Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!noao!asuvax!hrc!gtephx!barriost From: barriost@gtephx.UUCP (Tim Barrios) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Elm and other mailers for Apollos Message-ID: <43290411.f81c@gtephx.UUCP> Date: 11 May 89 16:17:16 GMT Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona Lines: 40 We are a large Apollo site (about 700 nodes) running 9.7.1 (soon to be 10.1) Domain/IX. We use primarily Unix Sys V since we are now part of an ATT JV. Our users use generic Sys V mail and mailx. For the last year or so, more and more of our users have been using the USENET network mail and news but determining the relative address path of another site has been a matter of 'grep'ing the output of a mailpath based on the map and using that address in the mail/mailx command line. I had heard good things about the Elm mailer which would let our users get automatic net addressing via @ addressing. So, we installed Elm on a test basis about a month ago. We have very mixed reviews of it running on Apollo. First, it seems to lock up the mail file now and then (especially using newmail) which disallows other users from adding to the mailbox (all 700 nodes are linked to one /usr/mail dir). More serious is that recently, we have noticed that when reading volutile mail files (more than 20 messages while 10 or so new ones come in while reading), our users can lose their entire mailbox with the error 'mail file corrupt' (this morning i lost over 60 mail messages)! Here's the questions I have for other Apollo Sys 5 users: Does anyone have positive/negative comments about using Elm on Apollo? Is there another mail system that is better than mailx for Apollo? I've heard about 'smail'. Is this available for Apollo? What's different about it v.s. mailx and Elm? What do other Apollo users use to send/receive network mail? -- Tim Barrios (barriost@gtephx) UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!barriost AGCS (formerly GTE), Phoenix (602) 582-7101