[comp.unix.xenix] Trouble with Xenix rmail.

tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) (06/01/90)

My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
following back from our machine:

	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
		rmail tony al
	exited with status 1

		===== stderr was =====
	Usage: rmail username

Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.

--
Yours, etc., Tony Olekshy (...!alberta!oha!tony or tony@oha.UUCP).

steveb@aos.UUCP (Steve Bogner) (06/01/90)

In article <422@oha.UUCP>, tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
> following back from our machine:
> 
> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
> 		rmail tony al
> 	exited with status 1
> 
> 		===== stderr was =====
> 	Usage: rmail username
> 
> Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
> something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.
> 




Xenix rmail can't handle multiple recipients.  The site which feeds
you needs to take the "m" out of the Flags part of their uucp mailer
specification.  This prevents their site from putting multiple
recipients in the rmail line.  The bad part of this is that you get a
separate message for each user, which increases the connect time.




-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Steve Bogner                                Voice# : 918-742-6400 |
| AOS, Inc.                               uucp: ...uunet!aos!steveb |
| Tulsa, OK                                                         |

debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (06/01/90)

In article <422@oha.UUCP> tony@oha.UUCP writes:
>My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
>address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
>following back from our machine:
>
>	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
>		rmail tony al
>	exited with status 1
>
>		===== stderr was =====
>	Usage: rmail username

Sure looks broken to me. I just experienced the same problem about a week
ago. Newer mail programs do indeed try to send a mail message only
once to a remote machine and try to have the remote machine get it to
the users on that machine. My old Xenix 2.2.1 surely dates back to the
days where the messages would be sent separately to the remote machine for
every recipient. I guess they just didn't anticipate this ever changing.
(unix was invented by the phone company, so the extra cost didn't matter...)

Paul.
(debra@research.att.com)
-- 
------------------------------------------------------
|debra@research.att.com   | uunet!research!debra     |
------------------------------------------------------

det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) (06/03/90)

In article <422@oha.UUCP> tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
> following back from our machine:
> 
> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
> 		rmail tony al
> 	exited with status 1
> 
> 		===== stderr was =====
> 	Usage: rmail username
> 
> Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
> something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.

I'm not sure about your system and that version of xenix, but there *are* some
rmail programs out there (the older ones) that simply expect a single address
on the command line; no more; no less.  I would suggest verifying with SCO
whether they are indeed shipping an old version of rmail with 2.3.1 and, if so
(i would be suprised), upgrade to a newer package or install some public domain
mailer replacement.  the smail2.5 worked quite nicely on my xenix system (with
the xenix mods, of course).

derek
-- 
Derek Terveer		det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG

ron@rdk386.uucp (Ron Kuris) (06/04/90)

In article <54@aos.UUCP> steveb@aos.UUCP (Steve Bogner) writes:
>In article <422@oha.UUCP>, tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
>> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
>> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
>> following back from our machine:
>> 
>> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
>> 		rmail tony al
>> 	exited with status 1
>> 
>> 		===== stderr was =====
>> 	Usage: rmail username
>> 
>> Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
>> something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.
>
>Xenix rmail can't handle multiple recipients.  The site which feeds
>you needs to take the "m" out of the Flags part of their uucp mailer
>specification.  This prevents their site from putting multiple
>recipients in the rmail line.  The bad part of this is that you get a
>separate message for each user, which increases the connect time.

A better solution is to get smail and install it.  It handles multiple
recipients and completely replaces rmail.
-- 
--
...!pyramid!unify!rdk386!ron -or- ...!ames!pacbell!sactoh0!siva!rdk386!ron
It's not how many mistakes you make, its how quickly you recover from them.

edw@wells.UUCP (Ed Wells) (06/04/90)

In article <1990Jun3.020023.10174@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>, det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) writes:
In article <422@oha.UUCP> tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
> following back from our machine:
> 
> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
> 		rmail tony al
> 	exited with status 1
> 
> 		===== stderr was =====
> 	Usage: rmail username
> 
> Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
> something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.

  I think a few of their 'rmail' programs needed for some reason:

	rmail -ausername username

Try that.  It's been a while since I played with the Xenix rmail, but
I think the name after the -a was the name to send it to and the username
after that was the Documented name in the piece of mail.  If I remember
correctly, 'rmail -aedw Edward' allowed the mail to be send to 'edw'
while the "From " line contained the name from 'Edward'.  You'll have
to verify this by playing with it.  I don't have the old 'rmail' program
on my system anymore.  I use smail now and some other stuff I wrote
myself.

