*BSD News Article 17062


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From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm,comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: NetBSD/386bsd elm problem - empty message bodies
Date: 12 Jun 1993 16:17:59 -0500
Organization: Armstrong Lab MIS, Brooks AFB TX
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <1vdh6lINN8o7@hrd769.brooks.af.mil>
References: <1utcu1INNfu9@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> <C8IAIE.ACC@sugar.NeoSoft.COM>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hrd769.brooks.af.mil

In article <C8IAIE.ACC@sugar.NeoSoft.COM> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <1utcu1INNfu9@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess) writes:
>> I have been working to install elm on my newly installed NetBSD/386bsd
>> system and came across a problem with elm 2.4, pl20.  Whenever I would
>> try to send a E-Mail message, everything would appear to work, except
>> that the message would be delivered with no message body.
>
>Yeh, this is a known problem. What Elm is doing is not only a bad idea, and
>assumes undocumented features of the shell, but it also reduces the information
>available for the user (error messages from mail transport will get delivered
>asynchronously).
>
>I would recommend:
>! sendmail -options name <tmpfile ; rm tmpfile
>
>And you need to do the same thing a few other places, I think.

Probably, but I didn't really want to get completely into Syd's nickers,
if you know what I mean.  I went for the least invasive of the options,
desiring to leave fundamental decisions like sub program interaction to
the authors.

As it turns out, it is all moot anyway.  Elm pl23 was already slated to
make this change in response to another 386 user (from Linux, I think)
that reported the error and fix earlier.  

As it turns out, another avenue to 'fix' this is to install the patches
for ash that were posted here a couple of months back...  It seems as
though there really ARE more than a couple of ways to skin a tree :-)

No matter, the problem is fixed in elm, and hapless 386bsd newbies like
me can continue on blithely ignorant of the problems that have gone on
before.  

Now, if we can just get the two 'for file do' errors fixed in Configure,
we will be all set :-).  I sent Syd the easy fixes, and he sent me some
mail about using the config.over (override) file, for those pesky
'almost POSIX' features that we have.

BTW, the pl22 core dump problem is fixed in pl23 as well, so anyone that
wants to upgrade, read_rc.c has an error near line 333, where they try
to close a file that may not be open...  The actual fix is left as an
exercise for the reader (or E-Mail me, and I send out the patch).
-- 
------
TSgt Dave Burgess
NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office
Brooks AFB, TX