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- Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
- Path: sparky!uunet!ukma!psuvax1!leps5.phys.psu.edu!kenh
- From: kenh@leps5.phys.psu.edu (Ken Hornstein)
- Subject: Re: Problems with sendmail called from ELM - ME TOO!
- Message-ID: <Bxto0D.6s9@cs.psu.edu>
- Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: leps5.phys.psu.edu
- Organization: Penn State, Laboratory for Elementary Particle Science
- References: <1992Nov13.175323@hlrz24.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de> <DUG.92Nov16173206@morlich.turing.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 18:43:24 GMT
- Lines: 42
-
- In article <DUG.92Nov16173206@morlich.turing.ac.uk> dug@turing.ac.uk (& Scoular) writes:
- >Hi All,
- >In article <1992Nov13.175323@hlrz24.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de> melin@hlrz24.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de (Stephan Melin) writes:
- >
- >> at our site we have a problem whith ELM sending mail:
- >> when sending mail to certain sites whith ELM the mail
- >> never gets delivered. The message on the console reads
- >> something like:
- >> ... sendmail, nethang connection timed out
- >> Ok, one might think, it is just a problem with our
- >> connection, but when sending mail with the "mail"
- >> program or any other mailer to the same destination
- >> this never happens.
- >> Our system is a SUN-cluster running SUN-OS4.1.
- >
- > We get this too, it seems to happen when users choose to use
- > emacs as their elm editor. The exact error we get is...
- >
- >NOQUEUE: SYSERR: net hang reading from mailhost: Connection timed out
-
- The problem lies with the version of sendmail Sun ships, and the now-infamous
- OR option.
-
- A short synopsis: Sun has an option in their sendmail config files that, when
- enabled, will deliver mail to a central mailhost IF the mail spool is NFS
- mounted. This is actually a nice feature; unfortunately, it is implemented
- VERY poorly. There are a ton of problems that happen when you enable OR;
- one of them is IF you don't end a message with a newline, you will get the
- "net hang" error message, and sendmail will eat the message for breakfast.
- Vi doesn't let you end a message with a newline; but emacs does.
-
- The solution?
-
- Get your system administrator to upgrade to IDA sendmail (something
- that should be done anyway).
-
- Don't use emacs :-)
-
- Set a emacs option so it always adds a newline (I forget what the
- option is, tho)
-
- --Ken
-