Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:844 comp.unix.questions:4744
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!acornrc!bob
From: bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.unix.questions
Subject: 'Cannot mail directly to files' from sendmail
Message-ID: <538@acornrc.UUCP>
Date: 10 Dec 87 20:29:09 GMT
Organization: Acorn Research Centre, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23
Keywords: sendmail, 4.2bsd, help?

All the documentation I can find says that you can mail to a file instead
of a user's mailbox by using a recipient which {begins with, contains} a
'/' character.  (Docs differ on whether the recipient name has to begin
with the '/', but this is immaterial here.)

I know I can do this with /usr/ucb/mail .  Fine.  I want to do
it (in a script) with /usr/lib/sendmail , but sendmail gives the
error message 'Cannot mail directly to files'.  The script is running as
UUCP, driven by a "|script" entry in the aliases file.

Looking at the code in recipient.c, it appears that sendmail is rather
arbitrarily deciding it doesn't want to do what I want.  (I am not
claiming here that I understand all this code!)

Any ideas (1) why sendmail is refusing me and (2) how to get around this?

This is a Vax running 4.2bsd.

Thanks,
-- 
Bob Weissman
Internet:	bob@acornrc.UUCP
UUCP:		...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | apple }!acornrc!bob
Arpanet:	bob%acornrc.UUCP@AMES.ARPA