Silent mail handler

[Chris Lewis]

In article <526 at morpho.UUCP> azar at morpho.UUCP (James W. Van Horn) writes:
>I've recently noticed that my machine doesn't leave an audit-trail
>header on mail that passes through it.  (I'm sure that's not what
>it's called.  I'm referring to the "Received:" by/from lines at the
>top of all mail files.)

Stock (aka dumb) System V mail transfer agents don't do "Received:"
(In System V the User Agent (MUA) and Transport Agent (MTA) are the same
thing.  You've added mush as another "user agent".  Good.) Bare
System V mail doesn't support anything much.

>I tried to RTFM, and found that mail(1) mentions the
>"UNIX PC Electronic Mail User's Guide", which I don't seem to have.

Won't help.

>Is it common to replace the mail handler on a 3b1?  If so, what are
>the choices?

Yes.  One solution is smail 2.5 which partially replaces your "mail"
and "rmail" programs.  It supports "Received:", internet style addressing
(eg: clewis at ferret.ocunix.on.ca), and mail routing lookup if you want
to run pathalias.  I'm running smail 2.5 on a 3b1, 386, and have even
replaced sendmail (another MTA) on an RS/6000 with it.  The biggest
advantage is that smail 2.5 is small and pretty reliable.  (There are
fixes available for some of the problems, though, you'r not likely
to ever encounter them - I've not applied the fixes, and I've never
hit them myself).  Other alternatives are Smail 3.1 (large, but more
capable - eg: multiple gateways), sendmail (capable, but worthy of a
Phd if you successfully manage to reconfigure it), and deliver (of which
I've heard good things, but have no real detailed knowledge).

Smail 2.5 and deliver can be found in comp.sources.unix or .misc archives.
I'm not really sure where you'd find a copy of sendmail source (but I wouldn't
recommend it anyhow) or smail 3.1.

I do lots of mail, two mailing lists and other stuff, and smail 2.5 is
perfectly adequate for me.  My mail system consists of: 3b1 mail, mush 7.2.2,
smail 2.5 (vanilla), Jon Zeeff's lmail (to do "mail-to-pipe" and "mail-to-
file", needed extensive bug fixing), pathalias (to produce routing
tables from comp.mail.maps postings), and unpackmaps (a program I wrote
to unpack the comp.mail.maps postings and run pathalias).  All of these
(aside from 3b1 "mail") are available thru comp.sources.unix or .misc.
-- 
Chris Lewis,
clewis at ferret.ocunix.on.ca or ...uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis
Psroff support: psroff-request at eci386.uucp, or call 613-832-0541 (Canada)
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