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- From: trsnyder@mcs.drexel.edu (Bob Snyder)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp,comp.sys.unix.ultrix,comp.mail.misc
- Subject: Re: HP-UX and ULTRIX sharing a common NFS'ed mailbox area doesn't work
- Message-ID: <TRSNYDER.92Dec30150104@vf0031.mcs.drexel.edu>
- Date: 30 Dec 92 20:01:04 GMT
- References: <1992Dec30.181130.22144@colby.edu>
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- Organization: ASCI
- Lines: 56
- In-Reply-To: dwcooley@colby.edu's message of 30 Dec 92 18:11:30 GMT
- Nntp-Posting-Host: vf0031.astro.ge.com
-
- In article <1992Dec30.181130.22144@colby.edu> dwcooley@colby.edu (David W. Cooley) writes:
-
- We are historically a dec and mac shop beginning to install HP
- 9K8?7 machines. Our mail strategy has been to have a common pool
- of mail boxes (...spool/mail for DEC folks, /usr/mail for HP-UX)
- NFS'ed to all machines under the management of the Computer
- Services group. We also run a POP server on the pool for Mac users
- who wish toread mail on their Mac using Eudora. Users may have
- accounts on multiple machines and want to have access to their mail
- from each. The uid/gid/user name/group name data a
-
-
- all machines is managed as a unified entity.
-
- This has worked very well until we tried to integrate HP machines
- into this environment (HP 9K 827 running HP-UX 8.02).
-
- The presenting problem is that mail delivered by HP-UX to a mailbox
- stored on a ULTRIX NFS server does not have its UID/GID set
- appropriately.
-
- Suggestion #1: Have only one machine set up to receive mail (running the
- sendmail daemon). Set up MX records in your nameserver for all the
- other machines that point to mail server. A logical choise would be
- the machine the mail is NFS mounted from, so you don't have file
- locking headaches.
-
-
- One problem area is the difference between the group ownerships on
- HP-UX and ULTRIX mailbox directories, mail files, and mail
- programs. On HP-UX it appears that the mailbox directory and the
- mailboxes have gid mail, the mailboxes are rw to gid mail, and two
- of the three mail readers (elm and mail) are setgid-mail (mailx is
- not). On Ultrix, the mailbox directory is owned by root/system,
- the mailboxes are rw to user only, /usr/bin/mail is setuid-root,
- setgid-kmem, and /usr/ucb/mail runs with the uid/g
-
-
- the user. From this it appears that HP-UX mailboxes and some mail
- readers require special gid treatment which ULTRIX mailboxes do
- not. This probably implies that ULTRIX mail readers can not be used
- on mailboxes residing on and NFSed from HP-UX machines.
-
- The other problem ares is the incompatibility of the "UNIX" "From"
- header line (the one without the colon) used to separate messages
- in a mail box. We see this when ULTRIX mail readers (notably
- /usr/ucb/mail) try to read mail delivered by a HP-UX delivery
- program. The contents of a mailbox is parsed into separate
- messages based on the existance of the "UNIX" from header line at
- the start of every message. The HP-UX from line is missing the two
- second digits and associated colon in the timestamp (th
-
- But does HP-UX choke on Ultrix delivered mail? If it doesn't, just stop the
- HPs from receiving mail.
-
- Bob
-