On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Rusty Russell wrote:
> Running Debian, Exim version 3.20. Caught out very badly (2
> hours + $50, long story) recently by the discovery that `mailq'
> silently doesn't list my outgoing messages (sent using nmh, which
> calls sendmail -bs).
>
> IMHO, it's a bug to have sendmail compatible commands which
> aren't. If you really want this, pick one:
> 1) remove `mailq'
> 2) have it return an error if non-root and --only-my-own-mail not
> specified, OR
> 3) please have it clearly output that it is NOT showing you
> all the mail.
>
> Documenting it is *not* enough; I didn't read the
> documentation because I *know* what mailq does.
Speaking as the developer of Exim, this is, I believe, Not My Problem,
at least at the level of the "mailq" command.
The source distribution of Exim does not install a command called mailq.
However, because some people like the name mailq, the code of Exim does
recognize if Exim has been called under the name "mailq", and makes this
do the same thing as "exim -bp", which is the nearest Exim equivalent.
The choice of whether to install a command called "mailq", aliased to
exim, is up to whoever sets up the system. I can't do anything about
that.
HOWEVER, it is supposed to be the case that a non-admin user who runs
"exim -bp" should see any messages that they submitted to Exim via the
standard input, either using -bs or otherwise (but not anybody else's
messages). I have just tested this using -bs and -bm, and cannot find
any problem.
Philip
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
