Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan2 AT cyberspace.org>]

On the topic of a different mail program instead of needing to telnet to
send mail with attachments:


> > I thought BL2 was already set up with sendmail 
> 
> No, BasicLinux has a POP client and an SMTP client.
> These two clients need to connect with the appropriate
> servers (normally at your ISP).  In contrast, sendmail 
> is a complete mail transport agent.  It is big and 
> complex and has a reputation for being difficult to 
> understand and hard to configure.
> 
> Cheers,
> Steven

I was sort of a beta tester for some variants on sendmail used by Lynx for
DOS and it was certainly not fun to configure.  He finally switched to
mailx instead of sendmail (if I understand correctly).  Neither of these
(when used with Lynx) would send attachments.  


At my bbs there is a small program called 'sendmail' which is similar to
'mail' but you can attach binary files to outgoing mail and they are
automatically encoded. Unfortunately they arrive without the file name,
which is a major problem if you are sending to the sort of people who
don't know how to rename files and can only import .doc files into WORD. 
(And tell you if the files end in slk or bul they will need to get hold of
tech support to install the program needed to read them.  One place
actually kept a wp51/dos computer to handle wp files since they had no
idea how to import them to WORD).  

In DOS I use Netmail (by the author of Nettamer), which is designed for
automated mail sending but can be used manually.  You fill out an .ini
file (ISP name, phone, login and password for account and mail, etc.),
then type up the mail with To: address(es), Subject line, body of message,
and ##INCLUDE path/filename for one base64 attachment, name it mailout.64,
and it automatically encodes and sends.  (You can also automatically
decode incoming attachments).  No folders, nothing fancy, use a switch to
send/receive/both.  Dials, transfers, hangs up.  Under 100K (exe file,
doc, and ini file). Is there anything similar for Linux that will
automatically encode binary files in base 64?  (Uuencode is not
acceptable, Pine won't automatically decode it).  Or is it possible to
write some script to do this for outgoing mail sent with the mail program
used by BL2?  (To encode a binary file and attach it to the outgoing mail
in some format such that the other end will be able to decode it by the
same name.)

I don't care about incoming mail, don't use POP mail.  I don't even need
an address list.