NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/comp/mail/elm/2133

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Xref: sparky comp.mail.elm:2133 news.answers:2497
Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!ub!dsinc!syd
From: [e-mail] (Syd Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm,news.answers
Subject: Monthly Elm Posting from the Elm Development Group
Keywords: monthly elm posting
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 15 Aug 92 03:58:42 GMT
Expires: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 03:58:42 GMT
Sender: [e-mail] (Syd Weinstein)
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Datacomp Systems, Inc., Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
Lines: 393
Approved: [e-mail]

Archive-name: elm-monthly/part1

This is the monthly Elm Posting from the Elm Development Group and
your Elm Coordinator.  Please send all questions and comments about
this posting or Elm itself to [e-mail] (dsinc!elm).  See the
README section of this posting for info on some Elm 2.3 FAQ's.
This posting generated:
Fri Aug 14 23:57:05 EDT 1992

Current release version: Elm 2.3 PL11
    This version was released at patch level 0.
    comp.sources.unix Posting-number: Volume 22, Issues 60-85
    Archive-name: elm2.3/part01 thru elm2.3/part26
    Patches are posted to comp.sources.bugs and comp.mail.elm
    After they are stable, patches are sent to comp.sources.unix
        Patches 1 through 11 have been sent to comp.sources.unix.
        Patches 1 through 11 are Volume 24 Issues 25-35.
        Archive-name: elm2.3patches/part01 thru elm2.3patches/part11
    Patches are available from the archive server at DSI.COM:
    send mail to [e-mail]
    send elm index

Note: the archive server will not respond to users names root, daemon,
postmaster or mailer-daemon.  Please use your own login when requesting
information from the archive server.

Planned next version: Elm 2.4
    Current Elm 2.4 status: Beta Testing started July 1, 1992
    Expected release date: October 1, 1992

As of release 2.1, Elm is now being developed by a cooperative venture
of volunteers loosely being called the Elm Development Group.  There are
approximately 40 developers and an additional 16 testers, participating
at various levels of activity.

Comments, bug reports, feature requests, etc.  should be sent to
[e-mail].  I try to ack most reports, but over 60% fail due to
invalid addresses.  Note, I strip your address to name@fqdn or name@site
before replying.

New releases will be posted to comp.sources.unix, patches will be posted
to comp.sources.bugs.  After patches have been proven and out for a
while, they will be posted to comp.sources.unix.  Patches are available
from the archive server at DSI.COM.  The complete release as of the
current patch level is available via anonymous uucp from dsinc.  Also
available via anonymous uucp are postscript output files of the current
documentation.  This service is provided for those sites that have
postscript but do not have di-troff.  Instructions for obtaining files
via anonymous uucp from dsinc are also available from the archive
server.  Elm is too large to mail, don't bother asking.  Also don't
mail me asking for me to send you patches, I won't.  Use the archive
server.  The archive-server will not respond to users named root,
daemon, or postmaster to prevent loops.  Please do not use those names
for archive requests.  PLEASE do not send archive requests to [e-mail].

The following sites have agreed to make Elm available via anonymous ftp.

    Site            Contact
    In the US/Canada:
    wuarchive.wustl.edu    David J. Camp, [e-mail]
          (128.252.135.4)

    In Europe:
    archive.cs.ruu.nl    Edwin Kremer, [e-mail]
    (131.211.80.17)

    In the UK:
    uk.ac.soton.ecs        [e-mail] (bitnet)
                [e-mail] (JANET)

        In Australia:
        ftp.adelaide.edu.au     Mark Prior, [e-mail]
          (129.127.40.3)

The following sites have agreed to make Elm available via anonymous
uucp:
    Site            Contact
    dsinc            Syd Weinstein
                [e-mail], dsinc!syd
                note: anon uucp info changed 12/16/91
                For further info, send an e-mail
                message to [e-mail] stating:
                send anon how-to dir


    stanton            Steven P. Donegan
                [e-mail], stanton!donegan
                714-894-2246 uucp - nuucp no word
                Elm is /u/public/elm2.3.tar.Z


-----------------------------README SECTION-----------------------------
First: See the README file that is part of the Elm Source Distribution.
Many questions might be answered there.

