BMW6957@TAMCHEM.BITNET (Brad Wilson) (04/29/87)
>I have a DECnet task running asynchronously which I would like to >monitor indirectly (i.e. not typing NETSERVER.LOG to see if it's >done yet, or SHOW PROC, etc.) by having it send me mail. However, >the mail message does not come through, nor is an error generated. >... >The process starts up MAIL, but does not send anything, and appears to >`hang'. MAIL operates in two modes, depending on its environment. It can operate as a "sender" or a "receiver", the actual mode depends on its environment. When sending mail across DECnet, MAIL operates in sending mode on the local node and requests connection to the MAIL object on the remote node. MAIL on the remote node detects that it is a network process and switches to receive mode to handle the mail on behalf of the sender. If you try to invoke MAIL from a network process, MAIL will assume that it has been invoked due to a network MAIL request, switch to receive mode, and thus "hang" the process. I think the best you'll be able to do is spawn MAIL as a subprocess (if that works, I haven't tried it) or have your process submit a batch job to send the mail. Brad Wilson Department of Chemistry Texas A&M University BMW6957@TAMCHEM.BITNET