cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson [Animal]) (11/29/90)
I've seen this question been asked (and answered) earlier, but at
the time it didn't apply, so i didn't pay any attention. Now that
it's happening to me, I can't find the answer. :(
Anyhow, here's the problem. Mail messages are coming in, with sometimes
several in one message. I've just upgraded to MH6.7, and am using
slocal to direct mail. MH is running on a sun4, sunos4.1.
Can someone help? It's not a consistent problem; some messages come
in solo (like they're supposed to), others come in tandem. Randomness...
Thanks for any help!
--Chan
Chan Wilson Chief Hard-Question Answer Person
SRI Intl. Network Information Systems Center
333 Ravenswood Ave., EJ287 Internet: cwilson@nisc.sri.com
Menlo Park, CA., 94025 Phone: (415)859-4492
"If I want to be a surfer this month, I bloody well will be."laurie@curry.uchicago.edu (Laurie Abbott) (11/29/90)
In article <23942@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson [Animal]) writes:
+
+Anyhow, here's the problem. Mail messages are coming in, with sometimes
+several in one message. I've just upgraded to MH6.7, and am using
+slocal to direct mail. MH is running on a sun4, sunos4.1.
+
+Can someone help? It's not a consistent problem; some messages come
+in solo (like they're supposed to), others come in tandem. Randomness...
same exact problem at university of chicago, MH6.7 running on 3 suns,
with all mail being spooled off of one sun, and users reading mail
on the other two suns. running SunOS 4.0.3 (cfrftp). MH options
are:
version: MH 6.7 #1[UCI] (carom.uchicago.edu) of Tue Apr 24 13:03:33 CDT 1990
options: [BSD42] [BSD43] [SUN40] [TYPESIG=void] [DBM] [BIND] [NFS]
[DUMB] [RPATHS] [MHE] [MHRC] [WHATNOW] [SBACKUP='"#"']
[MSGPROT='"0600"'] [FOLDPROT='"0700"'] [OVERHEAD] [SENDMTS]
[SMTP]
if a patch for this problem was posted, please post it again, as i
missed it.
--laurie
________________________________________________________________________
laurie@tira.uchicago.edu DoD #0023
la@kafir.uucp <-- watch this space for more address changes :-)!eli@ima.isc.com (Elias Israel) (11/29/90)
In article <23942@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM>, cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson [Animal]) writes: |> |> I've seen this question been asked (and answered) earlier, but at |> the time it didn't apply, so i didn't pay any attention. Now that |> it's happening to me, I can't find the answer. :( |> |> |> Anyhow, here's the problem. Mail messages are coming in, with |> sometimes |> several in one message. I've just upgraded to MH6.7, and am using |> slocal to direct mail. MH is running on a sun4, sunos4.1. I suspect that I know the problem. If you are appending your mail to a file using the '>' action in your .maildelivery script and subsequenctly inc'ing that file, you will see that behaviour with MH6.7. The reason for this is that inc(1) doesn't deal correctly with message separators other than (a) Unix style and (b) MMDF style. When you append the message to the end of the file, slocal strips the "From user date" line from the top of the message. This is the UNIX mail message separator line. Without it, inc can't really find the top of each separate mail message. What it does when it gets to that file, therefore, is separate messages wherever it sees the string "\n\nFrom:". That means that if a mail message ends without at least one blank line, inc(1) runs the message together with the one after it. To fix this, use rcvpack(1) instead of just appending the message to the end of the file. This works because rcvpack(1) will put an MMDF-style separator between each of the mail messages as they are added to this file. This also fixes a number of other bugs related to inc'ing messages from a standard ascii file (on large mail messages, data can get trashed. Don't ask me why, I haven't figured that one out). Hope this helps, Elias Israel | "Justice, n. A commodity which in more or Interactive Systems Corp. | less adulterated condition the State sells Boston, MA | to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, eli@ima.isc.com | taxes, and personal service." eli@village.boston.ma.us | -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson [Animal]) (11/30/90)
