From: <[email protected]> 83550 [email protected]...
User unknown: Not a bicycle553 abingdon I refuse to talk to myself554 “| /usr/new/lib/mh/slocal -user $USER”...
unknown mailer error 1554 “| filter -v”... unknown mailer error 1554 Too many recipients for no message body“Not a typewriter” is sendmail’s most legion error message. We figure that
the error message “not a bicycle” is probably some system administrator’s
attempt at humor. The message “Too many recipients for no message
body” is sendmail’s attempt at Big Brotherhood. It thinks it knows better
than the proletariat masses, and it won’t send a message with just a subject
line.
The conclusion is obvious: you are lucky to get mail at all or to have mes-
sages you send get delivered. Unix zealots who think that mail systems are
complex and hard to get right are mistaken. Mail used to work, and work
highly reliably. Nothing was wrong with mail systems until Unix came
along and broke things in the name of “progress.”
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 22:34:19 -0700
From: Alan Borning <[email protected]>
To: UNIX-HATERS
Subject: the vacation programSo I went to a conference the week before last and decided to try
being a Unix weenie, and set up a “vacation” message. I should have
known better.The vacation program has a typical Unix interface (involving creat-
ing a .forward file with an obscure incantation in it, a .vacation.msg
file with a message in it, etc.) There is also some -l initialization
option, which I couldn’t get to work, which is supposed to keep the
vacation replies down to one per week per sender. I decided to test it
by sending myself a message, thinking that surely they would have
allowed for this and prevented an infinite sending of vacation mes-
sages. A test message, a quick peek at the mail box, bingo, 59 mes-
sages already. Well. It must be working.