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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: sending mail via rmail with multiple arguments
Message-ID: <2627@cbosgd.ATT.COM>
Date: Sun, 28-Sep-86 11:02:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2627
Posted: Sun Sep 28 11:02:19 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 07:27:48 EDT
References: <529@meccts.UUCP> <1138@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
Lines: 46

In article <1138@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>
>Since then I have heard it rumored that the "rmail" programs in V7 and
>4.1BSD will not accept multiple arguments.  However, I have 38 mail
>links and no mail is getting lost, so I must not be talking to any V7
>or 4.1BSD sites.  (Utzoo doesn't count, that's only the ghost of
>V7 yet-to-come.)

Let me clear up the rumor.

The 4.1BSD version of rmail has a usage check which basically says
	if (argc < 2 || argc > 3)
		print usage message and exit

Since I wrote the 4.1BSD rmail, this is my fault.  It seemed like a
good idea at the time.

The problem applies ONLY to 4.1BSD (and 4.0BSD, I think.)  In V7,
and I think in 3BSD, rmail was a link to mail, and mail doesn't
care how many arguments it gets, it's just like a user command.

The problem has been fixed in 4.2BSD, which handles multiple arguments
to rmail properly.

The problem does not apply to System III or V, since their rmail is
still a link to mail.

There are probably still a few sites out there running 4.1BSD derived
rmail's, but they seem to be pretty rare these days.  The benefits of
sending only one copy of a piece of mail, in our opinion on the UUCP
Project, outweigh the rmail usage problems.  If anyone has a neighbor
that can't handle multiple arguments, that neighbor can tweak their
sendmail.cf  to not batch to that neighbor.

Alternatively, it's easy to fix the problem, if you have source, just
correct the usage check, which should read
	if (argc < 2)
		print usage message and exit.
If you don't have source, the 4.2BSD rmail contains no AT&T code and
can be legally gotten from any 4.2BSD site and recompiled.  I think
the invocation of sendmail must be changed to delivermail on 4.1,
and there may be minor changes to the arguments (I don't have a copy
of the 4.1 rmail around any longer to check) but it should be easy
to get right.

	Mark