NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/mail/elm/4165

Text File | 1993-01-21 | 10.2 KB | 253 lines

Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Path: sparky!uunet!mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!nyx!mhatz
From: [e-mail] (Macs Suck!)
Subject: Re: Elm FAQ
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
    of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
    control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Sender: [e-mail] (netnews admin account)
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 20:58:47 GMT
Lines: 238

I found this at MIT's Pit Manager:


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 2.4 FAQ's.
This posting generated:
Mon Dec 14 20:46:08 EST 1992

Current release version: Elm 2.4 PL17
    This version was released at patch level 0.
    comp.sources.unix Posting-number: (Not yet posted)
    Archive-name: (Not yet posted)
    Patches are posted to comp.sources.bugs and comp.mail.elm
    After they are stable, patches are sent to comp.sources.unix
        The following patch sets have been posted, 1/2, 3, 4/5,
            6, 7/8, 9/10, 11, 12/13, 14-17.
        Archive-name: (No patches yet posted to comp.sources.unix)
    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 3.0
    Current Elm 3.0 status: Development expected to start 1/1/93
    Expected release date: Sometime in 1994.

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)

    ftp.uu.net
      (137.39.1.9, 192.48.96.9)

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

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

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

    In Taiwan:
    NCTUCCCA.edu.tw        Huang, Chih-Hsien [e-mail]
    (140.111.3.21)


The following sites have agreed to make Elm available via anonymous
uucp:
    Site            Contact
    uunet            Elm is /networking/mail/elm

    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.

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 Elm 2.4, 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 Elm adds your local hosts qualification to reply addresses:
(Or why the DANGER WILL ROBINSON KLUDGE is in the code)
    Elm passes any address off to the alias mapper to see if it
    needs expansion.  If you are replying to a bare user name of
    abc, Elm converts it to [e-mail] (assuming internet
    addressing, myhost!abc for the rest).  This is to prevent the
    alias expansion.  If you were to have, in you private Elm alias
    table an alias of abc that pointer to
    [e-mail], if the address wasn't qualified,
    Elm would convert the reply to abc to go to
    [e-mail].  This is generally not what you
    want :-)

If you can guarantee that no private alias will ever match a local user
name on your system, then you can disable the kludge code.  The kludge
will have to remain until 3.0 when Elm will track whether an address
has been/should be expanded, and its prior to and after expansion values.
In 2.x it doesn't do that.

How can I get elm to NOT expand the alias list on outgoing msgs?
Problem is if a list has, say, 100 names in it then sending to the list
expands every single one of the 100 names. I would like the message to
have the "To" line = the name of the list itself and have the actual
recipients' names not appear.
    You can't and don't want to. (and yet you can also) An alias is
    a mechanism of making Elm address a message to multiple
    people.  However, when the message gets to its destination, Elm
    also has to allow that person do a group reply.  If the message
    only has your local private elm alias in it, the group reply
    will try and go to that alias name.  Unfortunately, that name
    is meaningless to that other person (its private to both Elm
    and you).

    There are two solutions:

    The preferred if replies are desired:
        Have your mail administrator create a file include
        alias for you in your MTA (sendmail, et al).. This is
        usually of the type

    alias    :include:/some/path/to/a/file

    where the file would be in a place you control and you have write access
    to the file.  Then you can add/drop members of the list, and
    the mail just goes to the alias, and, someone sending to
    [e-mail] will be able to send to all members. (group
    reply works correctly)

    The less preferred method: (no group reply is possible)
        Send the message to yourself, with a bcc to the Elm
        alias.
    Of course, the Bcc: won't be expanded by the MTA internal to
    the message, so it won't appear in the message.


>From comp.mail.elm, [e-mail] (DaviD W. Sanderson) writes:
>... whoever wrote the default termcap
>and/or terminfo descriptions for xterm included in the ti/te strings
>the special escape sequences to make xterm switch between the normal
>and alternate screen buffers.  These sequences are:
>
>    \E[?47h        - use alternate screen buffer
>    \E[?47l        - use normal screen buffer
>...
>The elm code is just fine as it is.  If you change it so that it
>doesn't ever send ti/te, you'll just break elm for somebody else.  Fix
>your termcap/terminfo definition instead.

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, 3.2 or newer, to compile Elm
during Configure, specify -U__STR__ to the 'Additional CFLAGS'
question.  No other changes are needed.

    On IBM RISC 6000 AIX, prior to 3.2, 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]