Subject: Problem with my e-mail

From: Mary Monroe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 21:28:12 -0400 (EDT)

To who it may concern,

  For some reason I am able to recieve e-mail, but not able to send it.  I
ws given this e-mail address if I had any problems.  Please if you know
what is going on get back in touch with me.

                                               Thank-you,
                                                  chip

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 09:31:23 -0400

> what is going on get back in touch with me.

    For starters, comp.mail.pine is not an email address.  It is the
name of a newsgroup.  I am not being picky -- there really is a
difference, both practically and technically.  If this were an email
address and you weren't able to send email, we could not have seen your
message, could we?  :-)

    As for your problem, we cannot help you until you provide more
information.  Just telling an auto mechanic, "My car's making a funny
noise" is insufficient data for him to be able to do very much about
fixing your car.

    The more information you can provide, the more likely it is that
someone will be able to help you.  Does your site have a help desk or
user information center?  If so, that is the first place to ask for
help.  Otherwise, diagnostic information is necessary.

    From your message header, it appears that you are using Pine
version 3.95, although it is always nice to have that confirmed.  (That
information is very important.)  I do not recognize an apparent system
designator of "GSO."  What operating system are you using?  What
version?  What kind of hardware?  What mail transfer agent is involved? 
(Sendmail?  Some other?  What version?)  Most importantly of all, when
you try to send mail, *exactly* what happens?  What kind of error
message pops up?  How do you know and why do you say that you cannot
send mail?

    I hope you won't take offense, but just saying, "It's broken. 
What's wrong?" just isn't enough information for people to be able to
help you.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 17:12:03 -0700

> address and you weren't able to send email, we could not have seen your

If you look closer at the headers of her message, it looks like it
passed through the pine-info=>comp.mail.pine gateway at psg.com.  Thus
she apparently did send her message via e-mail... 

> designator of "GSO."  What operating system are you using?

GSO is the port for Solaris using the GCC compiler (as opposed to the
Solaris compiler).

>  What version?  What kind of hardware?  What mail transfer agent is
> involved? (Sendmail?  Some other?  What version?)  Most importantly
> of all, when you try to send mail, *exactly* what happens?  What
> kind of error message pops up?  How do you know and why do you say
> that you cannot send mail? 

All good questions.....

--DLM

-- 
|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, Box 354841
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA