[comp.unix.xenix] ELM 2.2 vs. XENIX -- THE ANSWERS

fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (04/29/89)

I promised a summary of the ELM vs. XENIX story.
There were lots of other responses, many of them redundant, some of
them with solutions for ELM 2.1 and a lot more which were "tell me what
you find out."  

Below is my original question.

In article <1902@ssc.UUCP> fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes:
>If you use rmail to deliver mail, the sender name gets screwed up.
>If you use mail to deliver mail, the subject line ends up after
>a blank line, therefore, no subject in the elm or mail headers list.
>
>My (obvious) question is what do I use to replace rmail so things work?
>A more general question is what is the right collection of programs to
>stick together (elm, deliver, pathalias, ...) so that you make a decent
>mailing system for XENIX?

I received a lot of answers, different answers.  First off, based on
a suggestion by Randy Bush of Oregon Software I told configure that
instead of using rmail to deliver mail it should use
/usr/lib/mail/execmail.  This actually fixes the problem on SCO XENIX.

As an aside, on 286 XENIX, the Configure script bombs the shell.  To get
around this I copied /bin/sh to shf and used fixhdr to change the stack
size.  I think I used 8000.  Then I ran Configure using this shell
(shf Configure) and all was well.

--
Now, on the the more interesting answers:

It's interesting to note all the problems with Xenix mail.  As Elm
Coordinator, I know first hand Xenix's problems with mail.  Our gateway
is a SCO Xenix 386 box.

First off, what do we do:  We used to run smail 2.5 here along with
Excelans SMTP.  We don't use micnet, so that wasn't a problem.  That
worked well.  We recently acquired a copy of smail 3.1 and patched it
to use the older socket system and run only that.  It can do most of
everything, and there is some unsupported micnet stuff distributed with
it.  (Again, we don't use micnet).  I recommend using smail 2.5 and
pathalias until smail 3.1 is released.  (And yes, after they are
proven a little more, we will be submitting our changed to the
smail developers, and no, I won't send them to you. :-()

Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP                   Elm Coordinator
--

From: uunet!berner!richard (Richard Greenall)

We use smail as our mail delivery agent, and run pathalias about
once every week to run and compile the maps.  We also use Elm as well
as it seems to go very well with smail.

We are running SCO XENIX 2.3.2 (386) on an ITT 386, and it has
a total of 10Megs of memory (good for running pathalias).  We have
approx 10 Users on at one time.
--

From: jim@tiamat.fsc.com (Jim O'Connor)

We do use micnet.  Heavily.  Which prompted me to write the micnet support
for smail3.1, and as the author, I plan to support it fully.  If this is
not clear in the micnet files distributed with smail3 I will make sure that
it is changed before the official release.  Micnet isn't great by any stretch
of the imagination, but it's cheap, uses existing hardware, and isn't real
hard to set up.  

As stated in the past, if anyone's interested, I've also experimented with
several ways to add micnet support to smail2.5.

------------- 

From: uw-beaver!ames!lll-crg!csusac!utgard!chris (Chris Anderson)

Hoo boy.  Ok. My opinions only, of course.  Try elm, smail, pathalias,
and uuhosts.  Smail is one of the best mailing agents.  Elm, of course,
you're familiar with.  Pathalias you're going to need if you want to
have smart mailing at your site.  And uuhosts is nice to display info
about sites, etc.

--

[ the following I am sure solves some problem but not the one that
I had.  I include it because I am sure someone needs it.]

From: uw-beaver!rutgers!ucf-cs.ucf.edu!ki4pv!cdis-1!tanner

Solution: use "rmail" to deliver mail.  Not just any old "rmail",
though; take your current one and rename it "rmail1".  Use the
enclosed script as "/usr/bin/rmail" and you'll be in business.

Note: un-shar it -- don't use the "shar" file as "rmail" or you
will have a minor problem.

					Dr. T. Andrews, Systems
					CompuData, Inc.  DeLand

#! /bin/sh
# this is a shell archive, meaning:
# 1. Remove everything above the #! /bin/sh line
# 2. Save the resulting text in a file.
# 3. Execute the file with /bin/sh to create the files:
#	/usr/bin/rmail
# This archive created: Thu Apr 27 10:17:35 EDT 1989 by 
#
#
export PATH; PATH=/bin:$PATH
#
if test -f /usr/bin/rmail
then
echo shar: will not over-write existing file /usr/bin/rmail
else
echo shar: extracting '/usr/bin/rmail',     332 characters
sed s/\^X-// > /usr/bin/rmail <<\SHAR_EOF
X-: /bin/sh
X-#	"@(#)rmail.sh	1.1	10-Feb-89"	[cdis-1!tanner]
X-#	replace "rmail" with one which works.  elim BCC: headers.
X-
X-if  [ $# -eq 1 ]  ; then
X-	sed '1,/^$/{
X-		/^B[Cc][Cc]:/d
X-		}' | rmail1 "$@"
X-else
X-	TMP=/tmp/rm$$.tmp
X-	sed >$TMP '1,/^$/{
X-		/^B[Cc][Cc]:/d
X-		}'
X-	for addr in $@
X-	do
X-		rmail1 "$addr" < $TMP
X-	done
X-	rm -f $TMP
X-fi
X-exit	0
X-
SHAR_EOF
len=`wc -c < /usr/bin/rmail`
if test $len !=     332 ; then
echo error: /usr/bin/rmail was $len bytes long, should have been     332
fi
fi # end of overwriting check
exit	0


-- 
Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155  (206)FOR-UNIX
    uw-beaver!tikal!ssc!fyl or uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl