Sys V.0 'delivermail' problem

[Guy Harris]

> The problem is with the V.0 machines, which happen to be Torches. They
> use remsh to mail the 11/750, which works OK. As they are not equipped
> with anything that listens on sockets, I am using rsh to send the mail
> to delivermail on the Torch.  The problem is that the delivermail '-f'
> switch ...  Is this problem specific to Torches, or do all V.0 systems
> exhibit this problem? (N.B. it's ok on V.2).

Unclear; "delivermail" is not a standard part of System V, but is a
4.1BSD-ism, which Torch presumably added to their system.

> Is there another way of delivering mail which allows mail back, but
> doesn't involve an overworked system manager in too much coding?

There is a pretty logical way of fixing this problem; unfortunately, it does
involve some coding.  The reference to "rsh" indicates that you have some
sort of TCP/IP on the Torches, perhaps even something with a C-language
binding somewhat resembling that of 4.2BSD.  (I presume "they are not
equipped with anything that listens on sockets" means "they are not equipped
with anything that listens on the standard SMTP socket"; when you say you
use "rsh" to deliver mail to the Torches, I think of the "rsh" that comes
with 4.2BSD, and it certainly requires somebody to be listening on a socket
on the other side!)

As such, you might want to consider porting "sendmail" to the Torches; that
would mean you wouldn't have to monkey around with "rsh" (or "remsh", which
I presume is something similar), but could just have the VAXes open SMTP
connections to the Torches and *vice versa*.

Unfortunately, the 4.2BSD version of "sendmail" does take some work to make
it run under a non-4.2BSD system.  It also dereferences null pointers in a
couple of places; I don't know if the Torch permits this or not.  It may
also have assumed pointers and integers were the same size in some places.

The 4.3BSD version may have these problems fixed, at least in some places.

For "sendmail" to work, you need a rather hacked-up version of "/bin/mail",
that knows 1) to hand things to "sendmail" instead of delivering them
directly when you run it as a regular command and 2) how to deliver messages
when "sendmail" runs it with the appropriate flag ("-d").  However, I think
you also need that for "delivermail" to work.  If "/bin/mail" has been
hacked to work with "delivermail", you can probably get it to work with
"sendmail"; you may have to write a front end called "delivermail" that
monkeys with its flags and calls "sendmail".

If it *hasn't* been hacked to work with "delivermail", that may be what's
causing your problem....
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy at sun.com (or guy at sun.arpa)