How to work around the X.400 problem with = in addresses and = being the
alias delimiter:
    0. This is a kludgy work around.  The problem is solved via
    allowing escape sequences in 2.4.

    1. Create the alias using some other character for the = in the
    address.

    2.  Run the newalias command to make the aliases.data and
    aliases.hash files.

    3. Edit the aliases.data file and replace the other character
    with the = character.

    NOTE: step 3 will need to be done every time a newalias command
    is run, either by Elm (alias changed/added/deleted from within
    Elm) or by typing newalias outside of Elm.

Where do I get the "Elm Reference Guide", "Elm Users Guide", ...
    Elm has several documents (over 100 pages worth of doc)
    that were written to help users install, support and use Elm.
    These are in the doc directory of the source distribution.
    Contact your systems administrator for a copy of the documents.
    For those sites that do not have troff (either di-troff or
    o-troff) and do have postscript printers, dsinc (dsinc.dsi.com)
    has a copy of the docs already in postscript format available
    for anonymous uucp or ftp.

Why do I get the remote signature on replies to local mail?  Can I
define what addresses are local?
    In 2.3, and for that matter 2.4 will be the same way, any
    address with an ! or @ in it is considered remote, without
    those characters, its local.
    Any reply is qualified to prevent alias expansion.  If you had
    an alias in your private Elm aliases that matched the name of a
    user on your system, but that alias did not point to that user,
    there would be no way to reply to the message.  It would end up
    going to the alias name, not the user that mailed you.  To
    prevent this, Elm fully qualifies (adds the site name) to a
    reply address.  This makes the simplistic signature detector
    think that the message is 'remote'. This is not slated to
    change until 3.0.

Why can't I get SGI to work for non ROOT.....
    SGI, at 3.3, doesn't have vfork, but instead a stub that does
    not work.  Make sure vfork is undef in the configuration.

How do I link Elm on IBM AIX?
    On IBM RISC 6000 AIX, you might get string funtion errors on the
compile.  The solution is to do the following:
    Look at /usr/lpp/bos/bsdsport. It tells you
    to add following lines to /etc/xlc.cfg

    * BSD 4.3 c compiler stanza
    bsdcc:    use       = DEFLT
        crt       = /lib/crt0.o
        mcrt       = /lib/mcrt0.o
        gcrt       = /lib/gcrt0.o
        libraries  = -lbsd, -lc
        proflibs   = -L/lib/profiled,-L/usr/lib/profiled
        options       = -H512,-T512, -qlanglvl=extended, -qnoro, -D_BSD, -D_NONSTD_TYPES, -D_NO_PROTO, -D_BSD_INCLUDES, -bnodelcsect, -U__STR__, -U__MATH__

    And then link bsdcc to xlc and use bsdcc instead of cc.
In addition, Elm should be linked with the curses lib and not termcap lib
if /etc/termcap is not there. (You can always copy the termcap database
to etc (or make a symlink)).


    On 386bsd, the shell that is shipped with the system, ash, does
not work for sending messages within Elm.  Mail messages have headers only
and no body.  Replacing the shell with bash (from GNU) seems to solve the
problem.  The bash shell is in the 'etc' distribution of 386bsd.


Why does my mail to Dave Taylor bounce?
    His new address is limbo!taylor, or, [e-mail]

--END--END--END--END--END----README SECTION----END--END--END--END--END--

Starting with release 2.2, the Elm Development group will attempt to
provide official patches to the release version to fix problems reported
at the same time we are working on the next release.  Also starting with
release 2.2 a list of known problems will be published in this posting.

Known bugs in Elm 2.3 PL11:
    The following are from the Elm 2.4 "To.Do" list that are
considered bugs, not enhancements, that have not yet been done.  Items
which are enhancements are not listed here.  It is our intention to
release changes to 2.3 for some, but not necessarly all of these.  Some
of these will only be fixed in 2.4.  (It depends on how extensive the
change is to fix it, and what else it ties into in the 2.4 work).
Items marked fixed will be deleted from the list on the next posting.

