Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!PEANUTS.NOSC.MIL!dennis
From: dennis@PEANUTS.NOSC.MIL (Dennis Cottel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: sendmail problem
Message-ID: <8808162127.AA08397@cod.nosc.mil>
Date: 16 Aug 88 21:21:15 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39

I'm looking for experience with sendmail running on the Apollos.  I have
talked to Apollo.  After checking for the correct links, permission, etc,
they say they have never seen this behavior.  How about any of you?

We are running SR9.7, TCP3.1beta.  Sendmail is running on a DSP80A
gateway connected to several VAXes running 4.3 BSD.  The network and
the TCP servers seem to be rock solid at this point.

Sendmail is configured to put all mail into the queue, with a separate
daemon process running the queue every 5 minutes.  This was to get
around an apparent bug where incoming (to the Apollo) mail would
sometimes get silently dropped.  Users use /usr/ucb/Mail.

Every so often, maybe a couple times a week, sendmail will not be able
to deliver a message.  If it is able to return an error message, it will
say "554 \dennis... unknown mailer error 1" with the accompanying
message
	mail: cannot append to /usr/spool/mail/dennis
	mail: can't send to dennis
or maybe just "554 \dennis... unknown mailer error 2".

On some of these occasions, the error seemed to occur at about the time
a user was getting out of mail, or using the command "file %" to update
the mail file.  At other times, this wasn't the case.

The only other unusual thing I can think of is that users have a
.forward file in their home directory that both delivers the mail, and
pipes it through a program which uses send_alarm to put up a notice
containing the message's Subject: and From: lines.  My .forward file
looks like:
	\dennis
	"|/user/local/com/mail_alarm dennis"
but note that the errors are (seem to be) associated with the \dennis
part and not the mail_alarm part.

So how come I'm the only one in the world with this problem?!

   Dennis Cottel  Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA  92152
   (619) 553-1645     dennis@NOSC.MIL       sdcsvax!noscvax!dennis