grahamd@otc.otca.oz.AU (Graham Dumpleton) (02/28/90)
I have setup a private bulletin board in my account but I am having
problem when is comes to giving post permissions to particular folders.
The problems are that messages isn't recognising when it cannot post to
a bulletin board and is also not getting the address to send the item to
correct; ie. it doesn't seem to be getting the information out of the
.MS.DirectPost file.
I will explain everything I did; it may even help someone who wishes to
do something similar.
The main reason for creating a private bulletin board was to make all
the mail which I get from the Andrew mailing list readable to other
users at out site. So I followed the procedure detailed in the help
document 'privatebb', namely:
1. Create a directory for the bboard
I called this .MESSAGES_PUBLIC and put it in my home directory.
2. Add the directory to your mspath
Added mspath: $MAIL:~/.MESSAGES_PUBLIC
3. Set the access rights for the directory
Didn't apply as we don't have AFS
4. Create the actual bboard folder
Did this and called it info-andrew
5. Enable direct posting to the bboard
Didn't do this quite yet
6. Let people know that you have created a new bboard
Mailed everyone with an invitation to subscribe
I now wanted to have any mail coming from the Andrew mailing list
automatically go into this folder so I created a .AMS.flames file
containing
(defun grahamd-mail-hook (msg)
(post-by-keyword
msg
"mail"
'(
(("to")("info-andrew")("/u/sysdev/grahamd/.MESSAGES_PUBLIC/info-andrew"))
)))
(load "flib") ; The standard flames library
This all worked fine so I decided to go whole hog with the bulletin
board stuff and set it all up properly. This generally means having an
.AMS.flames file with something like the following:
(defun grahamd-mail-hook (msg)
(process-mapped-mailbox
msg
"/u/sysdev/grahamd/.MESSAGES_PUBLIC/"
"grahamd\\+"
'("to" "cc" "resent-to" "resent-cc" "received" "x-bb")
"mail"
(ReplyAddr msg "s")
"grahamd@otc"
"Message rejected: could not write to bboard"
)
)
(load "flib")
Note that we don't have the Andrew delivery system running so
grahamd+info-andrew is not valid, instead we have to have
"grahamd+info-andrew" <grahamd> on the To: line.
The problem is that I couldn't work out how to make both this scripts
work together directly so I ended up with the following; if someone has
a better way then please tell me.
(defun grahamd-mail-hook (msg)
(progn
(cond
((a-pat-in-any-str "info-andrew" (getheadercontents msg "to"))
(addheader msg "X-bb: grahamd+info-andrew"))
(T NIL)
)
(process-mapped-mailbox
msg
"/u/sysdev/grahamd/.MESSAGES_PUBLIC/"
"grahamd\\+"
'("to" "cc" "resent-to" "resent-cc" "received" "x-bb")
"mail"
(ReplyAddr msg "s")
"grahamd@otc"
"Message rejected: could not write to bboard"
)
)
)
(load "flib") ; The standard flames library
This all worked fine, info-andrew mail went into the correct folder as
did anything which was sent to grahamd+*. I now went to set up
.MS.DirectPost files and I started getting problems.
I created a new folder called 'test' and placed in it an .MS.DirectPost
file containing the following:
0
"grahamd+*" <grahamd>
as described in the privatebb help file. When I went to post something
though it did not get the address correct, it would put up To:
test@otc.otca.oz, I tried making the second line just "grahamd+test" and
it sill wouldn't work. I then tried other things such as putting some of
the 'post nopost createsub nocreatesub' options on the first line also
but couldn't make anything work. It just wouldn't get the address nor
would it stop me from posting to a bulletin board which I couldn't.
Does anyone have any ideas about what I have missed. I have up to patch
level 3 applied using Version 3 of Andrew.
Graham Dumpleton (grahamd@otc.otca.oz.au)nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) (03/01/90)
Hmm... One obvious possibility is that "test" is already a legitimate user id or global or personal alias on your system. Another possibility is that you've got AMS_OnlyMail: 1 set in your configuration, though I don't *think* that would explain this one. Another possibility is that you don't have your *.mspath preference right. I suggest trying the following: Run the cui program and type: set level wizard set term 0 set debug 0 0 0 -1 whois test The "whois" command is simply a test/probe into the address validation routines. Doing this with messagserver debugging turned on will produce some voluminous output. If the output doesn't make the problem clear, then you could at least post the output to this mailing list and it is more likely that someone will be able to diagnose it better. Good luck. -- Nathaniel
tom@ICASE.EDU (Tom Crockett) (03/03/90)
Excerpts from info-andrew: 28-Feb-90 Problem with posting to bul..
Graham Dumpleton@uunet.u (3876)
> Does anyone have any ideas about what I have missed.
I don't know about your specific problem, but if I try to post to a
bulletin board from sendmessage, it puts the wrong thing in the "To:"
field after it validates the address (seems to be getting stuff from
/etc/passwd for the owner of the bulletin board). If I send mail to the
bboard from within messages, then everything is fine and it gets sent to
exactly what I specify in the second line of the .MS.DirectPost file.
Is this a bug, or a feature, and if so, what is the rationale?
-Tomnsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) (03/03/90)
What's going on here is a mismatch between the way AMS runs with and without AMDS (the AMS Delivery system, useful only if you have the Andrew File System). Not surprisingly, the mechanisms were optimized for the AMDS environment; I have found it possible to make them work, albeit with a few oddities, in a non-AMDS environment. First, you have to understand a wee bit about the process of AMS address validation. If you put a bboard name on a To: or CC: line in sendmessage, this will get transformed into a posting address according to the proper .MS.DirectPost file. All this stuff works just fine. The oddity only begins to happen if your direct post file sends stuff back to a "local" user -- e.g. your bboard account. In that case, what happens under various circumstances is that the address can get RE-validated. That is, the output of the validation process becomes the input for another validation process. This turns out to be fine in AMDS-style bboards, where the "local" address is something like "bb+bboard-name", because the software knows that the +suffix is something important and to be preserved. However, in non-AMDS situations, we typically run a bboard system with posting addresses like "bb+foobar" <bb@mysite> Unfortunately -- and I guess this could be considered a bug to be patched, ITC people -- the validation software considers the route phrase "bb+foobar" to be something it can safely throw away. Fortunately, there is a workaround. Just use a posting address that doesn't precisely match your local value of ThisDomain. For example, at Bellcore ThisDomain is "thumper.bellcore.com". This means that I might have problems if I put either of the following in my .MS.DirectPost file: "bb+foobar" <bb> "bb+foobar" <bb@thumper.bellcore.com" However, the trick I use is to use a host name that AMS doesn't think of as local, but that sendmail does. In my case, my .MS.DirectPost files read more like "bb+foobar" <bb@thumper> This is validated as an external address, and hence not rewritten at all -- just what the doctor ordered! So, the bottom line is: there is a bug in validation in that it throws away route phrases (and comments!) in local RFC822 addresses when it validates them. This should be fixed, but meanwhile the workaround is to set up your .MS.DirectPost files so that they don't look like "local" addresses, which you can do by using some alias for your local host name. Hope that's helpful and clarifying. -- Nathaniel