1.  General bugs and configuration bugs

GB01 The ordering of some sets of configuration    questions could
     be    improved.  In some cases, the answer to    a later    question
     renders an    earlier    question moot.    In such    cases, the latter
     should proceed the    former so that the former would    only be
     asked if need be.    This occurs with many of the configura-
     tion questions that deal with the domain routing and
     pathalias databases, appending the    hostname and internet ad-
     dress style, etc.

GB02 All programs need to use the same algorithm elm(1)    and
     frm(1) use    in establishing    the user's id and the user's in-
     coming mailbox.

GB09 All addresses need    to support both    an escape character and
     quoting the name portion to allow for illegal chars and
     blanks.
     (Being worked on for 2.4)

GB10 [next item    goes here]

2.  Elm(1) bugs

EB02 Encryption    is not fully implemented in ELM.  In elm(1) we
     have the following    problems:

     When `b' (bouncing) a message or `f' (forwarding) a message
     without editing, an encrypted section of text in the origi-
     nal message wrongly gets encrypted    a second time.    The func-
     tion that looks for encryption delimiters needs to    know to
     ignore them in these situations.

     When `p' (printing) or `|'    (piping) a message, an encrypted
     message does not get decrypted.  This is because elm(1) in-
     vokes readmsg(1) to pull the message out of the folder and
     readmsg(1)    does not deal with encryption at all.  Even if we
     gave readmsg(1) the ability to decrypt messages, we'd still
     have problems because readmsg itself would    have to    prompt
     for the decryption    key.  Now if we    were printing or piping    a
     set of tagged messages, readmsg(1)    would have to prompt for
     decryption    keys for each message individually.  In    doing
     that readmsg(1) would have    to indicate which message of the
     set it was    working    on.  This would    be difficult since
     readmsg(1)    uses actual ordinal message position in    the fold-
     er, and that would    be confusing if    the user has folders
     sorted in other than mailbox order: the message numbers
     wouldn't match up.     The solution therefore    involves replac-
     ing readmsg(1) with a new function    in elm(1) to handle the
     `p' or `|'    commands, and this function would need to detect
     the encryption delimiters and prompt for the decryption key.
     Furthermore, readmsg(1) should get    enhanced to deal with en-
     crypted text, or else carry a disclaimer that it doesn't
     work on encrypted text.

     When including the    text of    an original message for    a `r'
     (reply) or    `f' (forward), encrypted sections do not get de-
     crypted first, resulting in decrypted text    inside the in-
     clude text.  This means that the elm(1) function that in-
     cludes text of an original    message    must detect encryption
     delimiters    and decrypt encrypted text before including it in
     a reply or    forwarded message.

EB10 There is an inconsistency in the format of    the domain rout-
     ing database as presented by the documentation and    the
     elm(1) code.  Whichever is    wrong needs to be corrected.
     [domain database dropped in 2.4]

EB11 Some terminals with multipage memory do not scroll    correct-
     ly.  It was recommended that elm(1) use termcap ti    and te
     values, but this bug may need to wait until we convert
     elm(1) to use standard curses.
     [ti and te in elm 2.4]

EB14 On    the header editing screen, error messages that appear as
     a result of user input should linger on the screen    until the
     user enters the next command, as happens on the index
     screen.  Currently    they disappear too quickly to be read.
     [fixed in 2.4]

EB21 System_call() in src/syscall.c presumes that a system has
     SIG_CONT because SIGTSTP is defined.  On CCI systems this
     may be wrong and a    better check is    the existence of the file
     /usr/lib/libjobs.a.
     [Obsolete system/problem, being dropped]

EB25 If    elm is replying    to a message and considers From: lines
     valid and resolves    pathaliases, if    the reply path from the
     From: line    could not be resolved, elm should report the er-
     ror and ask the user if the "From " lines should be used in-
     stead.
     [pathalias resolving not present in 2.4 any more, bug dropped]

EB26 When using    an address of the form "node!user@domain" and
     having Elm    convert    it to an all ! address,    RFC976 states
     that the proper address should be domain!node!user, but Elm
     translates    that to    node!domain!user.

