elm command on hp ux 11i

[John Jimenez]

We are upgrading from 10.20 to 11i. We have programs that e-mail results. But on the new system it is asking to create a .elm directory and alias files. It also says that it can't run in "batch mode", but to run in "normal mode". Is it possible to create a system .elm directory?

[Paul Sperry]

Go ahead and let elm create the dir
It will only do this the first time a user
uses elm. After that it will work as normal

[Helen French]

Did you install all patches after OS installation? Installing this patch and it's dependencies might solve your issue: PHNE_24522 (s700_800 11.11 elm patch).

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

First time you use elm its going to want to create those directories.

elm is not a batch tool, its an interactive one.

use mailx -s for simple batch emails and sendmail scripts for the really complicated ones.

Attaching an example.

SEP

[Helen French]

To add: If you want to preserve old system mail setting, copy required files and parameters to the new OS from $HOME/.elm directory. This directory normally contains user configurable files, alias databse etc. To answer your other question about creating .elm directory - Yes the "elm" command will create it for you and it does not give any problems. You can leep your configuration files and alias on this directory if needed.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Elm is most definitely a batch tool as well as an interactive command. The difference is that in command-line mode, elm will not automatically create a .elm directory in the sender's home directory if .elm does not already exist. In interactive mode the .elm directory will be created if needed. All you need to do is:
cd to sender's home dir
mkdir -m 700 .elm

[John Jimenez]

I installed the patch, but it did not make any difference. We replaced elm -s with mailx -s and it seems to work fine. This is a perfect fix for most of our programmer, (except 1 prgrammer who has about 40-50 scripts to change) oh well....Thanks a lot for the help

[Pete Randall]

John,

There's no need to rewrite all those scripts. Simply create a ".elm" directory in each users' home, as Clay suggested.

for dir in /home/*
do
mkdir -m 700 $dir/.elm
done

That should be all there is to it.


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

I honestly didn't know elm could be effectively used in batch.

mailx -s of course will work.

elm in batch probably won't because of the different characteristics of the utility. If mailx -s is a solution, thats great.

If the need is to simply get the mail out and get on to other things, then mailx -s is good.

I use it in cron as follows:

* * * * * /usr/contrib/bin/script 2>&1 | mailx -s "subject" someone@aol.com

SEP

[John Jimenez]

Yes,I can get it to e-mail but is echoes everything to my screen instead of to the
.elm or Mail directories