This is Why-MailManager-is-evil in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1991 21:10:37 From: johnr@oceania.com (John Robison) Subject: Why MailManager is evil (was: Problem receiving mail on local machine) In article <1991Oct30.135205.2756@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> afortin@next532-1.gsfc.nasa.gov. (Andre Fortin) writes: > > I just had the same problem this week. [stuff deleted] > My > problem appeared AFTER I made my station a netinfo and config server and > upgraded to 2.1 os. [more stuff deleted] > I can now send mail but I > can't receive. [stuff deleted] > email broken at the moment Everybody always says, "MailManager is Evil!" Why; look below... Mail manager makes several assumptions that are plain wrong. It messes with your /etc/sendmail link, and also adds local mount points to NetInfo. This is great if you have the standard 10-20 NeXT's with one NetInfo & MailServer (the same machine of course). The reason you can't vary this setup, is because MailManager makes its assumptions based on this setup. If you have a standalone machine and run MailManager (and it is NOT a NetInfo server) MailManager sets up the wrong link in /etc/sendmail which causes you to be able to send and not receive mail. (Hence, the above poster's symptoms.) If you want a machine other than the NetInfo and Config server to be your mailhost, fine, but don't use MailManager. It will make the same wrong assumption. This caused me much frustration, because I originally did not realize what MailManager did. I kept setting the sendmail link correctly, then running MailManager to do the "NeXT stuff", thus undoing my work. Basically, Mailmanager is Evil, because you can get mail to work without it, and unless you have the generic NeXT network, it will almost undoubtedly make the wrong assumptions and undo all your hard work. Don't get me wrong, if your network looks like the picture painted in the NeXT System Admin manual, it is an great tool to get you up and running with NeXTMail quickly. Otherwise, though, forget it! John
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.