topic Re: SMTP Mail (SFF) in Operating System - OpenVMS

SMTP Mail (SFF)

Jerry Rieman — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:54:58 GMT

We use the TCPIP$SMTP_SFF.EXE program extensively to send mail messages both with and without attachments. When SFF is executed it queues the mail message to the smtp queue with a default priority of 100. Sometimes we queue 1000's of mail messages and the queue gets backed up. During this backup in the queue, we would like to let high priority users send mail messages and pop them to the front of the SMTP queue. We can do so manually (after the item is in the SMTP queue) by doing a "set/entry=xxx/priority=200" command and it immediately places the entry at the front of the SMTP queue. To avoid this manual process, is there a way to advise TCPIP$SMTP_SFF.EXE to place a mail message in the SMTP queue at a priority other than the default of 100 when TCPIP$SMTP_SFF.EXE is executed?

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

Hoff — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:27:53 GMT

AFAIK, no. There's no re-prioritization setting, and no queue redirection setting within the tool.

That would be a reasonable enhancement request.

Whatever tool calling TCPIP$SMTP_SFF.EXE would likely need to deal with this using f$getqui and such; to deal with this requirement more directly.

Scan the queue using f$getqui looking for these SMTP log-jams, and use (say) the associated username and/or some other distinctive attribute to determine which queue entries to drop priority. You could run this at, say, five minute intervals. Or (better) run this from the same sequence that calls TCPIP$SMTP_SFF.EXE.

There are examples of calling f$getqui around; it's a mildly hairy lexical function, and was a common question over in the old Ask The Wizard area. (To find this and various other DCL examples, download http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wizard.zip and search through the archives.)

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

Ian Miller. — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:08:27 GMT

for other examples of F$GETQUI see
http://dcl.openvms.org

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

John Gillings — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:17:05 GMT

Jerry,

Unfortunately TCPIP$SMTP_SFF doesn't set $ENTRY to tell you the entry number it just submitted. Oh well :-(

However, you can predict the entry name to some extent, which lets you use an "easy" F$GETQUI call.

A wildcard DISPLAY_ENTRY on the entry name doesn't need to set queue context. It will find all entries with matching names on all queues. The entry name will look something like:

_-

You could try this:

$ MCR TCPIP$SMTP_SFF
$! Note 2 digit year in julian date!
$ entname=F$EXTRACT(2,6,F$CVTIME(,,"DATE")-"-"-"-")+-
"%%%%%%%%_"+-
F$EDIT(F$GETJPI("","USERNAME"),"COLLAPSE")+"-*"
$ EntLoop:
$ ent=F$GETQUI("DISPLAY_ENTRY","ENTRY_NUMBER",-
entname,"WILDCARD")
$ IF ent.NES.""
$ THEN
$ SET ENTRY 'ent'/PRIORITY=200
$ GOTO entloop
$ ENDIF

If the entry doesn't exist, you can assume it's already been executed, so you don't need to bump the priority. As it stands, the code will find all entries submitted by the user "today". You could get a bit more specific by filling in more of the time fields, replacing the % wildcards (but remember you don't know the exact time, so going finer than hours and minutes might not work). There are also day, hour and minute rollover timing windows if you want to get really picky, but it's probably close enough for what you want. The other potential issue is that entries which fail for some reason will be retried. I don't think your increased priority will be propagated to the retry (but then, my guess is you wouldn't care about that?)

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

Hoff — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:32:29 GMT

And the other option here is to move to a list server or mail server; to move to software specifically intended to manage and to ship out boatloads of mail messages...

There are ports of MajorDomo and ListServ around (see below), and there are other servers available.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/majordomo/
http://www.lsoft.com/

There are older packages around (older MX was on the Freeware, and more current bits will likely require a discussion with Matt Madison) and it PMDF (commercial, Process Software) is almost certainly an option.

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

Jerry Rieman — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:30:58 GMT

I appreciate the replies. Our approach has been to modify the sysgen param defquepri and lower it while we are submitting the batch e-mails and then return it to normal when the batch job is complete. This is a dynamic param so it is pretty simple to do. Of course, any users submitting their own tasks during this period would get the same priority value as well.

Is SYSGEN the only way to change any dynamic sysgen params on the fly? I did not spot any system service calls for this - or did I just miss it.

Re: SMTP Mail (SFF)

Jan van den Ende — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:04:13 GMT

Jerry,

from your Forum Profile:

I have assigned points to 2 of 26 responses to my questions.

(dating back to 2006!)

Maybe you can find some time to do some assigning?

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

Mind, I do NOT say you necessarily need to give lots of points. It is fully up to _YOU_ to decide how many. If you consider an answer is not deserving any points, you can also assign 0 ( = zero ) points, and then that answer will no longer be counted as unassigned.
Consider, that every poster took at least the trouble of posting for you!

To easily find your streams with unassigned points, click your own name somewhere.
This will bring up your profile.
Near the bottom of that page, under the caption "My Question(s)" you will find "questions or topics with unassigned points " Clicking that will give all, and only, your questions that still have unassigned postings.
If you have closed some of those streams, you must "Reopen" them to "Submit points". (After which you can "Close" again)

Do not forget to explicitly activate "Submit points", or your effort gets lost again!!

Thanks on behalf of your Forum colleagues.

PS. - nothing personal in this. I try to post it to everyone with this kind of assignment ratio in this forum. If you have received a posting like this before - please do not take offence - none is intended!

PPS. - Zero points for this.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe