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From: jtc@tessera.UUCP (J.T. Conklin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Xenix mail system
Keywords: xenix, mail
Message-ID: <295@tessera.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jan 89 05:28:21 GMT
References: <417@ispi.UUCP>
Reply-To: jtc@tessera.UUCP (J.T. Conklin)
Followup-To: comp.unix.xenix
Organization: Tesseract Software Laboratories, Burnaby, B.C.
Lines: 61

[ followups redirected to comp.unix.xenix ]

In article <417@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
>Hello netlanders,
>
>	I would like to totally replace the standard Xenix mail system. 
>Currently I have smail running, with a few kludges in order to let it
>work with Xenix.  What I need are copies of the local-transport-agents
>(mail and mailx) and/or definitions of what they do.  I want to get rid
>of the execmail program as well as all the other unexplained stuff that
>SCO supplies.

I dumped the Xenix mail system about one year ago and never regretted
the decision.  Since that date, my mail system has gone through
several stages.  It's still not perfect, but it is much better than
the stock system.

This is a brief history of my mail system.  It is not a "how to" guide.
If anyone wants details, mail me and I'll do my best to help.

1. Replaced execmail with sendmail.

   Execmail is basically a non-configurable subset of sendmail.  I
   grabbed sendmail from an archive site, whipped up a sendmail.cf
   file, and replaced execmail with sendmail.

   This change didn't add any extra functionality over SCO's mail, 
   but I felt a bit happier that I was in control. (source code, etc)

2. Used smail as a back end to sendmail.

3. Totally removed SCO mail.

   I decided that _I_ was interested in SysV mail behavior even
   if SCO wasn't.

   I wrote a new mail delivery program which used /usr/mail as spool
   directory and SysV style locks.  Because the spool directory was
   changed, login couldn't notify me of new mail, so I wrote my own
   login too!

   [ Bug waiting to happen department:  What is bound to happen sooner
     or later when two Xenix machines on a network share the /usr/spool/mail
     directory when they don't also share /tmp? ]

   I now use mush and elm as my user interface.  (mush is linked to mail)
   I am working on a port of the BSD Mail mailer, but not enough time.

   Moving the spool directory to /usr/mail and using SysV style locks
   has not been totally without problems.  For example, the ELM
   configuration script discovered I was on a Xenix box and blindly
   assumed I was using that standard Xenix methodology.  It didn't even
   ask for confirmation!
 
Good Luck,

	--jtc

-- 
J.T. Conklin
    ...!{ubc-cs,uunet}!van-bc!tessera!jtc