Xref: utzoo comp.dcom.lans:4294 comp.sys.ibm.pc:43808 comp.unix.questions:19726
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!motcsd!motsj1!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: 3+Open from 3Com - mail question
Message-ID: <1990Feb7.045404.13659@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 7 Feb 90 04:54:04 GMT
References: <410@lkbpyr.UUCP> <4442@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 40

In article <4442@pegasus.ATT.COM> psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes:

>AT&T Mail PMX/STARMail is one of the e-mail products AT&T sells for
>MS-DOS PCs.
[...]
>It can also tie LANs together, and tie LANs to the AT&T Mail service
>and UNIX-based systems.

Is there any way to give an RFC822 style address to the STARMAIL mailer?
I'm using a 3B2 server with DOS clients over Starlan and haven't found
any way to give an address that contains anything but a name in the
unix machine's passwd file, or a machine name found in the Systems
file or in the PMX sysmap file to the left of the first "!".  The
new unix /bin/mail that comes with the PMX products can handle some
forms of routing but the PMX mailers won't pass anything to it unless
it looks like a valid uucp address.  Am I missing something?

>The STARMail server can talk over an async
>line, using a simple protocol called DDCP.  (Any relation to UUCP is
>greatly limited by available memory!  Sorry, it didn't fit.)

This is for DOS based servers, of course. The unix servers just hand
off to the enhanced unix /bin/mail.  However, DDCP takes 90K to run -
aren't some of the versions of UUPC smaller than that?  Using a
proprietary protocol means that DOS server users are forced to use
the attmail service unless they have a 3B2 or 386 unix machine to
forward for them.  And then there is ACCESS PLUS, a similar system
for stand-alone PC's that uses Yet-Another-Protocol over dial-up
lines and requires yet another program on the previously mentioned
3B2 or 386 forwarder or you are again forced to use the attmail service.

Actually, I like the programs or I wouldn't bother to complain about
this (and nits like keeping a plain-text copy of your unix password
in a configuration file on the PC or losing your mailbox contents when
the receiving PC's disk is full ). I would just like to see a cleaner
separation between the user interface and the transport with the details
of the linkage documented so users could roll their own connections.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us