[comp.unix.ultrix] Ultr3.1,undocum. mailer flag in sendmail.cf

michaud@devax.dec.com (Jeff Michaud) (09/29/89)

> I believe it indicates to Ultrix sendmail that it should speak a special
> extended SMTP to the mail11v3 program.  The extended SMTP includes a
mechanism
> to allow mail11v3 to look at the headers of the RFC822 message before 
> verifying that any recipients are valid.   This makes for a easier interface
> to the MAIL-11 protocol, where it's helpful to know what the message headers
> look like *before* you open the DECnet connection, and therefore before you
> ask the remote MAIL-11 object whether any recipient(s) are valid.

	Correct.  The MAIL-11 protocol uses what's known as optional data
	associated with a connection request to the remote system.  The
	optional data contains a couple of key pieces of information that
	need to be known at connection establishment time.  mail11v3 needs
	to know if there is a Cc: line, and it also needs to know if the
	message being sent is a DDIF/CDA/capsar (or whatever you want to call
	it :-) message.

> Mail11v3 won't work unless you speak extended SMTP to it.  This means
> you can't use mail11v3 with e.g., Berkeley sendmail.  Incidentally, the 
> extended SMTP protocol (as far as I can tell) is also undocumented.

	Correct again.  I made sure to state that in the release notes.
	We also don't document the two extra SMTP commands (HEAD and MULT)
	because I didn't want to commit ourselves to those commands at this point
	in time.  The two extra commands only get invoked if the appropriate
	mailer flags are defined for the mailer.

/--------------------------------------------------------------\
|Jeff Michaud    michaud@decwrl.dec.com  michaud@decvax.dec.com|
|DECnet-ULTRIX   #include <standard/disclaimer.h>              |
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