-- 
=========================================================================
Edward E. Wells Jr., President			    Voice: (215)-943-6061
Wells Computer Systems Corp., Box 343, Levittown, Pa. 19058
{dsinc,francis,hotps,houxl,lgnp1,mdi386,pebco}!wells!edw

edw@wells.UUCP (Ed Wells) (06/04/90)

In article <1990Jun3..23459@rdk386.uucp>, ron@rdk386.uucp (Ron Kuris) writes:
> .... 
> A better solution is to get smail and install it.  It handles multiple
> recipients and completely replaces rmail.
> -- 
> --
> ...!pyramid!unify!rdk386!ron -or- ...!ames!pacbell!sactoh0!siva!rdk386!ron
> It's not how many mistakes you make, its how quickly you recover from them.

  I don't think so.  The old 'rmail' get renamed to 'lmail' (for local
mailer).  Then the 'smail' program gets linked to the name 'rmail'.
The 'lmail' (your old rmail) is still used for local mailings.  As far
as I know this hasn't been changed any unless their's an update that
I'm not familiar with.  Maybe someone else out here can verify this
also.

-- 
=========================================================================
Edward E. Wells Jr., President			    Voice: (215)-943-6061
Wells Computer Systems Corp., Box 343, Levittown, Pa. 19058
{dsinc,francis,hotps,houxl,lgnp1,mdi386,pebco}!wells!edw

lance@embassy.UUCP (Lance N. Antrim) (06/04/90)

From article <1990Jun3..23459@rdk386.uucp>, by ron@rdk386.uucp (Ron Kuris):
>>
>>Xenix rmail can't handle multiple recipients.  The site which feeds
>>you needs to take the "m" out of the Flags part of their uucp mailer
>>specification.  This prevents their site from putting multiple
>>recipients in the rmail line.  The bad part of this is that you get a
>>separate message for each user, which increases the connect time.
> 
> A better solution is to get smail and install it.  It handles multiple
> recipients and completely replaces rmail.
> -- 
> --
> ...!pyramid!unify!rdk386!ron -or- ...!ames!pacbell!sactoh0!siva!rdk386!ron
> It's not how many mistakes you make, its how quickly you recover from them.

This must be a recurring question, so if there is a reference to send me
to, then please do.  I want to install smail 2.5 on my Xenix 386 system.
 I have the sources for smail 2.5 and pathalias.  I assume that I pretty
much follow the instructions for installation on a System V/no sendmail
system, but it there anything particular to Xenix that I should watch
for?  In particular, do I treat xenix execmail as if were the SysV
rmail?

I have been through the documentation, the nutshell guides and the xenix
manuals, but now I need advice from those who gone before.  You can
e-mail responses and I will post a summary of the steps needed to
install smail on Xenix for others.

... uunet!embassy!lance

thanks
-- 

Lance Antrim                            Project on Multilateral Negotiation
..!uunet!embassy!lance                  American Academy of Diplomacy
___________________________________________________________________________

chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) (06/04/90)

In article <382@wells.UUCP> edw@wells.UUCP (Ed Wells) writes:
>The 'lmail' (your old rmail) is still used for local mailings.  As far
>as I know this hasn't been changed any unless their's an update that
>I'm not familiar with.  Maybe someone else out here can verify this also.

No...if you graft smail onto a XENIX system, you would want to use
/usr/lib/mail/execmail to do the local delivery.  (Which is going to be
hidden under another name.)  If you use Chip Salzenberg's deliver program
(I do), you don't even need to use SCO's execmail.  And you can just chuck
the distributed rmail.

There are a couple of approaches to the installation.  Chip Salzenberg
introduces an execmail replacement which just passes off the message to
smail.  I prefer to hack smail to understand the execmail flags, and thus
link /bin/smail to /usr/lib/mail/execmail.  The advantage of my approach
is that it removes one level of complexity (i.e. a fork/exec) from an
already convoluted system.  The disadvantage is that it has never been
tested with Micnet.

