[TUHS] Quick question: earliest Unix system with mail, uucp and bangpaths?

Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com
Mon Mar 13 23:33:36 AEST 2017


UNIX/TS - which would become V7 could do uucp mail without Berkeley
delivermail.   And I believe there were versions of the delivery system
around the Bell System system before TS -- maybe PWB 2.0 but I've
forgotten.  Anyone from Columbus or Indian Hill?

delivermail - could handle the BerkNet, ArpaNet (on Ing70) and eventually
UUCP.   Then when Eric had to start dealing with the what he referred to as
the header format of the day problem, he added a database production
language -- and sendmail was born.   I will just never forgive him for
embedding the smtpd into it - I wish he had left it as a separate program
like it was in the BBN tcp.

Back to your question, I believe that local mail was around fairly early
3rd, 4th or 5th edition maybe.   And uucp was spliced into it fairly soon
their after, but I believe it was not the "default" mail code.

Again, I think it was a few generations before the architecture of
separation of the "Mail User Interface" , "Mail User Agent" , "Mail
Delivery Interface" and "Mail Deliver Agent" into different components
would emerge.     And until such time, things are little blurry.

Clem

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> As I go to bed, I wonder. Which was the earliest system that used uucp to
> send mail through multiple systems to a remote user?
>
> I see V7 has uucp/sdmail.c, but the comment says: This is only implemented
> for local system mail at this time. Ditto 32V and 3BSD.
>
> 4BSD has delivermail. Its uucp has a README which says: The ``mail''
> command
> has been modified, so that it may only be used to send mail, when it is
> invoked under a name beginning with 'r'. 3BSD has the same uucp.
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/src/cmd/uucp/README
>
> Ah, but 32V's mail.c checks for 'r':
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=32V/usr/src/cmd/mail.c
> and so does V7:
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/mail.c
>
> So I guess I've just answered my question. It also looks like delivermail
> from 4.1BSD could compile on V7, so it might be fun to try and bring a
> V7 system up on uucp+mail. But will it (delivermail?) do bang paths?!
>
> Cheers, Warren
>
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