tom@osf.osf.org (Tom Jordahl) (11/18/89)
I recently switched jobs and I was used to support/maintaining/using elm
at my previous location. Now around here I find that elm is frowned
upon because is does not support the popd or Post Office Protocol daemon.
I have my opinion on the usefullness of this, but what I would like
to know is why elm does not support this.
Is is being considered for elm 2.3?
My understanding is that a mail user agent makes requests to one
machine which handles all the mail and runs a daemon.
Something like: send me message #1, send me this users mailbox,
or delete this message from the mailbox.
Apparently, the popd server machine also broadcasts to the net
when anyone gets new mail. I'm not sure how this works.
This allows workstation users to read their mail from anywhere
in the organization. As long as the MUA supports this popd
protocol. Emacs Rmail does, as well as MH.
Has anyone out there hacked elm to do this?
Can this be considered for inclusion into elm 2.3?
Is there a history to this that I am not aware of?
Tom Jordahl Internet: tom@osf.org
Open Software Foundation UUCP: ..!uunet!osf!tom
"A silly quote is only worth what you put into it." -- mesyd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein) (11/20/89)
tom@osf.osf.org (Tom Jordahl) writes:
:I recently switched jobs and I was used to support/maintaining/using elm
:at my previous location. Now around here I find that elm is frowned
:upon because is does not support the popd or Post Office Protocol daemon.
:I have my opinion on the usefullness of this, but what I would like
:to know is why elm does not support this.
Because no one thought it important enough to do it.
:Is is being considered for elm 2.3?
No, and my guess is it won't be an easy change, as the mailbox
mangling Elm does is rather major. What you would have would be
a very different animal, but not Elm when you were done.
--
=====================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator
Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900
syd@DSI.COM or {bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) (11/22/89)
Tom Jordahl asks about POPD support within the Elm Mail System, to which Syd Weinstein responds, rather bluntly, with: > [Elm doesn't support POPD] because no one thought it important enough > to do it. As it turns out, Syd is incorrect. Back in 1988 I thought it was quite important to do and actually spent a few months working on adding a generic POPD support layer to the entire Unix electronic mail infrastructure. The result of that research was presented at the Winter 1988 Usenix technical conference at a talk entitled "The Postman Always Rings Twice: Experiences with Electronic Mail in a Distributed Environment". The gist of what we did was to tear out the POPD code from the public domain version of MH and bring it up as a "server" on a central machine. I then, with the assistance of a number of HPL colleagues, wrote a set of utilities called enroll(1L), popmail(1L), popaka(1L), and popwrd(1L): enroll - sign up for outbound mail address rewriting "Enroll allows users to sign up for having their outbound addresses on all electronic mail rewritten as if it were from their PostOffice Box on the Post Office server (the POP server) machine. "Specifically, if the user is signed up for POP service, they can elect to either explicitly use the Reply-To: field of their out- bound mail to point all responses to their pobox, or they can explicitly have the mail altered on its way out to reflect their postoffice box name." popaka - add or delete user@host POP access "Popaka allows you to add or delete user@host access pairs from your POP account. Trusted access pairs are those that don't need any password to access your postoffice box, so it is highly recommended that this use be minimized for security reasons... "NOTE: while this shares the name with the common popaka(1) as distributed as part of the MH POP package, this is a completely different package." popmail - allow pop interation with arbitrary mailers "Popmail is a command intended to bring the benefits of the Post Office Protocol to (almost) standard Unix mailers. The Post Office Protocol is a method by which a remote host stores mail for users who may claim it from any of several client hosts. It is useful in that the user needs only one mail address and can thus take full advantage of NFS and other network file sharing mechanisms. "The basic strategy of popmail is to contact the POP server and retreive the mail stored there into a file specified by the user. A mailer specified by the user is then started to read the mail, so that his usual mail reading environment is kept. "Popmail takes several arguments which control its behaviour: -h hostname This argument (or having the environment variable POSTOFFICE set to the name of the remote host) is mandatory, and specifies which host to try and contact a POP server on. -b pobox If the user is requesting access to a post office box other than that which matches the current login, this can be used to specify which to use (the envir- onment variable POBOX can also be used in this context). -p If you aren't at a trusted user@host pair (see popaka) this will allow you to specyf what password to use for the remote connection -l This will allow you to retreive the mail in your