help with vacation program

[Clay Calhoun Western]

OK - so I have been frustrated to the point where I am actually going to
ask for help.... :-)

I can't make the 'vacation' program run to automatically respond to mail!
I've followed the man pages, and when that didn't work - started trying
'other' things, like changing all the permissions on the .vacation.* files
to 666, the permissions on directories to 777, editing/ reversing the
order in the .forward file, changing the name of the .vacation.msg file
(see below for why NOTES #2)....

The executable (/usr/ucb/vaction) is set to 755....and /usr/ucb is set to
755.  I've tried different iterations of the .vacation.msg file...  ie.
deleting blank lines, etc..........and nothing. :-(

Here's the scenario:

1.  I log in as guest
    Guest doesn't have vacation activated
2.  I build the .forward file *just* as it says
3.  I run 'vacation -I'
4.  I log out of guest, and in as clayc
5.  I mail a message to guest
6.  I log out of clayc and in as guest
7.  guest has received my message
8.  *BUT* there's no record of it in either .vacation.dir or .vacation.pag
9.  I log out of guest and in as clayc
10. clay hasn't received a message from guest stating that he's on vacation

NOTES:  the man pages are unclear

1.  the second paragraph says not to include a 'From:' line in the 
    .vacation.msg file - but if I run 'vacation' with no options, and
    without having built a .vacation.msg file, then the application
    puts a 'From:" line in the file!  What's the deal?

2.  At the end of the man pages, under the FILES section, it refers me
    to "$HOME/.vacation.mesg.  Where did .vacation.mesg come from - a 
    typo in .vacation.msg?

So what's the deal?  Have you guys run across this before?  We're running
4.0.3.  I tried it this afternoon on a different box, and it wouldn't work
there either.

So what stupid mistake am I overlooking?  Help!  

Here's my ls:
 <some deleted>

drwxrwxr-x 13 clayc        1024 Nov 10 17:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 78 root         1536 Nov  8 08:40 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc         514 Oct 26 10:17 .cshrc
-rw-rw-r--  1 clayc          29 May  1  1990 .exrc
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc          35 Nov 10 17:54 .forward
-rw-rw-r--  1 clayc         481 Nov  9 09:51 .login
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc        4375 Nov  9 09:56 .mailrc
-rw-rw-r--  1 clayc        7979 Nov  9 09:05 .newsrc
-rw-rw-r--  1 clayc         801 Nov  9 09:38 .plan
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc         633 Oct 17 11:16 .signature
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc           0 Nov 10 17:54 .vacation.dir
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc         169 Nov 10 17:54 .vacation.msg
-rw-r--r--  1 clayc           0 Nov 10 17:54 .vacation.pag

Here's the .forward:

\clayc, "|/usr/ucb/vacation clayc"

Here's the .vacation.msg file that running 'vacation' *generates* itself
when run w/o options:

 From: clayc (via the vacation program)
 Subject: away from my mail

I will not be reading my mail for a while.
Your mail regarding "$SUBJECT" will be read when I return.

=======
cheers,
 clay
 ssds!clayc at uunet.uu.net