In article <1990Nov29.010709.13504@dirtydog.ima.isc.com> eli@ima.isc.com writes: >In article <23942@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM>, cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson >[Animal]) writes: >|> >|> I've seen this question been asked (and answered) earlier, but at >|> the time it didn't apply, so i didn't pay any attention. Now that >|> it's happening to me, I can't find the answer. :( >|> >|> >|> Anyhow, here's the problem. Mail messages are coming in, with >|> sometimes >|> several in one message. I've just upgraded to MH6.7, and am using >|> slocal to direct mail. MH is running on a sun4, sunos4.1. > >If you are appending your mail to a file using the '>' action in your >.maildelivery script and subsequenctly inc'ing that file, you will see >that behaviour with MH6.7. The reason for this is that inc(1) doesn't >deal correctly with message separators other than (a) Unix style and (b) >MMDF style. When you append the message to the end of the file, slocal >strips the "From user date" line from the top of the message. This is >the UNIX mail message separator line. Without it, inc can't really find >the top of each separate mail message. Yup, that's what was happening. After I posted this it occured to me that it probably was inc that was the problem. >To fix this, use rcvpack(1) instead of just appending the message to the >end of the file. This works because rcvpack(1) will put an MMDF-style Yup! That fixed it! One odd thing I noticed while browsing around is the entries in the slocal delivery log. To wit: Before the upgrade to MH 6.7: Sat Nov 24 14:20:08 PST 1990 delivering to file ".mail", done. Sat Nov 24 15:18:23 PST 1990 delivering to file ".mail", done. After the upgrade to MH 6.7: Sun Nov 25 13:15:20 PST 1990 delivering to file ".mail" (uucp style), done. Sun Nov 25 15:18:20 PST 1990 delivering to file ".mail" (uucp style), done. Suddenly, slocal is delivering mail to the file in uucp style. This leads me to believe that something in slocal has changed, but unfortunately there's no man page for slocal, and I'm not in a mood to go browsing through source code. Anyone else notice this behaviour? >Elias Israel >eli@ima.isc.com --Chan Chan Wilson Chief Hard-Question Answer Person SRI Intl. Network Information Systems Center 333 Ravenswood Ave., EJ287 Internet: cwilson@nisc.sri.com Menlo Park, CA., 94025 Phone: (415)859-4492 "If I want to be a surfer this month, I bloody well will be."
ziegast@ENG.UMD.EDU (Eric Ziegast) (11/30/90)
Laurie Abbott writes: >Chan Wilson [Animal] writes: >+Anyhow, here's the problem. Mail messages are coming in, with sometimes >+several in one message. I've just upgraded to MH6.7, and am using >+slocal to direct mail. MH is running on a sun4, sunos4.1. >+ >+Can someone help? It's not a consistent problem; some messages come >+in solo (like they're supposed to), others come in tandem. Randomness... > >if a patch for this problem was posted, please post it again, as i >missed it. It would be nice if you specified how your mail is incorperated. Was it inc? slocal? If it was slocal, what line in your .maildelivery actually processed the mail? Anyway, I am assuming that you are using slocal's file (>) action to store your mail. Apparently, the mail being filed is not separated with the required "\n\nFrom" which is used by BSD Mail as a message separator, but instead it is separated with a "\nFrom". When a mail is "filed", the following patch will prepend a "\n" to the message to ensure that it is correctly separated. It has been tested on SunOS 4.0.3, SunOS 4.1, and Ultrix 4.1. There is another patch that was posted that fixes a couple other problems as well as this, but when I applied it and recompiled slocal, for some reason BSD Mail could not use the maildrop. ________________________________________________________________________ Eric W. Ziegast, University of Merryland, Engineering Computing Services ziegast@eng.umd.edu - Eric@(301.405.3689) ############################### CUT HERE ######################### *** uip/slocal.c.orig Fri Nov 2 09:02:11 1990 --- uip/slocal.c Thu Nov 29 18:14:24 1990 *************** *** 37,42 **** --- 37,43 ---- #endif not V7 #include <sys/stat.h> #include <utmp.h> + #include <unistd.h> #define NVEC 100 *************** *** 848,853 **** --- 849,860 ---- adorn ("", "unable to open:"); return NOTOK; } + + /* The following line prepends a "\n" in front of the filed message + * if the mail drop already contains messages. This ensures proper + * separation for UUCP style mail drops. */ + if (lseek (md, 0L, SEEK_END) > 0) + (void) write(md,"\n",1); (void) lseek (fd, 0L, 0); if (mbx_copy (mailbox, md, fd, mapping, bp, verbose) == NOTOK) {