postoffice box without actually having the master copies deleted (the default is to delete all mail once it's copied out). -f maildrop Deposit the mail in file maildrop (the default is to drop it in /usr/mail/USERNAME). popwrd - change your POP access password "Popwrd is a simple command to allow remote setting and changing of your POP access password. To do this, you need to be accepted as a valid user of te specified POP account, therefore you need to either already be on a trusted user@host pair (see popaka) or will need to use the '-p' flag to enter the existing password." The basics of how this is set up is that we hacked into "sendmail" to teach it to rewrite addresses of "enrolled" users so that their mail seemed to come from their POBOX rather than whatever machine they happened to be actually on, then they'd automatically use "popmail" to retrieve their mail either explicitly upon invocation or implicitly every 'n' minutes or related. Typical examples of usage would be a aliases like: alias elm "echo checking our POBOX; popmail; elm" alias mailx "echo checking our POBOX; popmail; mailx" Which, as you can see, is a completely transparent way to have the Elm Mail System (and others) interact with a POP server, AND is very flexible and configurable to boot! - - - Obviously, as someone who is now not a part of the Elm Mail System development group, I cannot speak for what the future plans of the group are, but I can certainly point out that what you're asking for, Tom, isn't at all technically challenging. In fact, if you're already running POP at the OSF, then you're 75% of the way there. I do, however, find it objectionable that Syd would respond in such a summary and negative fashion without inquiring further about possible ways to hook Elm and POPD together. Just like with adding X.400 support, or name server hooks, or netnews reading, or any of a number of other custom modifications that have transpired over time, the key here is to be open minded and creative... Tom, I hope this information can help you and the rest of the group understand one possible way of retrofitting Elm (without any code changes at all, notice) to gracefully fit into the OSF mail environment. If you'd like to know more about this software, please refer to one of the following documents: Taylor, Dave, "The Postman Always Rings Twice", Proceedings of the Winter 1988 Usenix Technical Conference, Washington D.C., February 1988. Taylor Dave, "On-Line Post Office Boxes: Writings about Electronic Mail Postoffices", Hewlett-Packard Software Technology Laboratory Technical Report STL-88-6, April 21st, 1988. (C) Copyright 1988, Hewlett-Packard. Available for public distribution. Good luck and please do report back here on any results you achieve. Sincerely, -- Dave Taylor Intuitive Systems Mountain View, California taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor
syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein) (11/24/89)
taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) writes: >which Syd Weinstein responds, rather bluntly, with: >> [Elm doesn't support POPD] because no one thought it important enough >> to do it. >As it turns out, Syd is incorrect. Back in 1988 I thought it was quite >important to do and actually spent a few months working on adding a >generic POPD support layer to the entire Unix electronic mail >infrastructure. [...] >I do, however, find it objectionable that Syd would respond in >such a summary and negative fashion without inquiring further about >possible ways to hook Elm and POPD together. I guess I should have been more specific. No one currently in the elm development process considered it important enough to put it on the wish list. That users request is the first it has come up. I'll admit, I was not aware, Dave, that you had done some work on that topic. As usual, all submissions of patches will be considered. -- ===================================================================== Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900 syd@DSI.COM or {bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235
eckert@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Toerless Eckert) (11/27/89)
From article <1989Nov24.021808.26638@DSI.COM>, by syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein): > taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) writes: > > I guess I should have been more specific. No one currently in > the elm development process considered it important enough to put > it on the wish list. That users request is the first it has come up. I am very positive _for_ pop support in elm. In fact i think it is very useful and necessary. All those discless workstations we configured to run "rsh sendmail" instead of sendmail and have some spooling region mounted from some server made me believe that there must be a better way to solve this ;-) If you guys of the development team are so kind to implement it, if enough poeple want it, why not start voting for or against pop ? I think it's more important than any other new feature that someone might invent. As a side effect it will make elm's mailbox access code more portable and cleaner ;-) Toerless Eckert X.400: <S=eckert;OU=informatik;P=uni-erlangen;A=dbp;C=de> RFC822: eckert@informatik.uni-erlangen.de UUCP: {pyramid,unido}!fauern!eckert BITNET: tte@derrze0