Forwarding MAIL (VAXMAIL)

[Jack Trachtman]

How can I forward VMS MAIL to multiple recipients?

MAIL has a "SET FORMWARD recipient" option. If I enter a comma separated list, I get an error msg. If I enter a reference to a distribution file,
e.g. SET FORWARD @BLAH.DIS, it's accepted but doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Multipe-destination forwarding has been disabled since VMS V5 (1988-ish ).

You may want to check out the 'deliver' tool on teh OpenVMS Freeware. It has this and much more functionality beyond the basic VMSmail.

Attached part of a reply from my buddy Marios made in 1988 explaining the decision back then.

hth,
Hein.

---

Nope, you're not the first and only person to have used this non-feature (it used to work by "luck", not by design) and you are almost certainly amongst the many who have unwittingly caused untold grief by using it.

You've essentially got it -- without serious MAIL-11 protocol changes in the area of address-acknowledgement matching, doing "fan-out" forwarding cannot work. Basically, the protocol isn't built for it.

To, briefly, list the evils of this practice:

It can result in you or OTHER PEOPLE on the sender's "To:" list not receiving a message WITHOUT the sender being told that anything is amiss.

Furthermore, if the sender is using NMAIL, it can result in you or OTHER PEOPLE getting multiple copies of a message.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello,

actually Deliver is on the Freeware V4

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/freeware/freeware40/deliver/

which did come out quite a while back. While not for this particular purpose, we do use it in our operations to automate processes based on the contents of incoming mail.

Greetings, Martin

[Martin Vorlaender]

It should be noted, however, that some features of DELIVER can only be used with VMS v7 by installing MAIL with privileges (which poses a security leak).

I use the MX software (see http://www.madgoat.com/mx.html) mailing list feature for this.

[Terry Yeomans]

Jack,
I had to create a multiple send mail com file recently for operators on shift.
The way I got roud it was to do the following:
Create a file file_name.dis
In this should be your mail recipients, ie:
fred.flintstone@bedrock.com
barney.rubble@bedrock.com
etc etc
In your mail command line, do the following:
MAIL /SUBJECT="whatever" -file_to_be_sent.txt; "@file_name.dis;"
Hope this helps.
Terry.

[Eberhard Wacker]

As Terry written. It can be used with a procedure for interactive mailing and in batch jobs. But there is 1 problem: if you are using VMS accounts as recipients e.g.
mynode::Fred
Barney@wherever.com
and if Fred does not exist or mynode is not reachable then Barney will get no mail. What we do in this error case is: read the distribution file line by line and send the mail to each entry. Not much effort and on our side no need to use a special tool.
Cheers,
Eberhard

[Mobeen_1]

Jack,
I am not sure if you got that set forward right...

Try the following syntax
MAIL> SET FORWARD[/USER=name] user@host

Note: TCPIP SMTP services are needed for this

regards
Mobeen

[Jack Trachtman]

Thanks for everyone's replies.

Just let me restate: I'm looking for a solution for MAIL FORWARDING because we have some production accounts used for batch jobs & etc where no one normally logs in interactively. When mail sent from batch jobs or whatever can't be delivered, it gets returned to those accounts. I would like to be able to set MAIL FORWARDING to a few people so that they would know immediately when mail failed to get sent.

The mail distribution list function (file of xxx.DIS) works when sending mail directly via the MAIL cmd, but does not work with the SET FORWARD cmd, nor does entering a comma separated list to that cmd. Hein has indicated that this "feature" that I want isn't available.

The use of non-commercial products is frowned upon here, so I may not be able to use the freeware suggested.

I seem to be back to my original "klugey" idea of writing a script which, each minute or so, checks to see if there is any mail in the specific accounts and if so forwards it. I was hoping for a simpler, more elegant solution.

Thanks again

[Zeni B. Schleter]

This is not be supported, I think, but it has worked for years and we use it for very limited cases. We define a logical for the distribution list and send mail to the logical. We use it so that mail sent to a system account goes to a limited number of system managers. We use it for mail sent to the operators. The operators are identified by an identifier and a procedure runs nightly to update the list.

This works interactively just like sending to a user. It has the same potential for mail delivery failure if one of the accounts is deleted and the list is not updated.

The logical has to include the "@" sign.
- Z. Schleter

[Art Wiens]

": I'm looking for a solution for MAIL FORWARDING because we have some production accounts used for batch jobs & etc where no one normally logs in interactively. "

So I assume (hasn't really be stated explicitly) that you would like to receive these mail messages external to VMS, perhaps Exchange Server? Why not just forward the account's VMS mail to an SMTP email address for a distribution list?

MAIL> set forward smtp%"group_emailaddress@yoursupport_domain.com"

Setting up an Exchange distribution list with an email address is routine. Other email servers must have the same capability.

HTH,
Art

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

If you do setup a list for this, why bother sending the mail to an (unused) operator account in the first place and not just directly sending the mail to the list address.

Btw, LISTSERV is available for VMS and MX does contain a mailling list function too.

Greetings, Martin