From: jdoss@jmd386.lonestar.org (Joe M. Doss) Subject: Re: [Q] Linux/SLS "mail" is too smart for its own good Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 00:49:16 GMT
In article <1993Mar24.190859.16371@eecs.nwu.edu> hpa@nwu.edu (H. Peter Anvin) writes:
>I have a question about the "mail" program for Linux, specifically
>from the SLS release, which I believe is the same as in mailpak. The
>problem is that it bypasses the mail transport agent (smail) when it
>gets an address it "recognizes" (local or UUCP-style, I believe).
>Unfortunately that is a Bad Thing[TM] at least on my system. "elm"
>behaves properly but some users on this machine are used to the BSD
>Mail interface and don't want to switch.
>
>So: is there either a way to force "mail" to send ALL its mail to the
>mail transport agent, or is there a different version of mail
>somewhere that does that? (If there is but is not for Linux I'll try
>to port it -- that's no problem)
>
I have been working on a POSIX.2a-compliant mail program which does
(IMHO) "The Right Thing" and leaves all mail delivery to /bin/rmail.
I started with the wmail program by Fred Van Kempen, which itself was
based on a mailer by Peter Housel, and have hacked it to be compile-time
configurable as to whether it attempts mail delivery itself, or leaves
delivery to another mail delivery agent like Smail. The program is
currently POSIX.2 compliant (It was before I started -- POSIX.2 just
specifies that mailx accept the -s "Subject of mail" option), and I have
gotten it maybe one-fourth of the way to POSIX.2a compliance. It accepts
most of the options specified in POSIX.2a, and does the right thing with
them. I have not started on the mail reader user interface specifications
from POSIX.2a, but it is usable in its current form -- I use it every day,
and I haven't made any changes to it in about 2 months.
I find it most useful in cron jobs and such, where a shell script needs
to notify a human about something, mailx provides a standard way to give
the mail a meaningful subject and also uses Smail's aliases.
I tried using elm as /bin/mail, but it requires Mail and .elm directories
in the home directory of the user invoking it, and I didn't want to have
to remember to create these every time I set-up some cron job with a
different user (like news, uucp, etc.).
If anyone is interested in mailx in it's current form, I can upload it to
tsx & sunsite. I have not updated the documentation, so some of it is wrong,
but it does have very good documentation written by Fred van Kempen.
I definately intend to release it when I get it fully POSIX.2a compliant,
but if you want to see this incomplete version uploaded, send me mail.
-- =========================================================================== | Joe M. Doss, Jr. "Scrute the inscrutable, | | jdoss@jmd386.lonestar.org eff the ineffable" - Kevin G. Barkes | ===========================================================================