Debian Bug report logs - #74889
NMH whom command broken with exim

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox):

From: "A.F.R. Bain" <afrb2@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: bugs@debian.org
Subject: NMH whom command broken with exim
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 16:02:41 +0100

Package: nmh
Version: 1.0.2-9

The whom command implemented by the spost post procedure (use SMAIL
rather than SMTP) doesn't work correctly when exim is the MTA.


Using exim 3.12-10, the whom command invokes exim with the -bv and -t
flags together; as the exim binary doesn't allow these together (unlike
other sendmail programs)

Having spoken to Philip Hazel (the exim author) he tells me that he 
never foresaw the need for the -bv (addresses from command line) and
-t (from To: fields of message) to be used simultaneously, and adding
this functionality now would be hard.  Hence it looks like it needs
fixing in the spost program.

Alan Bain


Some examples:

Example: /\==/\ Smail3.1.25.1 #25.1 on SunOS 4.1.4
% /usr/lib/smail -t -m -i -bv
To: <foo@bar.baz.com>
^D
foo@bar.baz.com at ppsw.cam.ac.uk ... deliverable


Example: 8.154 build 92453-07 under HPUX 10.20
% /usr/lib/sendmail -t -m -i -bv
To: <foo@bar.baz.com>
<foo@bar.baz.com>... deliverable: mailer smtp, host bar.baz.ccom, user foo@bar.b
az.ccom


Example: exim Exim version 3.12 #1 built 30-Apr-2000 01:07:30
[debian potato]
% /usr/lib/sendmail -m -t -bv -i
exim: incompatible command-line options or arguments

Message #10 received at 74889@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox):

From: ruud@ruud.org (Ruud de Rooij)
To: "A.F.R. Bain" <afrb2@cus.cam.ac.uk>, 74889@bugs.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#74889: NMH whom command broken with exim 
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 21:47:38 +0200

On 2000/10/16, "A.F.R. Bain" wrote:

> Using exim 3.12-10, the whom command invokes exim with the -bv and -t
> flags together; as the exim binary doesn't allow these together (unlike
> other sendmail programs)

I too ran into this a while ago.  A limited survey at that time indicated
that none of exim, postfix, and qmail handle the -bv -t combination.  Since
spost is only semi-documented, a fix for this has not been high on my
priority list.

An alternative is to install the nmh version from the unstable distribution.
It supports delivery to /usr/sbin/sendmail by setting "mts: sendmail" in
/etc/nmh/mts.conf.  Don't forget to set your delivery program back from spost
to post in that case.

Thanks,

Ruud.
-- 
ruud de rooij | ruud@ruud.org | http://ruud.org

Message #17 received at 74889@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jonathan David Amery <jdamery@dorothee.ysolde.ucam.org>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <74889@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: nmh: This bug report appears to have been incorrectly downgraded
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 02:48:07 +0000

Package: nmh
Version: 1.0.4+dev-20010317-1
Followup-For: Bug #74889

Ruud wrote:
>On 2000/10/16, "A.F.R. Bain" wrote:
>
>> Using exim 3.12-10, the whom command invokes exim with the -bv and -t
>> flags together; as the exim binary doesn't allow these together (unlike
>> other sendmail programs)
>
>I too ran into this a while ago.  A limited survey at that time indicated
>that none of exim, postfix, and qmail handle the -bv -t combination.  Since
>spost is only semi-documented, a fix for this has not been high on my
>priority list.
>
>An alternative is to install the nmh version from the unstable distribution.
>It supports delivery to /usr/sbin/sendmail by setting "mts: sendmail" in
>/etc/nmh/mts.conf.  Don't forget to set your delivery program back from spost
>to post in that case.

 Ruud appears to have got confused here.  The original report was
about the `whom' command which is supposed to produce a list of
recipients, not about the spost command which sends a mail.

 This bug causes whom to be unusable on systems with exim (and
apparantly postfix and qmail), and thus I feel it should probably be
of severity at least `minor' if not `normal'.  (and possibly assigned
to those MTAs, rather than to whom, which expects a sendmail-like
interface).

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux dorothee 2.4.17 #2 Tue Jan 22 01:06:37 GMT 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages nmh depends on:
ii  base-files               3.0.2           Debian base system miscellaneous f
ii  libc6                    2.2.5-11.2      GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  liblockfile1             1.03            NFS-safe locking library, includes
ii  libncurses5              5.2.20020112a-7 Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libsasl7                 1.5.27-3        Authentication abstraction library
ii  netbase                  4.07            Basic TCP/IP networking system

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