh. MH is certainly ore flexible. Some of these things are taken care of from PMDF, certainly all of them *could* be implimented, however they are all problems with "vanilla" vms mail. If we are still voting, I don't care one way or the other about digests. I don't think anyone really wants anybody to suffer, just to join the real world. --robert -- CSNET: robert%jimi.cs.unlv.edu@relay.cs.net UUCP: {akgua,ihnp4,mirror,psivax,sdcrdcf}!otto!jimi!robert