[comp.mail.misc] Mail problems on 3B2/310

jkg@prism.gatech.EDU (Jim Greenlee) (07/30/90)

I'm having problems with mail on a 3B2/310 (we're running SVR3.0 and WIN 
TCP/IP 1.1). It's probably due to something dumb, but I'm stuck, so here
goes.

The problem is that I'm getting extra "From " lines at the beginning of
mail messages that originate from other machines (we get all our mail via
TCP connections). In all cases, the original "From " line is escaped out 
with ">", and a "From root" line is prepended at the start of the message. 
This causes problems when you try to Reply, because it gets sent to root 
rather to where it ought to go.

I'm pretty sure that /bin/mail (our local mailer) is the culprit here, but
I can't find any options for telling it not to monkey with the "From " line.
I've tried messing around with some of the mailer flags in sendmail (the
version that comes with WIN TCP 1.1 is ancient - 4.12 or something), but
nothing seems to have any effect. We use /bin/mailx for sending and reading
mail, so I would not be averse to installing a different mailer if /bin/mail
can't be made to behave like I want it to.

Is there something really obvious that I am missing? If not, does anyone 
know where I can get a more reasonable local mailer? It doesn't have to be 
complicated - just something simple that delivers the mail. I suppose I
could write my own, but I'm sure that somebody else has dealt with this.

One by-the-way - we have SVR3.2 and WIN TCP 3.0.1, but haven't installed
them yet (for a variety of reasons). Will the newer versions of /bin/mail
and sendmail fix this problem?

						Jim Greenlee
-- 
Jim Greenlee - Instructor, School of ICS, Georgia Tech     jkg@cc.gatech.edu

Jryy, abj lbh'ir tbar naq qbar vg! Whfg unq gb xrrc svqqyvat jvgu vg
hagvy lbh oebxr vg, qvqa'g lbh?!

jeffe@sandino.austin.ibm.com (Peter Jeffe 512.823.4091) (08/09/90)

In article <11967@hydra.gatech.EDU> jkg@prism.gatech.EDU (Jim Greenlee) writes:
>The problem is that I'm getting extra "From " lines at the beginning of
>mail messages that originate from other machines (we get all our mail via
>TCP connections). In all cases, the original "From " line is escaped out 
>with ">", and a "From root" line is prepended at the start of the message. 
>This causes problems when you try to Reply, because it gets sent to root 
>rather to where it ought to go.
>...We use /bin/mailx for sending and reading mail...

/bin/mail escapes existing From_ lines with the '>', and adds its own;
unfortunately, when invoked by sendmail in daemon mode, it thinks that the
sender is root (or whatever the u option is set to if your mailer doesn't
have its S flag set).  In BSD's /bin/mail, the -r flag allows sendmail to
specify the real sender (e.g. "-r $g"), but there's no way to change this
in SVR2.1; maybe the later versions have added such a flag.

The From_ line shouldn't matter to mailx if it is configured to look first
for an rfc-822-style From: line, which should be there from sendmail. In
the SVR2.1 source, in file aux.c, function name1(), this check is #ifdef
DELIVERMAIL'ed, so maybe you need to define this to enable it.  I would
imagine, however, that this is the default behavior.

If this doesn't help, include a copy of an unreplyable message, since your
problem may lie in another aspect of the message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Jeffe   ...uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
        first they want a disclaimer, then they make you pee in a jar,
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