26 Nov
2013
26 Nov
'13
4:49 p.m.
I am reading the delivermail (later known as postbox and then sendmail)
code from 4.0BSD and from sccs history from June 1980.
Its arpa-mailer(8) manual says it just spools the letter and actual
delivery will be performed by the ARPANET mailer daemon and refers to
mailer(ARPA) manual. The arpa.c code says "is stuck away in the
outgoing arpanet mail queue for delivery by the true arpanet mailer."
Where is this true arpanet mailer? I am guessing it periodically looks
in /usr/spool/netmail/ and delivers the messages using FTP and RFC458.
Where is this mailer(ARPA) manual?
Where is the ftp server code used for the incoming mail? (Example
code mail-dm.c is provided for the ftp server to "handle the MAIL <user>
command over the command connection.")
Also where is the uucp-mailer(8) manpage referenced in delivermail(8)?
Jeremy C. Reed
echo 'EhZ[h ^jjf0%%h[[Zc[Z_W$d[j%Xeeai%ZW[ced#]dk#f[d]k_d%' | \
tr '#-~' '\-.-{'
26 Nov
26 Nov
9:57 p.m.
below...
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed(a)reedmedia.net> wrote:
I am reading the delivermail (later known as postbox
and then sendmail)
code from 4.0BSD and from sccs history from June 1980.
sendmail was really a different code base from delivermail. As Eric
(Allman) used to say, the later was created to solve the "header of the
week" issue he was fighting at the time.
Its arpa-mailer(8) manual says it just spools the letter and actual
delivery will be performed by the ARPANET mailer daemon and refers to
mailer(ARPA) manual. The arpa.c code says "is stuck away in the
outgoing arpanet mail queue for delivery by the true arpanet mailer."
Where is this true arpanet mailer? I am guessing it periodically looks
in /usr/spool/netmail/ and delivers the messages using FTP and RFC458.
Where is this mailer(ARPA) manual?
At one point there was an smtpd that was written by BBN. I don't remember
why Eric did not continue to use it when he wrote sendmail. At Berkeley
at the time, the only system that needed it was Ing70 later IngVax [which
of course Eric managed] because that was the Internet connection for the
systems on campus. We all ran the BerkNet to the ingress systems for
Internet mail or to ernie (later ucbvax) to do UUCP mail.
He and I talked about about it once, I had always wished he had left the
different "connector" programs alone and just let sendmail be a header
rewriting system.
Where is the ftp server code used for the incoming mail? (Example
code mail-dm.c is provided for the ftp server to "handle the MAIL <user>
command over the command connection.")
Also where is the uucp-mailer(8) manpage referenced in delivermail(8)?
uucp just handed off to /bin/mail for delivery. I thought delivermail did
the same thing. I think it was Kurt Shoens who did the splicing of Berkeley
delivermail to uucp, but again I've forgotten - a long time ago. The SCCS
headers might say. memory was that Kurt and Eric Schmidt
Clem
10:13 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 04:57:40PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
He and I talked about about it once, I had always
wished he had left the
different "connector" programs alone and just let sendmail be a header
rewriting system.
+1
I get why he did what he did but holy mother of god is maintaining sendmail.cf
a black art. We've switched to postfix.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com
27 Nov
27 Nov
12:06 a.m.
Amen - I've always said that sendmail became what it was because it was the
SMTPD that went out in 4.2 and followings. If the original BBN code had
been left alone, since most people did not have the issues Berkeley did,
they would never have bothered with sendmail.cf. But because it was there
and >>conceptually<< you could do all sort of stuff with it, people tried.
We'll never know.
I was a fan of MMDF for years and later qmail - but I switch ccc.com to
google when the first offered it small folks like me 8-10 years ago and I
never looked back.
Clem
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)bitmover.com> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 04:57:40PM -0500, Clem Cole
wrote:
He and I talked about about it once, I had always
wished he had left the
different "connector" programs alone and just let sendmail be a header
rewriting system.
+1
I get why he did what he did but holy mother of god is maintaining
sendmail.cf
a black art. We've switched to postfix.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com
http://www.bitkeeper.com
4073
days inactive
4074
days old
3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Clem Cole -
Jeremy C. Reed -
Larry McVoy