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Annotation of 43BSDReno/share/doc/ucs/mmdf/p6, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: .SH
        !             2: The Local Channel
        !             3: .PP
        !             4: The local channel remained unchanged until late 1983, when
        !             5: a major reworking of the channel was done by BRL.  The old
        !             6: local channel could handle delivery in three basic ways.
        !             7: The first and most common was to deliver directly to the
        !             8: user's default mailbox, appending the message to the end.
        !             9: Second, the user could put a program in his
        !            10: private bin directory
        !            11: called ``rcvmail'' that would be called by the local channel
        !            12: to handle delivery of the message.
        !            13: If the user program (rcvmail) did not complete successfully,
        !            14: a standard delivery was made instead.
        !            15: .PP
        !            16: In early versions of the local channel for MMDFII, Dave Crocker added
        !            17: support for mailing to files and pipes, but the original version
        !            18: had a number of security problems,
        !            19: mostly due to \fBsubmit\fR, so the capability
        !            20: was not much used.
        !            21: .PP
        !            22: The latest version of the local channel has kept
        !            23: the alias-file-originated delivery to files
        !            24: and pipes, and the changes Steve Kille
        !            25: has made to the \fBsubmit\fR program have also made this facility reliable
        !            26: from a security standpoint.
        !            27: The rcvmail mechanism has been totally scrapped in favor of a
        !            28: more general and powerful mechanism which I will call
        !            29: ``mail delivery files''.
        !            30: .PP
        !            31: Mail delivery files were designed to give the user as much flexibility
        !            32: over how his mail was delivered as possible without opening security holes.
        !            33: The mail system was changed to allow local addresses to have a
        !            34: suffix appended which consists of an `=' and any simple text;
        !            35: this suffix is totally ignored except when using mail delivery files.
        !            36: Each user may create a ``.maildelivery'' file in his home
        !            37: directory which contains one or more delivery specifications.
        !            38: A delivery specification has five parts, separated by field separators, 
        !            39: \fI<FS>\fR, which may be tabs, spaces or commas ``,''.
        !            40: .sp .5
        !            41: .ti .6i
        !            42: \fIfield\ \ <FS>\ \ pattern\ \ <FS>\ \ action\ \ <FS>\ \ A/R/\?\fR\ \ <FS>\ \ ``\fIoptional string\fR''
        !            43: .sp .5
        !            44: The \fIfield\fR is the name of a field that is to be searched for a pattern.
        !            45: Currently supported fields are \fIFrom\fR, \fITo\fR, \fISubject\fR, 
        !            46: \fISender\R, and \fICc\fR, plus three special fields, \fIaddr\fR, \fI*\fR,
        !            47: and \fI*\fR.
        !            48: The \fIaddr\fR field is used to match against the address being delivered to
        !            49: \fIincluding\fR the suffix (e.g. ``dpk=unixwizards'').
        !            50: If the user subscribes to different lists with different suffixes
        !            51: he can use his mail delivery file to segregate his mail by source.
        !            52: To do this based on the message text alone is impossible to
        !            53: do right 100% of the time.
        !            54: The \fIdefault\fR field matches if the message has not been delivered
        !            55: by any of the preceding lines in the ``.maildelivery'' file.
        !            56: The \fI*\fR field always matches, regardless of any other action.
        !            57: .PP
        !            58: The \fIpattern\fR is some sequence of characters that may be matched
        !            59: in the \fIfield\R.  Case is not significant, and multiple fields of the same
        !            60: name are concatenated, separated by spaces.  If the field does not need as
        !            61: pattern, a dash (-) or similar symbol is usually inserted to show that the
        !            62: field is present but not used.
        !            63: .PP
        !            64: The \fIaction\fR is ``file'' or ``>'', ``pipe'' or ``|'', or ``destroy''.
        !            65: ``File'' or ``>'' appends the message in standard mailbox format to the
        !            66: file specified in the optional string.
        !            67: ``Pipe'' or ``|''  causes the
        !            68: program in the optional string to be run with the message available on
        !            69: the standard input.
        !            70: ``Destroy'' causes the mail to be thrown
        !            71: away silently.  This is useful if you go away on a long trip and don't
        !            72: want to unsubscribe to lists, but also don't want to come home to
        !            73: several thousand messages.
        !            74: .PP
        !            75: The \fIA/R/?\fR flag is a single character: `A' for accept, `R' for reject,
        !            76: or `?' for accept if not delivered yet.  This flag indicates whether the action,
        !            77: if successful, is sufficient to mark the message as delivered.
        !            78: If the message is undelivered at the end of the .maildelivery file,
        !            79: the local channel next consults a system-wide file, such as
        !            80: \fI/usr/lib/maildevliery\fR.  If the message is still undelivered at the end of
        !            81: the system-wide file, a standard delivery is made to the default mailbox.  
        !            82: This protects against
        !            83: mail being lost due to lack of foresight or errors in the maildelivery files.
        !            84: .PP
        !            85: The file is always read completely so that several matches
        !            86: can be made, and several actions taken.
        !            87: For example, the user could have a TTY alert
        !            88: message sent to his terminal and also have the message resent to his new
        !            89: home machine by the following .maildelivery file:
        !            90: .sp .5
        !            91: .in +.6i
        !            92: addr\ \ \ \ dpk\ \ \ \ pipe\ \ \ R\ \ ``/usr/mmdf/mailutils/ttyalert''
        !            93: .br
        !            94: addr\ \ \ \ dpk\ \ \ \ pipe\ \ \ A\ \ ``/usr/brl/bin/resend [email protected]''
        !            95: .in -.6i
        !            96: .sp .5
        !            97: The last line, if completed without error (a return code of 0 from resend),
        !            98: would mark the message as delivered because of the A (accept) flag in the
        !            99: fourthcolumn.

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