DELIVER(ADM) UNIX System V
Name
deliver - MMDF mail delivery process
Syntax
/usr/mmdf/bin/deliver [-bdpsw] [-cchan,chan] [-lmins]
[- thrs] [-mmaxsort] [-Llogfile] [-Tsecs] [-Vloglevel]
[message1 ... messageN]
Description
The deliver program handles the management of all mail
delivery under the MMDF mail system. deliver does not
deliver mail directly, but instead calls on MMDF channels to
handle actual delivery. deliver's actions are guided by the
MMDF tailoring file, /usr/mmdf/mmdftailor, and by the
command line options. The program can run as either a
daemon or a user-invoked program. The program may be called
to process the entire mail queue or just handle some
explicitly named messages. When possible, deliver will
attempt to process messages in the order received. deliver
also maintains a cache of host information on a per-channel
basis which allows hosts which are unavailable for delivery
to be skipped until available.
deliver first builds a list of channels to process, either
from the command line or composed of all the non-passive
channels in the system. Next, a list of messages to process
is collected, either from the command line or by scanning
the mail queue for for each channel. If the the number of
messages in the queue for a given channel is more than
maxsort (set in tailor file or on command line), the queue
directory for that channel will be processed in the order
read, without sorting by submission time. If a list of
messages is given on the command line, no sorting will take
place and the messages will be delivered in the order
specified. The sorting keys are (in order): channel,
submission time, and finally host. This causes many
accesses to the messages but minimizes the invocation of
channel programs.
deliver is setuid to the superuser to allow it to set its
real and effective UID and GID to that of the MMDF user.
The following options may be used to alter deliver's
behavior:
-b Background mode. Causes deliver to run as a background
daemon making periodic sweeps over the mail queues
looking for undelivered mail and attempting deliver.
The invoker must be the MMDF user or the superuser to
use this option. deliver attempts delivery for all
eligible messages, then sleeps, and then repeats the
process. The default sleep time is 10 minutes but it
can be changed (see the -T option below).
-cchannel1,channel2,...
Channel selection. A comma-separated list of channels
to be processed.
-d Already in ``quedfldir''. This option will cause
deliver to assume it is already in the mail queue and
therefore it will not issue an explicit chdir(). This
is useful if you wish to have deliver operate on an
alternate mail queue hierarchy, mainly for testing.
-lminutes
Sets the ``time-to-live'' for entries in the dead-host
cache. This time defaults to 2 hours. The dead host
cache is used to prevent attempts to deliver to hosts
that are known to be down. The ``time-to-live'' is
given in minutes. If the number of minutes is
negative, dead host caching is disabled.
-mmaxsort
Sets the sort threshold. If there are more than
maxsort messages in a given channel's queue, then they
are processed in directory order without first sorting
by submission time. If -m is not specified, the value
of maxsort is given in the tailor file by MMAXSORT.
-p Pickup only mode. Indicates that the invoker would like
to pickup a passive mail channel.
-s Force linear search of the mail queue. Normally
deliver will deliver messages in the order they were
received which seldom matches the order in the
directory. This option is useful if the queue gets so
large that deliver can no longer deal with sorting the
queue in a reasonable time.
-thrs
Time limiting. This option prevents deliver from
attempting to deliver messages which have been in the
queue for more than hrs hours. For efficiency reasons,
this option only applies when the queue is being
sorted. If an explicit list of messages was given on
the command line, if the -s option is in effect, or
there are more messages than the maxsort threshold (see
the -m option), then time limiting does not occur.
-w Watch the delivery. Causes deliver to print informative
messages on the standard output as it is attempting
delivery. This option is passed onto the channel
programs which also give informative messages.
-Llogfile
Sets the logfile for this deliver to the file
specified. The default is to log into the file msg.log
in the MMDF log directory. This option is only
available to the Superuser and MMDF.
-Tseconds
Sets the sleep time between background sweeps of the
mail queue. This defaults to 10 minutes.
-Vloglevel
Sets the logging level for this deliver to the level
specified. The loglevel should be a valid mmdf logging
level string such as FTR. This option is only
available to the superuser and MMDF.
See Also
submit(ADM), queue(F), mmdftailor(F)
Value Added
deliver is an extension of AT&T System V provided by the
Santa Cruz Operation.
(printed 8/23/89) DELIVER(ADM)