[comp.sys.next] Sending Next-Mail without an ethernet link

gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (05/02/91)

In article <!01g-6b@rpi.edu> 
           gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes:
> In article <#f1gsn+@rpi.edu> 
>            lasteve@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Steven D Borrelli) writes:
> > I have just got MailService, and it's a great program!
> > Thanks to Eric Celeste. I have one problem now. How do I
> > send NeXTmail back to the sender? My only link to the
> > internet world is a direct line to my school's mainframe.
> 
> Hmm, I haven't tried this, but it seems to me that you should be able  
> to fake things out.  ...(etc)...

Well, a thunderstorm started just as I was going to walk home, so I decided to  
stay here at work a bit later and try out my theories.

I have a test account on my NeXT which has nothing much on it.  Call it  
"testacc".  So, I did the following to send a NeXT-mail type message from my  
NeXT thru the AIX370 service we have here on campus.

 1) I composed the NeXT-mail message as I wanted it, and mailed it 
    to the test account on my Next machine.
 2) I opened a terminal window, and did an
          rlogin -l testacc localhost
          (and then entered the password for that id)
 3) I started up the regular unix mail application, and saved the
    new message to a file called "testmsg".  Note that the file
    "testmsg" did not exist before I did the following:
         mail
         s 1 testmsg
         quit
 4) I used kermit to dialup our aix370 system, and transferred the
    "testmsg" file to my account on aix.
 5) I sent the message from aix to my NeXT machine (in my case my
    NeXT machine *is* on the internet...).  Again I used mail, I'm
    sure MH users could have used "comp" or whatever other mail 
    systems to send the message.  For those who are not unix-gurus,
    here's what I did ("gad@rpi.edu" goes to my account on my NeXT):
         mail gad@rpi.edu
         (it prompted for a subject, I typed one in)
         ~r testmsg
         (it told me some stats on file "testmsg", and then I typed
          a control-d to end the message).
    that's a tilde character before the "r testmsg" up there....

A little while later the NeXT-type message arrived on my machine, complete with  
font changes, alternate rulers for some paragraphs, a lip-service message, and  
a attached file (just a plain text file I had dragged from the file viewer into  
the message).

Everything was fine except for a few extra lines in the beginning of the  
message, which were header lines from the original posting from my real account  
to the test account on my machine.  You can go in with your favorite editor and  
delete those lines at the start of the message, but make sure you don't delete  
any of the lines that NeXT itself wants to know about.  If you look at the  
file, it's not too hard to guess which lines you'd want to keep.

Someone who is more of a unix expert could probably wrap a simple program or a  
shell around the above procedure and make it simpler.  All-in-all it didn't  
seem very hard to do as it was, but it would probably get a bit tedious if you  
wanted to send 20-30 messages a day this way!

 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Garance Alistair Drosehn   = gad@rpi.edu  or  gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer                        (accepts NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;  Troy NY  USA