jlunny@nswc-g.arpa (12/19/87)
i'm trying to use /bin/mail to mail a letter to a local file and obviously i am not having much luck. both ucbmail and binmail pass their requests to sendmail, which in turn sends it to its local mailer, and on my system it is binmail. i know ucbmail will mail letters to local files because ucbmail will do the actual write operation itself if the recipient is a file and not exec sendmail, unlike binmail which does pass the request to sendmail if the recipient is a file. i have looked at the source of sendmail and don't see how it is possible to mail letters to files if sendmail is in the loop. would somebody please tell me how/if it is possible? thanks a bunch. jlunny NSWC
jarrell@vtopus.cs.vt.EDU (12/19/87)
Try defining the alias for the address to be "| cat > filename" -Ron Jarrell Va Tech
dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) (01/04/88)
In article <10906@brl-adm.ARPA> jlunny@nswc-g.arpa writes: > >i'm trying to use /bin/mail to mail a letter to a local file and >obviously i am not having much luck. both ucbmail and binmail pass >their requests to sendmail, which in turn sends it to its local >mailer, and on my system it is binmail. > >i know ucbmail will mail letters to local files because ucbmail will >do the actual write operation itself if the recipient is a file and >not exec sendmail, unlike binmail which does pass the request to >sendmail if the recipient is a file. > >i have looked at the source of sendmail and don't see how it is >possible to mail letters to files if sendmail is in the loop. would >somebody please tell me how/if it is possible? UCB Mail can write to a file because it's non-setUID, leaving the actual delivery of mail (to others' mailboxes) to /bin/mail or some other real mailer. Once you're into a sequence involving setUID programs, you can't allow mailing to files unless the programs have all kinds of careful checking about ownership and permissions. (Consider what would happen if you could mail the line "trojan::0::/:" to /etc/passwd.) David Sherman The Law Society of Upper Canada -- { uunet!mnetor pyramid!utai decvax!utcsri ihnp4!utzoo } !lsuc!dave Pronounce it ell-ess-you-see, please...