You can get the other Chip's patches from a comp.sources.misc archive,
and the other other Chip's patches by sending me email. :-)

-- 
Chip Rosenthal                            |  You aren't some icon carved out
chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM                  |  of soap, sent down here to clean
Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260  |  up my reputation.  -John Hiatt

fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (06/05/90)

In article <422@oha.UUCP>, tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
> following back from our machine:

> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
> 		rmail tony al
> 	exited with status 1

> Does anyone know if the Xenix rmail just incapable of this, or am I doing
> something wrong?  System is Xenix 2.3.1.

I had this happen a few weeks ago.  It is a feature.
The solution I chose was to install smail.  An alternative is to
rename rmail to something like rmail.dumb and write a shell script
called rmail that would pass argments one at a time to rmail.dumb.
-- 
Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155  (206)FOR-UNIX
     uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl            (206)527-3385

shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) (06/05/90)

>>In article <422@oha.UUCP>, tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy) writes:
>>> My mail feed from alberta will send a message to two recepients at the same
>>> address with a uux request to "rmail user1 user2".  The sender receives the
>>> following back from our machine:
>>> 
>>> 	remote execution	[uucp job albertaAAaa3 (5/26-12:59:50)]
>>> 		rmail tony al
>>> 	exited with status 1
>>> 
>>> 		===== stderr was =====
>>> 	Usage: rmail username

First, it appears that Xenix rmail is performing an argument check; since
the command to be run fails the defined syntax, uuxqt fails. Absent code
to uuxqt, I am under the impression that uuxqt builds a "pipe" between the
data stream (found in UUCP's D.* file) and the command to be run (rmail).

The pipe, however, will not support repetitive reads. Once the data has
been read and processed for the first rmail addressee, there is nothing
left for the second addressee. Thus, it would be appropriate to reject
a multiple addressee list.

Of course, if uuxqt takes standard input from a file, then, as Rozanne
Rozannadanna would say, "Never mind!".

ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (06/06/90)

In article <1298@chinacat.Unicom.COM> chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
> I prefer to hack smail to understand the execmail flags, and thus
> link /bin/smail to /usr/lib/mail/execmail.

Can you enumerate these flags ?  I found -f, and hacked around that one,
are there others ?

> You can get the other Chip's patches from a comp.sources.misc archive,
> and the other other Chip's patches by sending me email. :-)

Urk, are there _three_ of you ? I count you and tct!chip .. who's the
third ?  This is something we need in a comp.unix.xenix FAQ sheet. :-)

-- 
Eunet: Ronald.Khoo@robobar.Co.Uk  Phone: +44 81 991 1142  Fax: +44 81 998 8343
Paper: Robobar Ltd. 22 Wadsworth Road, Perivale, Middx., UB6 7JD ENGLAND.

ron@rdk386.uucp (Ron Kuris) (06/06/90)

In article <145@embassy.UUCP> lance@embassy.UUCP (Lance N. Antrim) writes:
> [ my original response deleted ]
>
>This must be a recurring question, so if there is a reference to send me
>to, then please do.  I want to install smail 2.5 on my Xenix 386 system.
> I have the sources for smail 2.5 and pathalias.  I assume that I pretty
>much follow the instructions for installation on a System V/no sendmail
>system, but it there anything particular to Xenix that I should watch
>for?  In particular, do I treat xenix execmail as if were the SysV
>rmail?
>
>I have been through the documentation, the nutshell guides and the xenix
>manuals, but now I need advice from those who gone before.  You can
>e-mail responses and I will post a summary of the steps needed to
>install smail on Xenix for others.

You're right -- probably tons of people are interested.  I only made two
changes to smail to get it to work, plus renamed "execmail" to
"lexecmail" (its in /usr/lib/mail).  "execmail" should be a link to "smail"
which should be a link to "rmail" :-)

Here's my context diffs.  They apply to version 2.5 of smail.

*** Makefile	Thu Apr 26 06:22:27 1990
--- ../smail.orig/Makefile	Tue Jun  5 06:14:14 1990
***************
*** 6,12 ****
  #
  # System V Release 2.0 sites can use -lmalloc for a faster malloc
  #
! LIBS	=	-lmalloc
  
  OBJECTS =	main.o map.o resolve.o deliver.o misc.o alias.o pw.o headers.o getpath.o str.o getopt.o
  
--- 6,12 ----
  #
  # System V Release 2.0 sites can use -lmalloc for a faster malloc
  #
! #LIBS	=	-lmalloc
  
  OBJECTS =	main.o map.o resolve.o deliver.o misc.o alias.o pw.o headers.o getpath.o str.o getopt.o
  
