Conference vmszoo::vmsmail

1942.0. "smtp% causes DIS list to act like command procedure??" by PADC::PDONAHUE (Paul Donahue) Fri May 30 1997 17:15

I am having a weird problem when I send mail from the command line to a dis list
which has an smtp% recipient.  As soon as it hits the smtp line, the rest of the
file seems to be passed to DCL as a command procedure (very weird).

Here is a transcript:

Username: PDONAHUE/NOCOM
Password:

                           PADC VMSCluster
                       OpenVMS Version 6.2-1H3

[snip.  I did NOCOM so I have no side effects of my login.com.]

    Last non-interactive login on Thursday, 29-MAY-1997 16:27:57.13
$ create foo.dis
smtp%"[email protected]"
PADC::PDONAHUE
ROCK::PDONAHUE
 Exit
$ mail nl: /subj="this is a test" @foo.dis
%DCL-W-SKPDAT, image data (records not beginning with "$") ignored
$ mail

MAIL> send
To:     @foo.dis
CC:
Subj:   testing
Enter your message below. Press CTRL/Z when complete, or CTRL/C to quit:
 Exit

MAIL> sh trans
You have not specified a default transport.

MAIL> exit

The first mail gets sent to [email protected], but not to PADC or ROCK. 
Instead, it looks like those lines are passed to DCL, which gives the
%DCL-W-SKPDAT message.

When I interactively send the mail, it does go to my other accounts with no
problem.  It also works if there is no smtp% recipient.

Check this out:
$ create foo.dis
smtp%"[email protected]"
$ sh time
 Exit
$ mail nl: /subj="this is a test" @foo.dis
  30-MAY-1997 13:09:59
$

So in fact, DCL is executing the "$ sh time" line I put in the dis list.  That
seems like a bug to me.  There's a potential for trojan horses if you use
someone else's dis list.

Any ideas?


Thanks,

-Paul

    
    	Put quotes around the @name.dis from the command line:
    
    $ mail nl: /subj="this is a test" "@foo.dis"
    
    
    	And BTW, this isn't an SMTP thing ... it's for any .DIS list.

Re: .1

Thanks.  I'll go ahead and change that.

I guess it's a documented feature that I didn't know about.  From the "examples"
help page for @:

         $ LINK SYNAPSE@QUALIFIERS

         This example shows a command procedure, QUALIFIERS.COM, that
         contains qualifiers for the LINK command. When you enter the
         LINK command, specify the command procedure immediately after
         the file specification of the file you are linking. Do not type
         a space between the file specification and the @ command.

This means that you can't say "HELP @ EXAMPLES" even with quotes (as far as I
can tell).  It seems strange that you can have an @ in someplace other than the
first non-whitespace character of the command line, but I guess it's too late to
change that.


Thanks,

-Paul