[comp.mail.sendmail] mail and 'quit' problem

looi@sutro.SFSU.EDU (06/20/91)

Hi, I'm running into problem with mail's "quit" subcommand and
hoping some experienced netters to give me some input as to what
I have done wrong.

We have three hosts running NFS, NIS and nameserver, and let's assume
host A being the master server. I exported /usr/spool/mail from
host A and had hosts B and C mounted over using NFS. With this setup,
I was hoping that users could read mail irregardless of where the users
are logged on, but the mail sessions froze on hosts B and C soon as
the users type "quit" (& quit) at the mail prompt. Does anyone know
what might have caused the problem?

Btw, we're running AIX 3005, and the mailer agent is sendmail.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (06/20/91)

In article <RCAU8QVN@linac.fnal.gov>, looi@sutro.SFSU.EDU writes:
|> 
|> Hi, I'm running into problem with mail's "quit" subcommand and
|> hoping some experienced netters to give me some input as to what
|> I have done wrong.
|> 
|> We have three hosts running NFS, NIS and nameserver, and let's assume
|> host A being the master server. I exported /usr/spool/mail from
|> host A and had hosts B and C mounted over using NFS. With this setup,
|> I was hoping that users could read mail irregardless of where the users
|> are logged on, but the mail sessions froze on hosts B and C soon as
|> the users type "quit" (& quit) at the mail prompt. Does anyone know
|> what might have caused the problem?
|> 
|> Btw, we're running AIX 3005, and the mailer agent is sendmail.
|> 
|> Please help.
|> 
Well, for quite a while, I thought I was the only one suffering from this.
I think my 320 still runs 3003 as my head SA didn't mention any OS upgrade to me.

My experience is that occationally I can use the q or quit command to quit the
BSD mail.  But most of the time, just like looi mentioned above, the two commands
freeze my xterm or even console.  I can cntl-C to my heart's content without any
effect at all!  Our setup is quite similar to looi's, ie, NFS, and one nameserver,
mailer agent is sendmail too.

Another curious thing is that I am NEVER able to send mail to IBM Palo Alto 
even though it's next door to Stanford.  I can, however, always use my SUN SPARC
to send mails to IBM sites without a hitch.  Both use the same nameserver so why
is this?  

To get around my problem, I keep a remote xterm on my SPARC all the time just for
handling mails :-(.  Yes, I have elm, xmh, mh etc available but I am curious why
the default BSD mail wouldn't work as expected.

Thanks in advance for any hints.

Sincerely,

Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin@leland.stanford.edu

marc@ekhomeni.austin.ibm.com (Marc Wiz) (06/20/91)

In article <RCAU8QVN@linac.fnal.gov>, looi@sutro.SFSU.EDU writes:

> We have three hosts running NFS, NIS and nameserver, and let's assume
> host A being the master server. I exported /usr/spool/mail from
> host A and had hosts B and C mounted over using NFS. With this setup,
> I was hoping that users could read mail irregardless of where the users
> are logged on, but the mail sessions froze on hosts B and C soon as
> the users type "quit" (& quit) at the mail prompt. Does anyone know
> what might have caused the problem?


This is a known problem and is currently being worked on.
For reference the APAR is IX18805.

Could you please describe what you are using for the server and
the client?  I would like to see if this occurrence matches the
one in the APAR.  I need the level that the systems are running 
on.  If some of them are not RS/6000's the version of NFS that 
they are running will help.

Marc Wiz 				MaBell (512)823-4780

NFS/NIS change team
Yes that really is my last name.
The views expressed are my own.

marc@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 
or
uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmchs!auschs!ekhomeni.austin.ibm.com!marc

looi@sutro.SFSU.EDU (W. W. Looi) (06/20/91)

In article <8634@awdprime.UUCP> marc@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com writes:
>In article <RCAU8QVN@linac.fnal.gov>, looi@sutro.SFSU.EDU writes:
>
>> We have three hosts running NFS, NIS and nameserver, and let's assume
>> host A being the master server. I exported /usr/spool/mail from
>> host A and had hosts B and C mounted over using NFS. With this setup,
>> I was hoping that users could read mail irregardless of where the users
>> are logged on, but the mail sessions froze on hosts B and C soon as
>> the users type "quit" (& quit) at the mail prompt. Does anyone know
>> what might have caused the problem?
>
>
>This is a known problem and is currently being worked on.
>For reference the APAR is IX18805.
>
>Could you please describe what you are using for the server and
>the client?  I would like to see if this occurrence matches the
>one in the APAR.  I need the level that the systems are running 
>on.  If some of them are not RS/6000's the version of NFS that 
>they are running will help.
>
>Marc Wiz 				MaBell (512)823-4780
>

Marc, the following is wh we have it set up in our site:

masterserver: 530
clients: 230H
networktype: Token Ring

Thanks.