*** defs.h	Thu Apr 26 07:05:09 1990
--- ../smail.orig/defs.h	Tue Jun  5 06:14:15 1990
***************
*** 201,207 ****
  #ifdef BSD
  #define LMAIL(frm,sys)		"/bin/mail"	/* BSD local delivery agent */
  #else
! #define LMAIL(frm,sys)		"/usr/lib/mail/lexecmail -f %s",frm	/* SV  local delivery agent */
  #endif
  
  #define LARG(user)		" '%s'",postmaster(user)
--- 201,207 ----
  #ifdef BSD
  #define LMAIL(frm,sys)		"/bin/mail"	/* BSD local delivery agent */
  #else
! #define LMAIL(frm,sys)		"/bin/lmail"	/* SV  local delivery agent */
  #endif
  
  #define LARG(user)		" '%s'",postmaster(user)
-- 
--
...!pyramid!unify!rdk386!ron -or- ...!ames!pacbell!sactoh0!siva!rdk386!ron
It's not how many mistakes you make, its how quickly you recover from them.

chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) (06/06/90)

In article <1990Jun5..2479@rdk386.uucp> ron@rdk386.UUCP (Ron Kuris) writes:
>You're right -- probably tons of people are interested.  I only made two
>changes to smail to get it to work, plus renamed "execmail" to
>"lexecmail" (its in /usr/lib/mail).  "execmail" should be a link to "smail"
>which should be a link to "rmail" :-)

Ouch!  I'm surprised this works.  The command line arguments which execmail
supports are not compatible with smail.  For example, the "-f sender"
option which mail passes to execmail is interpreted totally wrong by
smail.  If you'd like a patch which lets smail2.5 handle the execmail
command line arguments, drop me a line.
-- 
Chip Rosenthal                            |  You aren't some icon carved out
chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM                  |  of soap, sent down here to clean
Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260  |  up my reputation.  -John Hiatt

shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) (06/06/90)

In article <1298@chinacat.Unicom.COM> chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
>
>There are a couple of approaches to the installation.  Chip Salzenberg
>introduces an execmail replacement which just passes off the message to
>smail.  I prefer to hack smail to understand the execmail flags, and thus
>link /bin/smail to /usr/lib/mail/execmail.  The advantage of my approach
>is that it removes one level of complexity (i.e. a fork/exec) from an
>already convoluted system.  The disadvantage is that it has never been
>tested with Micnet.

Our own installations are a bit simpler than many others on the Net. Our
deliveries are to local users and users linked through UUCP. That being
the case, we can support an even simpler system where rmail is replaced by
an alternative version that recognizes user alias and pathalias lists,
and does its OWN delivery. A number of tests show efficiency to be almost
an order of magnitude better than smail for typical messages.

Since we offer our own user interface to mail, we're able to completely
remove the mail package provided under SCO Xenix.

chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) (06/07/90)

ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes:
>chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
>> [about smail understanding execmail flags]
>Can you enumerate these flags ?  I found -f, and hacked around that one,
>are there others ?

    usage: execmail [-mnr] [-f from] [-h hopcount] user ...

As a matter of course, it appears that SCO's mail runs it as:

    execmail -f from user ...	(with an argv[0] of "..execmail")

I provided support for all the flags (although in some cases that support
is merely ignoring a flag without choking) so that hopefully other stuff
which interfaces with execmail will continue to work with smail hiding
there instead.  For example, it's possible that Micnet or some third party
stuff (e.g. SMTP) tries to use the other flags.

>> You can get the other Chip's patches from a comp.sources.misc archive,
>> and the other other Chip's patches by sending me email. :-)
>Urk, are there _three_ of you ? I count you and tct!chip .. who's the third?

No, there are only two of us.  We just post a lot.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal                            |  You aren't some icon carved out
chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM                  |  of soap, sent down here to clean
Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260  |  up my reputation.  -John Hiatt

chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) (06/12/90)

According to chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal):
>
>    usage: execmail [-mnr] [-f from] [-h hopcount] user ...

As I recall:

  "-m" means "me too", so that aliases may expand to include the sender.
  "-n" means "no aliases", disabling alias expansion.

What the "-r" flag does is still a mystery to me...
-- 
Chip, the new t.b answer man      <chip@tct.uucp>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>