Zack Weinberg wrote: > Bernard Leak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Fine - but then it tells me (actually, the docs said this already) > > that I need "the Mail program" in my path. Not wanting to be > > obstructive or anything, but ... wot? > > This program should have been included with your operating system (I > am assuming you are using a Unix variant). Not having it indicates a > monumental error in the packaging or installation of your OS. > mailx is the traditional command-line-mode mail user agent. > Even if you don't use it it may be required by other programs.
Just to add to Zack's fine answer and to tie some of these things together. In the old, old days the program /bin/mail was a simple command line mail program. Functional. But very stark. No way to specify a -s "subject string" on the command line for example. BSD added to this program and many others. They called their mail program "mail" as well and installed it in /usr/ucb/mail IIRC. Having the same program names worried others. So the program was also called called "Mail" to differentiate it from "/bin/mail". The 1994 Makefile installs the program as both "mail" and "Mail". http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/mail/Makefile?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup But having a program name which only differed by case bothered AT&T and so in SysV they called the program "mailx". This was distributed to most of the commercial unix systems of the day such as HP-UX where mailx is found but Mail is not. In the old days (old, not old old) everyone used either Mail or mailx depending on whether they were running a BSD or a SysV flavor system. Mail/mailx was vastly superior to /bin/mail. I used mailx for years. I know people who still only use mailx for mail. Habits die hard. POSIX has generally favored SysV and standardized on the "mailx" name and functionality. POSIX standard system are required to supply a "mailx" program. http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/mailx.html In response the *BSD generally include a symlink to all three "mail", "Mail" and "mailx" for compatibility. Debian supplies both for compatibility to either too. However RH only supplies Mail and do not supply mailx and miss on POSIX compatibility. And the reverse compatibility with BSD when HP-UX supplies only mailx and does not supply a Mail program. So you may have to switch from one to the other name for this functionality because it is used by a lot of scripts and programs. > > Now it wants 'sendmail'. ExCUSE me! I need to have *sendmail* > > installed in order to submit a test report? Perhaps more to the > > point, am I required to have *configured* it? > [...] > There is also the standard Unix low-level interface for sending > mail, /usr/sbin/sendmail. Agreed. /usr/sbin/sendmail is a defacto standard interface to a generic Mail Transport Agent for sending mail. Also used by a lot of scripts and programs. > Again, not having an MTA installed indicates a monumental error in the > packaging or installation of your OS. You should have gotten all this > stuff automatically, and the installation sequence should have > prompted you for mail information and then set up the MTA for you. Agreed. However if you are working in some port environment you may be trying to bootstrap these things along and may want/need gcc to get other components bootstrapped. You may not have a working system to begin with. If you are trying to make progress regardless of the system problems you can probably replicate the Mail/mailx functionality. It reads standard input. It mails the contents to the address provided on the command line. The "-s" option sets the subject. I do not think any other options are used. As long as you do that then you can fake things out with a replicant. Bob
