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From: david@ukma.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: uucp mail inefficiency
Message-ID: <6244@ukma.ms.uky.csnet>
Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 11:51:28 EST
Article-I.D.: ukma.6244
Posted: Sun Apr  5 11:51:28 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 23:36:13 EST
References: <7326@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl> <2629@phri.UUCP> <561@van-bc.UUCP>
Sender: news@ukma.ms.uky.csnet
Reply-To: david@ms.uky.csnet (David Herron, Resident E-mail Hack)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 44
Xref: utgpu comp.os.minix:512 comp.mail.uucp:411

As for batching up many pieces of mail into one file, there is *already*
a method for doing exactly that, which requires NO silly additions to
the header, and is known to work really well.

It's called BSMTP.  It's a simple derivation of SMTP which was devised
by Allan Crosswell (the guy that wrote one of the better mail systems
for IBM Mainframes), and is heavily used on BITNET.  Since BITNET is
the same sort of network as UUCP then BSMTP is just as applicable.
("same type" means Store & Forward).

A BSMTP package looks something like:

HELO sender.domain.name
MAIL FROM:<rfc822-address-or-path>
RCPT TO:<rfc822-address-or-path>
   (Repeat the RCPT TO:'s as many times as necessary)
DATA
   "something" goes here ... in principle "something" could be anything,
   but the spec says to put an rfc822 mail message here.  one point of
   order is that any line which begins with a "." has the "." doubled,
   and the receiving end takes away the new ".".
.
   (You can repeat a MAIL FROM:, RCPT TO:, DATA sequences as many times
   as you like)
QUIT

Go and read RFC976 where it's suggested to use BSMTP in the UUCP world,
and the method for doing that.  Another applicable RFC is RFC821 where
SMTP is documented.

In case y'all're interested, I have a BSMTP decoder written which will
feed mail into mmdf, sendmail, or /bin/mail delivery systems (without
recompiling either ... treeky..).  Expect a copy of my program to be
in the next smail distribution ... at least I did give them a copy of
the program along with permission to use it.  I'm using it every
day here to receive mail from BITNET, it's been running w/o problems
since last November.


-- 
-----   David Herron,  cbosgd!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET, david@ms.uky.csnet
-----  (also "postmaster", "news", and the Usenet map maintainer for Kentucky.)
-----
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