Xenix mail system

[Chip Salzenberg]

According to chip at vector.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal):
>With smail 2.5, "deliver" is needed for delivery to
>user mailboxes and "|command" type aliases.

The need for "|command" processing -- with security! -- was my original
excuse to begin writing deliver.  The project, well, grew from there.

>The result is a very lean and flexible mail system.  I'm very happy with
>it.  Yes, micnet has been lost -- but no great loss as far as I'm concerned.
>However, you could probably hack "deliver" to recognize micnet sites and
>feed the message to "/usr/lib/mail/mail.mn".  I did a similar thing:  I
>hacked my deliver sys file to recognize "user%site" addresses for internal
>machines on our ethernet.

An interesting approach.  It could work for Micnet too.  In my previous
article I described another approach, one driven by username instead of by
address syntax.  Of course, the approaches could be combined.

>It looks to me when the really-it-is-going-to-be-here-someday version
>of smail is out, "deliver" could be dropped from its primary position
>in the mail system.  (Just as my changes dropped /usr/bin/mail -- but
>left it available for use.)

The only thing left for deliver to do in my mail system is to (1) vary
behavior based on message *content* (as opposed to destination address), and
(2) modify message contents, as when forwarding.  Smail 3 does the rest.

>>(One of the ten (!) links to /usr/bin/smail is /usr/lib/sendmail.)
>OK ... /bin/smail, /bin/rmail, /usr/lib/sendmail ...
>What are the rest?

Here they are, in /usr/local/bin:
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 mailq
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 optto
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 pathto
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 rsmtp
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 runq
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 smail
-r-sr-xr-t  10 root      265702 Jan 25 11:30 uupath

Of course, /usr/local/bin/smail is redundant, given /usr/bin/smail, but it
doesn't hurt anything.  The "mailq" and "runq" links are for mail spooling,
a feature which I won't need until I do batch SMTP over UUCP -- that will be
a real time-saver for uunet, since I'll need to send only a single file for
each batch of messages.  The "rmstp" link is for when other people send
BSMTP to me.  The other links provide utility functions.

Smail 3 is great... worth the wait, without a doubt.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg             <chip at ateng.com> or <uunet!ateng!chip>
A T Engineering             Me?  Speak for my company?  Surely you jest!
	  "It's no good.  They're tapping the lines."