As of version 5.15 of the FBB BBS the EPURMESS program returns messages which cannot be forwarded due to a bad or unknown route Or sysop laziness :-) Local messages however are simply killed after expiring, without notifying the sender of the message. I wrote RETMAIL to fix this problem RETMAIL returns two types of messages o Messages for known users which are about to expire o Messages for unknown users which are about to expire The expiry of unread pmail is handled by RETMAIL itself, not by EPURMESS RETMAIL scans the message database (DIRMES.SYS) for messages with type 'P status 'N' and no @BBS field. (i.e. local unread p-mail) It then checks if the callsign for whom the message is has an entry in the users database INF.SYS). If the message is expired it will be returned to the originator and the message-status will be changed to 'K'. (i.e. killed The locations of the various files are taken from INIT.SRV. RETMAIL should be started from the directory where the INIT.SRV file resides The two expiry limits are given as command-line arguments to RETMAIL. The first argument is the number of days after which a message for an unknown user will expire. The second argument is the number of days for message to a known user. For example RETMAIL 7 100 This will return messages for unknown users after 7 days, and unread messages for known users after 100 days If RETMAIL is given a third argument it will operate in debug mode It doesn't matter what the third argument is. In debug mode no messages are killed, and the output is written to the file RETMAIL.DBG instead of the MAIL.IN file. I recommend testing RETMAIL in debug mode before using it in Real Life Situations (tm RETMAIL should be started from within your APPEL.BAT (or whatever name it has on your system). Don't use RETMAIL while the BBS is running It's safe to run it in debug mode though
