Museum

Home

Lab Overview

Retrotechnology Articles

Online Manuals

⇒ mailcnfg(4M) — DG/UX R4.11MU05

Media Vault

Software Library

Restoration Projects

Artifacts Sought

Related Articles

mail(1)

getdomainname(2)

uname(2)

mailsurr(4M)



mailcnfg(4M)                   DG/UX R4.11MU05                  mailcnfg(4M)


NAME
       mailcnfg - initialization information for mail and rmail

DESCRIPTION
       The /etc/mail/mailcnfg file contains initialization information for
       the mail and rmail commands.  Each entry in mailcnfg consists of a
       line of the form

                           Keyword = Value

       Leading white space, white space surrounding the equal sign, and
       trailing white space is ignored.  Keyword may not contain embedded
       white space, but white space may appear within Value.  Undefined
       keywords or badly formed entries are silently ignored.

   Keyword Definitions
       DEBUG               Takes the same values as the -x invocation option
                           of mail.  This provides a way of setting a
                           system-wide debug/tracing level.  Typically DEBUG
                           is set to a value of 2, which provides minimal
                           diagnostics useful for debugging mail and rmail
                           failures.  The value of the -x mail invocation
                           option will override any specification of DEBUG
                           in mailcnfg.

       CLUSTER             To identify a closely coupled set of systems by
                           one name to all other systems, set Value to the
                           cluster name.  This string is used to supply the
                           ...remote from... information on the From header
                           line rather than the system nodename returned by
                           uname(2).

       FAILSAFE            In the event that the /var/mail directory is
                           accessed via NFS within a cluster (see CLUSTER
                           above), provisions must be made to allow for the
                           directory not being available when local mail is
                           to be delivered (remote system crash, NFS
                           problems, etc.).  Value is a string that
                           indicates where to forward the current message
                           for delivery.  Typically this is the remote
                           system that actually owns /var/mail.  In this
                           way, the message is queued for delivery to that
                           system when it becomes available.  For example,
                           assume a cluster of systems (sysa, sysb, sysc)
                           where /var/mail is physically mounted on sysc and
                           made available to the other machines via NFS.  If
                           sysc were to crash, the NFS-accessible /var/mail
                           would become unavailable and local deliveries of
                           mail would go to /var/mail on the local system.
                           When /var/mail is re-mounted via NFS, all
                           messages deposited in the local directory would
                           be hidden and essentially lost.  To prevent this,
                           if FAILSAFE is defined in mailcnfg, mail and
                           rmail check for the existence of
                           /var/mail/:saved, a required subdirectory.  If
                           this subdirectory does not exist, mail assumes
                           that the NFS-accessible /var/mail is not
                           available and invokes the failsafe mechanism of
                           automatically forwarding the message to Value.
                           In this example Value would be sysc!%n.  The %n
                           keyword is expanded to be the recipient name [see
                           mail(1) for details] and thus the message would
                           be forwarded to sysc!recipientname.  Because
                           sysc is not available, the message remains on the
                           local system until sysc is available, and then
                           sent there for delivery.

       DELEMPTYMFILE     If not specified, the default action of mail and
                           rmail is to delete empty mailfiles if the
                           permissions are 0660 and to retain empty
                           mailfiles if the permissions are anything else.
                           If Value is yes, empty mailfiles are always
                           deleted, regardless of file permissions.  If
                           Value is no, empty mailfiles are never deleted.

       DOMAIN              This string is used to supply the system domain
                           name in place of the domain name returned by
                           getdomainname(2).

       FORCE7BITHEADERS  Unless FORCE7BITHEADERS has a value of no, mail
                           will convert any 8-bit headers into 7-bit format.

       SMARTERHOST         This string may be set to a smarter host which
                           may be referenced within the mail surrogate file
                           via %X.

       %mailsurrkeyword   As described in mailsurr(4), certain pre-defined
                           single letter keywords are textually substituted
                           in surrogate command fields before they are
                           executed.  While none of the predefined keywords
                           may be changed in meaning, new ones may be
                           defined to provide a shorthand notation for long
                           strings (such as /usr/lib/mail/surrcmd) which may
                           appear repeatedly within the mailsurr file.
                           Upper case letters are reserved for future use
                           and will be ignored if encountered here.

FILES
       /etc/mail/mailcnfg
       /etc/mail/mailsurr
       /var/mail/:saved
       /usr/lib/mail/surrcmd

SEE ALSO
       mail(1), getdomainname(2), uname(2), mailsurr(4M).

NOTES
       If /var/mail is accessed via NFS and the subdirectory
       /var/mail/:saved is not removed from the local system, the FAILSAFE
       mechanism will be subverted.


Licensed material--property of copyright holder(s)

Typewritten Software • bear@typewritten.org • Edmonds, WA 98026