[comp.archives] [comp.mail.sendmail...] Re: Sendmail 5.64 IDA 1.3.4 / DEC mail11v3 problem

moore@betelgeuse.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) (09/16/90)

Archive-name: utk-mail11/15-Sep-90
Original-posting-by: moore@betelgeuse.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore)
Original-subject: Re: Sendmail 5.64 IDA 1.3.4 / DEC mail11v3 problem
Archive-site: cs.utk.edu [128.169.201.1]
Archive-directory: /readonly/mail11
Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <1990Sep13.021422.22907@comp.vuw.ac.nz> Andy.Linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz writes:

>I need to be able to use Sendmail 5.64 IDA to talk to DEC's mail11v3
>mailer on an Ultrix box which has DECnet-Ultrix installed.

Sorry.  You can't do it without modifying sendmail to speak DEC's 
undocumented extensions to SMTP.  Mail-11 sends the message header 
before the recipient list, but SMTP does things in the opposite order.
Furthermore, most remote mail-11 objects do not mail back error messages
in the case of failed delivery; instead, the messages are delivered 
immediately and delivery status is reported back to the sender before
the end of the conversation.  Vanilla SMTP has no provision for this.

I had to address the same problem when writing my mail-11 gateway, but
I decided that modifying SMTP was a bad idea.  For now, recipients are
passed on the command line, and you get best results if you omit the
'm' flag (send to multiple recipients at once) in the mailer description.
I have improvements for this problem in the works, so you can have the
efficiency win of sending a message to multiple recipients in one
transaction, but avoid the problems that occur if delivery for some of 
them fails.

You can get the current version by anonymous ftp to cs.utk.edu (128.169.201.1),
directory readonly/mail11, files mail11.tar and mail11d.tar.  I'll mail out 
shar files on request for those that don't have ftp access.

Keith Moore			Internet: moore@cs.utk.edu
University of Tenn. CS Dept.	BITNET: moore@utkvx
107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus	Telephone: +1 615 974 0822
Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301	``Friends don't let friends use YP (or NIS)''
Keith Moore			Internet: moore@cs.utk.edu
University of Tenn. CS Dept.	BITNET: moore@utkvx
107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus	Telephone: +1 615 974 0822
Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301	``Friends don't let friends use YP (or NIS)''