Re: [bug-mailutils] Mail, sends to dead.letter once in a while, to black hole mostly

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 03 July 2013 15:57:31 Sergey Poznyakoff did opine:

> Hi Gene,
> 
> There were quite a few mails in the list recently which my schedule
> did not permit me to attend in time, for which I apologize.
> 
> > So, now, how do I troubleshoot what your /usr/bin/mail is actually
> > doing with my pecks on the keyboard?  Does it keep a logfile
> > someplace?
> 
> First of all, let's verify that the binary we are talking about is
> really the mail utility from mailutils (Debian succeded in making such
> a mess of UNUX that one can never be sure what binary one is running).
> So, the first step is to try "mail --version".  If it shows "GNU
> Mailutils", then we're at home.  Note, however, what version number
> it shows.  That might be important.
> 
address@hidden:/etc# mail --version
mail (GNU Mailutils 2.1)

> The mailutils implementation of bin/mail never tries to deliver mails
> directly.  Instead it uses a transport layer (a "mailer"), which is
> configured via the variable "sendmail" (a misnomer, I readily agree).

Humm, sendmail is not installed, but is being installed, while that is 
removing postfix.  I thought sendmail was part of every distro?  I have 
aklso heard that postfix can do the same exact job.  If this fixes it, then 
obviously postfix is not a universal replacement.  Sigh...

> Its default value instructs mail to invoke "/usr/sbin/sendmail
> -t -oi" and to pipe the composed message to its standard input.  This
> variable may be redefined either in the site-wide configuration file
> /etc/mail.rc or in the user configuration file ~/.mailrc.

That file DID exist in /etc, an hour ago.  With the postfix removal it 
seems to have been removed.

> You can
> always check its value by running "set" without arguments from the mail
> shell, or by running
> 
>    mail -E set </dev/null|grep ^sendmail

As root:
address@hidden:/etc#  mail -E set </dev/null|grep ^sendmail
sendmail="sendmail:/usr/sbin/sendmail"
As gene:
address@hidden:~$ mail -E set </dev/null|grep ^sendmail
sendmail="sendmail:/usr/sbin/sendmail"

No diff there.
 
> To see what is going on when mail is invoked, set the variable
> "verbose" to true.  To do so, add the following line to either
> address@hidden:/etc#  mail -E set </dev/null|grep ^sendmail

>   set verbose
> 
> or use the option -E "set verbose" when invoking mail, e.g.
> 
>   mail -E "set verbose"  address@hidden

And, with sendmail installed, I was able to send me a message using the 
above syntax, Yippee!
debug output was:
address@hidden:~$  mail -E "set verbose"  address@hidden
Cc: 
Subject: Third test of local mail delivery sent to me as me
Now is the time yadda yadda
DEBUG: sendmail (/usr/sbin/sendmail)
DEBUG: exec /usr/sbin/sendmail argv: /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t
DEBUG: Sending headers...
DEBUG: Header: To: <address@hidden>
DEBUG: Header: Subject: Third test of local mail delivery sent to me as me
DEBUG: Header: X-Mailer: mail (GNU Mailutils 2.1)
DEBUG: Header: 
DEBUG: Sending body...
DEBUG: /usr/sbin/sendmail exited with: 0

Which looks fairly normal to me.  It looks as if sendmail was the magic 
twanger.

So from root, su - amanda, and send another msg, works just as well.  I 
think we've pieced this puzzle together now.

Thank you very much Sergey, Jordi and everybody.

Cheers, Gene
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