1Welcome to bsmtp for Sendmail, Version 1.01
2
3
4Copyright (c) 1995-1999 Hannah Schroeter <hannah@mamba.pond.sub.org>
5
6See COPYING for copyright, license and copying conditions, as well as
7the warranty disclaimer (in short: No warranty for any damage from this
8software).
9
10This package supplies batch SMTP support for sendmail, both incoming
11and outgoing.
12
13Included are
14* bsmtp.m4 (mailer description for sendmail 8's configuration package)
15 This comes in four versions (for sendmail 8.6 up to 8.9)
16* bsmtp (mailer for outgoing mails - just appends to batches)
17* batcher (send prepared batches - via separated transmitter scripts.
18 This shell script batcher may eventually go away)
19* batcher.new (replacement for batcher with support for flock() file
20 locking)
21* transmitter.* (sample transmitter scripts,
22 included are n-rsmtp: No compression, uux -p -r -gA system!rsmtp,
23 c-cbsmtp: compress, uux -p -r -gA system!cbsmtp,
24 c-rcsmtp: compress, uux -p -r -gA system!rcsmtp,
25 g-rcsmtp: gzip, uux -p -r -gA system!rcsmtp,
26 g-rgsmtp: gzip, uux -p -r -gA system!rgsmtp)
27* rsmtp (incoming rsmtp)
28* rcsmtp (incoming compressed/gzipped rsmtp - linked to rgsmtp, cbsmtp, gbsmtp
29 on installation)
30* rsmtp.wrapper (little C program which sets eff. uid to real uid, then exec's
31 rsmtp)
32* _bqueue (little C program, which lists the bsmtp queue)
33* bqueue (sample frontend for _bqueue to beautify output)
34
35* some contributions (see contrib/README for information)
36
37*NOT* included are:
38* Real documentation. I have got an offer from s/o to write
39 documentation (and perhaps to help me also otherwise in the
40 further development of this package). Perhaps this will yield
41 better documentation for the package...
42
43Prerequisites are
44* UNIX
45* perl4 or perl5
46* sendmail 8
47* gzip, compress (the latter only if you want to use the compress transmitter
48 scripts)
49
50Usage of the programs:
51bsmtp -f sender destination_host destination_user ...
52 Transmits mail from stdin into batch for host destination_host.
53 Dot escaping has already to be performed (ensured by sendmail mailer
54 flag in bsmtp.m4)
55rsmtp/bsmtp
56 (in fact rsmtp.wrapper, installed as the publicly available rsmtp)
57 reads bsmtp batch from stdin and executes it
58rcsmtp/rgsmtp/cbsmtp/gbsmtp
59 Executes compressed/gzipped batch from stdin
60batcher method hostname
61 sends batch to the named host with the given transmission method (which is
62 just a suffix for transmitter.*, i.e. method n-rsmtp turns into a call
63 of transmitter.n-rsmtp).
64bqueue
65 lists the bsmtp queues
66
67Suggestions, additions, error reports and so on are welcome via mail to
68Hannah Schroeter <hannah@mamba.pond.sub.org>. (The old address will still
69work for a while.)
70
71I'm especially interested in package information files for major
72free UNIX (clone) installations (Debian, FreeBSD, Redhat,
73<insert_your_favorite_installation_here>), which I could bundle
74with this package. Please write something about the packaging scheme
75(or include the according excerpts from the documentation).
76
77And I'm interested in information on the platforms, under which
78the package runs (and changes needed to make it run).
79
80Licence: This package used to be licenced under the GNU GPL, version 2
81up to release 0.95b. That is now changed to a BSD style copyright, which
82is more permissive. Permission is hereby granted to use and redistribute
83older versions of the package under the new conditions as well.
84Please ask the contributors for permission, if you want to use or
85redistribute a contribution in a way permitted by the new conditions,
86but contradicting to the GNU GPL.
87
88From post 0.99 on, I removed the restrictions 3. and 4. from the license.
89That change may be applied to older versions, too.
90
91
92Supported systems:
93* BSD/OS 2.0, 2.1: This used to be the main development platform till
94 release 0.95a.
95* Linux: You must perhaps change some paths (just enter the correct
96 ones while configuring the package)
97 Tested on an old DLD Linux box, some Debian boxen.
98 0.95 worked after nearly the same fixes as those of 961023 (see
99 ChangeLog) on a Debian GNU/Linux system. (Some paths were changed
100 during configuration)
101* Risc iX: (This is an old 4.3BSD Net/1 derivative from Acorn)
102* OpenBSD 2.0 up to 2.5-current:
103 You can include this as a SUBDIR entry into a <bsd.subdir.mk> style
104 Makefile. Or just do
105 make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper; make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper install
106 This is the main development platform since release 0.95a
107
108Though this list is rather small, I expect the package to
109run on the very most UNIXes/clones. Be careful, that you *don't*
110use flock() locking if that's an emulation that keeps the
111braindead POSIX/System V semantics of the fcntl() locking mechanism.
112If you must count yourself among the poor ones on such boxen,
113use lockfile locking instead. (Be careful about stale locks!)
114
115There is even someone, who uses part of this package with SMail.
116Perhaps I can include some material about that in one of the next
117releases.
118