[comp.sources.bugs] mush bug report

reggers@julian.UUCP (09/25/87)

I've sent this off to Dan Heller, but post it as an advisory not
---

Dan, I assume you've got lots of comments about mush since you put it out on
the net. First let me say that I'm very impressed, and then say but....

a) I have
	alias pm "Peter Marshall <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>"
   mush exands that as
	Peter, Marshall, <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>

b) I have a mail message in my box saying
	From 105_172@uwo-hobbit.UWO.CDN Tue Sep 22 13:45:43 1987
	Received: from uwo-hobbit by julian.UWO.CDN; Tue, 22 Sep 87 13:45:40 edt
	From: (Cindy Munro) 105_172@uwo-hobbit.UWO.CDN
	Date: Tue, 22 Sep 87 13:38:37 EDT
	To: (Reg Quinton) reggers@julian.UWO.CDN
	Subject: Re: Discussion of Strike Issues
	In-Reply-To: <8709221515@julian.UWO.CDN>
	References: <8709221515@julian.UWO.CDN>
	Message-Id: <127088@uwo-hobbit.MLNET>
	R-Serial: 3689
	Status: RO
	
	Reg,
	
	I am interested in being involved in the discussion and I would like
	to see what has already been written.  Thanks.
	
   When I try to reply I get

	To: reggers

c) Several times when I mail messages I get a /bin/sh gripe.

	sh: syntax error at line 1 'end of file' unexpected.

We've been very careful to make sure our messages conform to RFC822, I think
your address parsing isn't right and is causing these several bugs. Not that
you should feel terribly bad -- ucb/Mail has similar problems.

	in any case, I'd be very interested in mush if these problems were
	solved.

-- 
Telephone:	(519) 661 2151 x6026 (a real person and not a machine)
Canada:		reggers@UWO.CDN (soon to be UWO.CA)
BITNET:		reggers@uwovax.BITNET (for the ethnocentric)
UUCP:		reggers@julian.UUCP (...!watmath!julian..)

argv@garp.mit.edu (Dan Heller) (09/27/87)

In article <968@julian.UWO.CDN> reggers@julian.UWO.CDN (Reg Quinton) writes:

>a) I have
>	alias pm "Peter Marshall <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>"
>   mush exands that as
>	Peter, Marshall, <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>
Aliases in mush are supposed to be legal mail addresses that your
mail delivery system can understand.  From my experiences with sendmail
(and to a lesser degree with other mailers), the address scheme of
the kind mentioned above doesn't always work.  So, I've restricted the
form of aliases to be only addresses; names (comments) are not allowed.
Some mailers will convert whitespaces to .'s unless preceded by a comma.
If someone can tell me how to get sendmail to understand these addresses
(without using -t), then I will consider using that approach.  I'm sure
it's possible and I'm just missing some aspect of the features of sendmail
or other mail delivery systems.

>b) I have a mail message in my box saying
>	From 105_172@uwo-hobbit.UWO.CDN Tue Sep 22 13:45:43 1987
>	From: (Cindy Munro) 105_172@uwo-hobbit.UWO.CDN
>	To: (Reg Quinton) reggers@julian.UWO.CDN
>	Subject: Re: Discussion of Strike Issues
>	
>   When I try to reply I get
>
>	To: reggers
It seems the routine in error is the "replyall" (or, the R command).
This is the error I got (in a form) when I tried to simulate this error
by hand.  Unfortunately, it seems that the replyall command may not work
given certain situations of the format of the original message. The fix
for this type of error will be made available when the patches for the
current bug list is posted.  

>c) Several times when I mail messages I get a /bin/sh gripe.
>
>	sh: syntax error at line 1 'end of file' unexpected.
>
>We've been very careful to make sure our messages conform to RFC822, I think
>your address parsing isn't right and is causing these several bugs. Not that
>you should feel terribly bad -- ucb/Mail has similar problems.

The problem here could be related to the problem mentioned in a) above.
That is, if you give sendmail a bogus address line, it'll barf and you'll
get errors like the one mentioned here (based on my own experimentation).
Granted, Mush should do whatever it takes to make sure sendmail gets something
valid, but until that happens, I imagine that this error can be elimiated
by conforming to the rules stated in a) above.

Yes, RFC822 says that certain addressing schemes are legitimate, but
even sendmail doesn't conform 100%.  It's difficult to say exactly 
what is going on here since this bug report doesn't mention what the
To: line contained when when he got this error, but chances are it
contained something that caused his mail delivery system to barf.

My mistake here is that I am using "popen" to execute the mail delivery
system rather using a form of exec().  Advantages include the fact that
a whole shell doesn't need to be invoked, I can trap the output and error
output to the same place or separate places and have complete control
and I can maintain the size of the input the command should get.  This
may not be fixed in the first round of patches.

This fix will also enable the user to pipe messages to unix commands.
Having control over the stdin, stdout, and stderr of the child of a
pipe makes piping to and from non-mush (unix) commands more easily
executed and error recovery more elegant.

davew@gvgpsa.UUCP (09/27/87)

>
>Dan, I assume you've got lots of comments about mush since you put it out on
>the net. First let me say that I'm very impressed, and then say but....
>
>a) I have
>	alias pm "Peter Marshall <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>"
>   mush exands that as
>	Peter, Marshall, <pm@uwovax.UWO.CDN>
>
etc.

I too have seen the same sort of problems with MUSH.  I had one address
that was of the form  From: allbery@gvg49, and when I replied, it sent
it to allbery@gvg49, allbery.

The package seems to have potential, but I am avoiding using it
because I don't want to scatter my mail all over the place.  It
does appear that something is wrong in the address parsing.

-- 
===================================================================
Dave White		Grass Valley Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 1114   	Grass Valley, CA  95945
UUCP:	...!tektronix!gvgpsa!davew	PHONE:	+1 916 478 3052