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Conference abbott::mailworks-unix

Title:Mailworks-unix
Notice:V2.0.4 now available -- see Note 4.375
Moderator:TAMARA::NEUMAN::Neumann
Created:Wed Jun 02 1993
Last Modified:Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1384
Total number of notes:5851

1371.0. "dead.letter contents" by BACHUS::CLEVELAND (L'Escargot) Wed Apr 23 1997 12:22

    
    I have a customer who had some problems (now cleared up) but in the
    aftermath would like to find out more about certain things.
    
    A quick description as provided to me about their setup:
    
    "X.400 messages come in via an X.25 connection.  These messages are
    addressed to a mailbox that is defined in Mailworks message store. The
    messages are picked up by a script using the Mailworks CLI and are
    moved to a directory that is periodically scanned by the host and the
    messages are picked up by the host using ftp.
    
    Outgoing messages are put into a directory on the UNIX server, picked
    up by a script, injected via CLI into Mailworks and sent out via
    X.400."
    
    What they need to know about is the existence of dead.letter. I thought
    this file was created by sendmail. Is it utilised by mailworks also?
    
    They also want to know more about the format (is there one?!) of
    dead.letter and whether the contents can be rescued and rerouted from 
    dead.letter.
    
    The reason for wanting to know all these details is that these are
    banking transactions so are deemed to be rather important (could be your 
    pay cheque!) and they want to be able to ensure that they can at least 
    fix things without loss of data is they have future problems, so the more 
    detail that can be provided the better.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Brian Cleveland         CSC - Brussels
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1371.1Pretty please?!BACHUS::CLEVELANDL'EscargotMon Apr 28 1997 13:419
    
    Is there any chance of anybody being able to supply the answer to this,
    or to even point me in the direction of someone who can respond?
    
    This is quite an important question to our customer.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Brian
1371.2RE: 1371.1TAMARA::NEUMAN::NeumannStan NeumannMon Apr 28 1997 17:0218
You haven't gotten a response partly because we are not
very familiar with sendmail.

dead.letter *is* a sendmail file.  It is neither created
by MailWorks, nor is it used by MailWorks.

I don't know anything about the format of dead.letter,
or how you can re-route it.

My suggestion is that you have a script that periodically
checks for a dead.letter file, and notifies a human being
if it finds one - then the person can judge whether it is
possible to recover the information in the file.

As you get more experience with the file, you might
be able to automate it.

-Stan
1371.3BACHUS::CLEVELANDL'EscargotTue Apr 29 1997 08:437
    
    Thanks for responding. That corresponds pretty much with what I
    thought was the case. 
    
    Regards,
    
    Brian
1371.4BACHUS::CLEVELANDL'EscargotTue May 06 1997 12:5814
    
    A further question now regarding the way that Mailworks deals with
    mail. Can you tell me how the messages are actually moved around from
    one machine to another? Do you copy them, use sendmail or something
    else?
    
    The reason I ask is that the customer wants to find out where in the
    process described in .0 mail could end up going wrong and ending up in
    a dead.letter. From this they might then be able to formulate some plan 
    for correcting the problem and moving the mail on in the process.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Brian
1371.5RE: 1371.4TAMARA::NEUMAN::NeumannStan NeumannThu May 15 1997 15:3333
The way that MailWorks deals with mail is a rather broad
question.  In your case, I think you are dealing with
a single MailWorks server, and the question relates to 
moving mail from the MailWorks server to whatever
machine is running the MAILbus MTA - if not, you will
need to make the question more specific.

To answer the question I think you are asking, for outbound
X.400 mail, MailWorks uses a process called x488gsend to
transfer the message to the MTA.  For inbound message,
a process called x488grecv picks up the message from
the MTA.  In all cases, the message is either 
transferred in or out, or a non-delivery is generated
(if there is an addressing or other problem.)

In no case is true X.400 mail sent to dead.letter -
that file is used strictly by the SMTP mail system.

The one possibility that I can imagine is if a message
coming into MailWorks through the command line had
an address that looked like an SMTP address to MailWorks,
then MailWorks would pass that message to sendmail, and
sendmail might deposit it in dead.letter.  To determine
if this was happening, you would have to look at the
message in dead.letter to try to determine it's source.

The other possibility is that this is a message that
arrived at this machine over SMTP, and that it has
nothing to do with the banking system.  Again, you would
have to look at the message itself to try to determine
its source.

-Stan