References: <427E8378.1010309 at brenda-arkle dot demon dot co dot
uk><873bsxbclc.fsf at codesourcery dot com><20050508225133.GA2890 at
dementia dot proulx dot com><87r7gh9tmq.fsf at codesourcery dot com>
Apologies if this has lost its "References" field - it shouldn't have
done, but off-hand I can't work out how to verify it. Hence the line
above (with mildly obfuscated addresses)
My system has developed, for hysterical reasons, as a minimal
installation of GNU/Linux on a P4. Minimal really was minimal -
no networking, no X... Everything else has been added on demand.
I managed to get my networking running with no problems without
ever encountering mail, Mail, mailx, or any version of sendmail.
Don't blame the distribution - but surely I'm not alone in my
position?
Nice as it is to know that "mailx" is what I wanted, and it is
easily available, the docs didn't say "mailx", they said "Mail".
"Mail" was unhelpful (I wasn't helped), and "mail" would not
have been better. And, yes, I was misconstruing "sendmail" as
referring to the Configuration Monster from Hell. Doubtless
"an experienced Unix person" would not have been in this
position, but that's not a great deal of help to me. Zack and
Bob, however, *have* been helpful (thanks to both of you!), and
in my darker and more cynical moments I suspect them of being
experienced Unix persons themselves.
The mere absence of Mail/sendmail wasn't the essence of my problem.
A solution "by hand" was still possible. When feeding the
script output to `sh' failed, I could (and did) spool it to a file
instead, from which I could extract the inline data. The difficulty
was rather that I couldn't find what executables I was expected
to be using. This in turn introduced an unnecessary element of
guesswork into the solution "by hand", which was bothering me. I
didn't want to be sending junk to the mailing list. Now I know
what I'm supposed to have been doing, the rest is relatively
straightforward. Special system restrictions may make it
impracticable to install the expected tools, but this is really
a red herring.
Can something be done to make the problem less obstructive?
It's not obvious that the script should try to be too clever and
work out which name to use. Mail looks as useful as any name
it can have hard-coded. However, a comment could be added
to the script *output*; something like
if ! [ -x "`which Mail`" ]; then
echo Modify the script, or set up a symlink, to use \`mailx\'
echo if \`Mail\' doesn\'t exist: mailx and \`Mail\' should be
echo synonyms. If neither is present, \`mail\' might work.
echo mail from GNU mailtools should work.
exit
fi
if ! [ -x /usr/sbin/sendmail ]; then
echo This script may fail if \`/usr/sbin/sendmail\' is not available,
echo depending on the version of \`Mail\' being used.
echo This is NOT the very large MTA whose home is at
echo http://www.sendmail.org.
echo You may need to set up a symlink to an equivalent program.
echo mail.remote from GNU mailtools should work.
fi
and it can be mentioned in the docs: something like
You must have Mail in your path: Mail is (or can be made to be)
an alias for mailx, which you should have. This requires
/usr/sbin/sendmail, which is NOT the huge MTA from
http://www.sendmail.org but something much smaller.
GNU mailutils include versions of both, which will need to be
renamed/linked.
--
"Before they made me, they broke the mould"
Bernard Leak
