Erik Soderholm) provided me with source code that does pretty much
exactly what I want (well listens to a <protname>% thing from mail and
does something with it).
Glad to hear you got what you need. Maybe I shouldn't mention it right
now, but this is only half the job. This part will handle the outgoing
(MAIL-11 -> FIDOnet) part, but you'll also need to write another program
that runs as a detached system process ("daemon" to you Un*x guys) that
listens for incoming FIDOnet mail and then dumps it into MAIL-11 (presumably
using the MAIL$ API routines). It's not really hard, but it's another piece
that you'll need.
What (or rather who) is still on FIDOnet these days?
Bob
To start off with, if you don't have time to help me with this, I
totally understand and will stop bothering you.
It's OK - you're not bothering me. I have to admit that, although I have
used the MAIL$ API on occasion, I never actually did this before (wrote a
MAIL-11 foreign transport protocol). FWIW, the CMU TCP/IP implementation
for VMS came with source code and I'm pretty sure it had an SMTP mail
gateway. You might look for that.
But I see from a recent posting that you've already got what you need.
Sounds like you're all set.
Bob
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Marc Chametzky wrote:
If you go to http://www.process.com/openvms/hobbyist.html and click on "[License Terms and PAKs]", one of the products you can select (after you agree to the license) is PMDF.
Thanks - this is exactly what I needed. I'm not sure why I didn't see it before when I fetched my Multinet PAK.
Now I'm just waiting for my PMDF PAK to arrive. I will hopefully have time over the weekend to get this set up.
Cheers & thanks again ...
Fred
---
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to
lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores
the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate
technology, led them all into it in the first place. (Douglas Adams, '95)
WOO HOO. It actually sort of works. I've managed to tie into the <PROTOCOL>% handler with a couple of hundred lines of C code that I modified from what I was sent and the MAIL program quite happily produces XML output.
Now all that's left to do is to write a little python script to pull down the files from the outbound directory, convert them to Fidonet format and place them in the outbound directory of my Fido mailer.
Happy days.
Sampsa
On 2 Jul 2009, at 00:21, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I am a very very happy bunny: A friendly guy on c.o.v. (called Jan Erik Soderholm) provided me with source code that does pretty much exactly what I want (well listens to a <protname>% thing from mail and does something with it).
And it's in C, so I won't be entirely lost.
I think I'll be able to knock out something resembling a working bit of code within a pretty short period of time.
Get ready to be on Fidonet guys!
Sampsa
On 1 Jul 2009, at 22:46, Zane H. Healy wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I will take a look at this mail_routines documentation - it's not immediately obvious to me how to write the library with the relevant entry points. As others seem to point out it's rather undocumented - you wouldn't have any old code lying around would you Bob? :)
I'd recommend asking such questions on comp.os.vms rather than here. Better
to hit a much wider audience.
Zane
I am a very very happy bunny: A friendly guy on c.o.v. (called Jan Erik Soderholm) provided me with source code that does pretty much exactly what I want (well listens to a <protname>% thing from mail and does something with it).
And it's in C, so I won't be entirely lost.
I think I'll be able to knock out something resembling a working bit of code within a pretty short period of time.
Get ready to be on Fidonet guys!
Sampsa
On 1 Jul 2009, at 22:46, Zane H. Healy wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I will take a look at this mail_routines documentation - it's not immediately obvious to me how to write the library with the relevant entry points. As others seem to point out it's rather undocumented - you wouldn't have any old code lying around would you Bob? :)
I'd recommend asking such questions on comp.os.vms rather than here. Better
to hit a much wider audience.
Zane
WIll do, this way I'll stop bugging Bob as well :)
Sampsa
On 1 Jul 2009, at 22:46, Zane H. Healy wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I will take a look at this mail_routines documentation - it's not immediately obvious to me how to write the library with the relevant entry points. As others seem to point out it's rather undocumented - you wouldn't have any old code lying around would you Bob? :)
I'd recommend asking such questions on comp.os.vms rather than here. Better
to hit a much wider audience.
Zane
Bob,
To start off with, if you don't have time to help me with this, I totally understand and will stop bothering you.
I've just had an idea -
1. To send mail: All I will do on the VMS side is set up a FIDO% handler that simply writes the message it receives verbatim into a directory. I will then periodically poll this directory via FTP from my main Fido box, run some quick Python scripts to mangle it into Fidonet format and dump it into the appropriate place for my mailer etc to move it onwards.
2. To receive mail: I will configure my mailer on the Fido box to mangle the message (using a Python script again) into something that is easy to import into VMS mail, upload it via FTP to the VMS box where a periodic script looks for these messages and inserts them into MAIL using the published routines that I found in help.
It's part 1 that I have no idea where to get started, as the documentation in HELP doesn't seem to offer any clues on how to build this library that ties into VMSMAIL. Any pointers / code would be tremendously gratefully received.
Sampsa
On 1 Jul 2009, at 18:58, bob at jfcl.com wrote:
Got any documentation for this API?
$ help mail_routines
It's also in the gray (or orange) wall, of course.
Ideally I'd want to somehow "hook" into the MAIL application in the
All I can say is that there's a documented path for doing this - there's
\nothing special about SMTP in this regard. It's called a "foreign transport
protocol" or something like that. You need to write a library with
the appropriate entry points (this is where the documentation comes in
handy), call it FIDO_MAILSHR, and install it. If you do the right
stuff, VMSMAIL will recognize the FIDO%"..." address and call your
library. Couldn't be easier :-)
BOb
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I will take a look at this mail_routines documentation - it's not immediately obvious to me how to write the library with the relevant entry points. As others seem to point out it's rather undocumented - you wouldn't have any old code lying around would you Bob? :)
I'd recommend asking such questions on comp.os.vms rather than here. Better
to hit a much wider audience.
Zane
Hmm, looks doable. I think my skillset might be more targeted towards the Ultrix path, and we could use an emulated PDP-11 Ultrix on HECnet right?
I will take a look at this mail_routines documentation - it's not immediately obvious to me how to write the library with the relevant entry points. As others seem to point out it's rather undocumented - you wouldn't have any old code lying around would you Bob? :)
Sampsa
On 1 Jul 2009, at 18:58, bob at jfcl.com wrote:
Got any documentation for this API?
$ help mail_routines
It's also in the gray (or orange) wall, of course.
Ideally I'd want to somehow "hook" into the MAIL application in the
All I can say is that there's a documented path for doing this - there's
\nothing special about SMTP in this regard. It's called a "foreign transport
protocol" or something like that. You need to write a library with
the appropriate entry points (this is where the documentation comes in
handy), call it FIDO_MAILSHR, and install it. If you do the right
stuff, VMSMAIL will recognize the FIDO%"..." address and call your
library. Couldn't be easier :-)
BOb
Speaking of PMDF, I'd really like to get my hobbyist-hands on that. I've looked at Process Software's website but was unable to find a link for hobbyists for anything other than Multinet (which I run on MISER).
If you go to http://www.process.com/openvms/hobbyist.html and click on "[License Terms and PAKs]", one of the products you can select (after you agree to the license) is PMDF.
--Marc