Robert.Smart@uunet.uu.net (Bob) (11/23/88)
MAIL-11 is the protocol used by DEC computers to exchange mail over DECNET
and over X.25. It is a vile brain-damaged protocol, but it is like uucp:
it is what people get with their machine and they don't want to install
anything else. If you want to have a computer as a central mail machine
then a Sun is an obvious choice: you get a choice of mail management
systems (sendmail, IDA sendmail, mmdf, maybe pp) and lots of working
implementations of protocols: uucp, smtp/tcp, ACSnet, Coloured Book (the
PD implementation works), various RFC987 style X.400s, and more. It is
possible to get a Sun and a VMS machine to share the central mail system
role (as we do now) but that means keeping two different mail
configurations in sync. Also we would like all local mail to go through
the Sun for IDA style transformations but it is hard to arrange that mail
posted on the VAX should go go to the Sun first for massaging then come
back to the VAX for physical delivery.
I have the dnamail software that was posted a while ago. Before I hack
into: is anybody else doing anything in this area? It seems that the
posted program has a few deficiencies:
(a) It ignores the initial option negotiation. This might be more
significant when talking to VMS v5 systems.
(b) It doesn't support PSImail (MAIL-11 over X.25).
(c) The From address transformation needs to be improved to always give a
replyable address.
(d) The method of talking to sendmail has the effect that the message is
split once for each recipient. It would be better to talk smtp to
sendmail, and it looks like this will work fairly comfortably.
Bob Smart, CSIRO Division of Information Technology, Australia.
<smart@ditmela.oz.au> or <smart%ditmela.oz.au@uunet.uu.net>