Subject: Pine won't read /etc/aliases?

From: [email-masked] (David DiGioia)
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 06:37:29 GMT

I am running Pine 3.89 under SunOS 4.1.3.  I like it a lot!

The only problem I have is with mail addressing.  Sometimes it bounces
mail immediately, when the address looks ok to me.

I think the problems arise when the user is on the local net, and I
use an address like: user@hostname, instead of user@domainname.  I
think I also have problems when using multiple To: addressess,
separated by commas; sometimes it seems to bounce one of them, even
though if I resend it to that single address, it mails fine.

BTW, if it makes a difference, I have Pine set up to use domain-name
only.

Since I have an extensive /etc/aliases file, which points all likely
addresses to the correct user@hostname or user@domainname, I think my
problem would be solved if Pine would read the aliases file.  Although
mailtool reads it fine, Pine does not seem to.

Any hints would be appreciated.

Thank you.

...David

.. David Di Gioia | [email-masked]
.. Stout were the words     he spoke to his men:
.. 'Heart must be braver,     courage the bolder,
.. Mood the stouter     as our strength grows less!'
.. Byrhtwold, in "The Battle of Maldon"

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From: [email-masked] (Jim Davis)
Date: 19 Jul 1994 08:12:16 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>, David DiGioia <[email-masked]> wrote:

:Since I have an extensive /etc/aliases file, which points all likely
:addresses to the correct user@hostname or user@domainname, I think my
:problem would be solved if Pine would read the aliases file.  Although
:mailtool reads it fine, Pine does not seem to.
:

/etc/aliases is read by sendmail, not pine (or mailtool).  Pine (and
mailtool) hand off the message you want to send to sendmail to do the
real work of delivery.  So it sounds to me like a sendmail problem.
You can use /usr/ucb/Mail on your Sun to troubleshoot this: try

Mail -v user

and watch the resulting chatter.  Another debugging trick is to telnet
to the smtp port on the machine you want to send mail to and use the
'vrfy' and 'expn' commands to check out alias expansion:

telnet some-machine-name 25
[ ... startup chatter from remote sendmail ... ]
vrfy some-name
expn some-name
quit

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From: [email-masked] (David DiGioia)
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 04:31:15 GMT

Jim Davis ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]>, David DiGioia <[email-masked]> wrote:

: :Since I have an extensive /etc/aliases file, which points all likely
: :addresses to the correct user@hostname or user@domainname, I think my
: :problem would be solved if Pine would read the aliases file.  Although
: :mailtool reads it fine, Pine does not seem to.
: :

: /etc/aliases is read by sendmail, not pine (or mailtool).  Pine (and
: mailtool) hand off the message you want to send to sendmail to do the
: real work of delivery.  So it sounds to me like a sendmail problem.
: You can use /usr/ucb/Mail on your Sun to troubleshoot this: try

Thanks, Jim.

I know about sendmail; the reason I suspect a Pine problems is that I
have been using mailtool on the same system for 2 years without any
major problems; all of a sudden I switch to Pine, and I have lots of
problems.  It's the old "if b after a, then a causes b"; I don't
remember the Latin for it, and I know it's not logically valid.

I'll have to do some more testing, and I'm sure your tips will come in
handy.  BTW, I have been checking the mail addresses that bounce using
sendmail -bv, and they always seem to check out ok!