EB30 Deletion of an alias with multiple    alias names does not
     work.  The    alias is not deleted.
     [fixed in 2.4]

EB31 Return addresses are not checked in the same way that manu-
     ally entered addresses are    checked    against    the pathalias da-
     tabase, and this sometimes    allows a bad address to    be used.
     [pathalias resolving not present in 2.4 any more, bug dropped]

EB36 When Elm is configured not    to look    at the password    file for
     full name information, it sometimes places    the user name in
     ()s as the    comment    in addition to the full    name.

EB40 If    reading    an alternate folder and    all messages are marked
     for deletion and a    resync is performed, the folder    is delet-
     ed    and Elm    exits saying it    cannot open the    folder.
     [partially fixed in PL 6]

EB41 [next item    goes here]

3.  Utilities bugs

UB02 Newmail(1)    displays a null    "From" when a message does not
     contain a From: header line.  It needs to be able to parse
     the return    path and display the "last two words" of it, just
     like elm(1) does  when it encounters a message without a
     From:

UB07 Arepdaemon    has a bad security hole    because    it does    not check
     to    see if the user    can read the file used for reply.

UB08 The move_left function in arepdaemon.c does not work for a
     move of 1 byte. [fixed in 2.4]

UB09 Autoreply.c tries to unlink the file "/etc/autoreply.data"
     when there    is only    one entry in it    and does not check the
     return value of unlink.  This can have bad    repercussions if
     the unlink    fails because the program nevertheless reports
     success.

UB10 Readmsg doesn't understand    continued header lines and there-
     fore doesn't list all the "To" header, for    example, if
     presented on more than one    line.

UB12 X.400 now also uses the = in its addresses, newalias was
     changed from :  to    = due to X.400,    but now    even = is not
     good for a    delimiter.  Newalias needs to have an escape
     mechanism for its addresses.  This    needs to be coordinated
     with GBxx. [fixed in 2.4]

UB13 If    filter is run on a system that allows multiple delivery
     agents, that can start up multiple    copies of filter,
     delivery of messages can get intermixed.  Filter needs a
     complete interlocking to prevent this.

UB14 [next item    goes here]



                           The Elm(tm) Mail System


        (C) Copyright 1986, 1987, by Dave Taylor
            (C) Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, USENET Community Trust

            An Overview of the Elm Mail System
            ----------------------------------

1. What is Elm?

    In the lingo of the mail guru, Elm is a "User Agent" system,  it's
designed to run with "sendmail" or "/bin/rmail" (according to what's on
your system) and is a full replacement of programs like "/bin/mail" and
"mailx".  The system is more than just a single program, however, and
includes programs like "frm" to list a 'table of contents' of your
mail, "printmail" to quickly paginate mail files (to allow 'clean'
printouts), and "autoreply", a systemwide daemon that can autoanswer
mail for people while they're on vacation without having multiple
copies spawned on the system.

2. What's New about Elm?

    The most significant difference between Elm and earlier mail
systems is that Elm is screen-oriented.  Upon further use, however,
users will find that Elm is also quite a bit easier to use, and quite
a bit more "intelligent" about sending mail and so on.

3. What systems does it work on?

    Elm was originally written on HP-UX, HP's proprietary version
of AT&T System V, with a little BSD thrown in.  Since then, it has been
ported to AT&T, Berkeley, Sun, UTS, Pyramid and Xenix and should run on
all these systems without any modifications.

4. Does it obey existing mail standards?

    Yes!  That's another of the basic reasons the program was
originally written!  To ensure that the date field, the "From:" line
and so on were all added in the correct format.  The program is 100%
correct according to the RFC-822 electronic mail header protocol
guide.

--
========================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP          Elm Coordinator - Current 2.3PL11
Datacomp Systems, Inc.                 Projected 2.4 Release: Oct 1,1992
[e-mail] or dsinc!syd      Voice: [phone], FAX: [phone]