How can I use the Mail command with Sendmail Options

Kalar · 07-16-2004, 10:59 PM

Hello,

I recently setup and configured CVS on a FC1 machine and I've managed to figure out how to get the CVS to email me all commit messages. The problem is that it is not perfect.

First some background on what I am doing. Since the CVS machine is a local machine it doesn't actually have a "real" IP address to the outside world; just to my dynamic IP. The emails get sent to a mailinglist on my Web host. To allow the mail server on my Web host to accept the mails, I had to configure a DynDNS IP to show it that "yes, the domain does exist".

The list software gives me two (relevent) options: 1. Allow posts from non-registered users, and 2. The list of members on the list. I do not have the option of changing the mailing list software (unfortunately).

I definitely want to enable option (1) to get rid of spam on the mailing list, but since the email address (eg.: ) localCVSuser@whatever.dyndns.org gets put into the from field of each email, the commit emails can't be sent to the list (even subscribing that addr to the list would cause problems because it doesn't exist IRL).

After some searching, I found that I can (somewhat) fake the from address using sendmail -f, but sendmail refuses to run on FC1 unless it's the root user or a "trusted user" (whatever that means).

Then I looked at the mail option, which can be run as any user, and according to the "mail --help":

Code:

Usage: mail [-iInv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] to-addr ...
            [- sendmail-options ...]
       mail [-iInNv] -f [name]
       mail [-iInNv] [-u user]

... sendmail options can be included in the command line.

The problems is: how? They imply that a "-(space)(sendmail-options)" format should be used, but it ends up giving me strange results. For example, the command:
mail -s "cvs test" maillist@mydomain.com - -f cvs@mydomain.com

Sends a message to cvs@mydomain.com, with a to field of maillist@mydomain.com, and a From field of the local CVS machine user (eg.: localCVSuser@whatever.dyndns.org).

I'm a (little past a) Linux newbie, but I can't figure this out. Does anyone know how I can use the sendmail-options with the "mail" command? (And yes, I checked "man"; it didn't even mention the sendmail options, but mentioned that not all options were listed because "most were not useful to the general user"

.

Thanks in advance.

Kalar · 07-16-2004, 11:35 PM

Just when I had given up hope, I found the answer here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/uug-list.../msg10431.html

Apparently, the "mail --help" output is a big lie. Well, maybe a typo... but we'll call it lie.

The original text output stated:

Code:

Usage: mail [-iInv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] to-addr ...
            [- sendmail-options ...]
       mail [-iInNv] -f [name]
       mail [-iInNv] [-u user]

When it should have said:

Code:

Usage: mail [-iInv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] to-addr ...
            [-- sendmail-options ...]
       mail [-iInNv] -f [name]
       mail [-iInNv] [-u user]

Notice the extra "-" on the second line above. Now, adding -- -f youremail@yourdomain.com will set the from field to that address.

Thanks anyway to those who read this!