VMS Mail

[Pat Reinert]

I have been trying to send VMS mail to outside vendors. However, since these emails are coming from VMS logins, such as 123pat, the spam/virus detection software at the vendor site thinks it's spam and won't accept it. How can I initiate mail from VMS with a nonVMS FROM address, like pat.reinert@nisc.cc? Or does anyone know how to send a nonVMS mail from VMS? Thanks.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello Pat,

from a technical point the easiest would be to create an account on the VMS system that does not match the spam filters on the receivers end. (Which are IMHO not very smart, since there are lots of sites where having digits in the username is corporate policy).

Another way is to use e.g. Perl and the Mail::Sender module from the VMS system to access an SMTP server. Using this you can put the address you desire in the from field.

Greetings, Martin

P.S. A general outline of the Perl solution can be found at http://www.decus.de:8080/www/vms/sw/notes/perl_mod.htmlx

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

For recent versions of TCPIP services (V5.0 and above) you can define the logical name TCPIP$SMTP_FROM to specify an IP style from address.

In your case:

$ DEFINE TCPIP$SMTP_FROM "pat.reinet@nisc.cc"

(it's up to you to choose an address that will get somewhere sensible).

Note that this capability may have been deliberately disabled by your system manager. If it's not working, check for the system logical name:

TCPIP$SMTP_PROHIBIT_USER_HEADERS

That said, MAIL should have generated some kind of valid address...

[Pat Reinert]

Martin, thanks for your suggestion. However, we do not have Perl installed and this may be a little over my head.

John, I tried defining the TCPIP logical and this seems to work. Yeah!!!

Thank you both so much!