🚀 go-pugleaf

Michael Doyle <miked> wrote:
>We run SUNOS and connect to Demon over 14.4 Modem.  In our office we use POP
>for the PCs and sendmail forthe other UNIX boxes.  What I'd like to know, is
>how Demon get the waiting mail to be sent to me after I attach?  Is it all in
>the /usr/spool/mqueue area and somehow my login causes a queue run to be
>forced?  How is that achieved when the login is on a router box?  The reason I
>want to know is I would like to connect a couple of home users (UNIX) to the
>system and I seem to have to run the sendmail queue really frequently to get
>anything working.  Surely Demon can't do this?

I'm not entirely sure whether you're concerned about incoming or
outgoing mail here, this is how I understand it works:

Incoming:  

Yes, your login to demon causes some form of message to go
to the mail machines (punt, punt2, etc.) which then try and contact
your machine using SMTP, (they also retry every few minutes while you
are connected) if they have mail queued for you.

Exact details of how it's done are probably commercially confidential.

What it means for you, is that whilst logged in you must have an SMTP
program listening for connections. Most people will have one running
always anyway. I use "/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd" - note there's no "-q".

Outgoing:

Your sendmail normally queues mail it can't deliver immediately
(eg. because you're not connected), and if you use the "-q" option it
will retry the queued mail every given-time-interval. This is not
particularly useful for dial-up since only by luck will a queue run
coincide with a connection.

Most ppp/slip setups have some form of script that is run
post-connection eg. "ip-up" for ppp. This script can be used to force
a sendmail queue run after connection, I use "/usr/sbin/sendmail -q".

Thus: when connected, mail is sent immediately, otherwise it is
queued, and all queued mail is sent after each connection.
      

Hope this helps

ray

-- 
Ray Auchterlounie                Research Student (still) at:
<rda@kythera.demon.co.uk>            Signal Processing Group
<rda@eng.cam.ac.uk>                  Cambridge University Engineering Dept.
                "Don't ask me about my thesis (TM)"