Ftpmail is an email->ftp gateway. You mail requests to a user (eg: ftpmail). This causes q.pl to be called which checks the request and sticks it in a queue. dq.pl then parses the queue and does the ftp transfers that the job specifies mailing back the files that were transfers. As various things happen notes are writen in the ftpmail log file. It is all writen in perl and sends responses using either mail or by directly calling sendmail. When using sendmail MIME support is available. If a transfer fails for a fatal reason then it is dequed and the user is emailed. If it fails for a non-fatal reason (such as timeout on connect) then it will be requeued to try later (the next time dq.pl is called). Once a transfer (get|dir|ls) has succeeded it is marked as DONE and will be skipped. All other commands will still be obeyed. A job will only be tried for a fix number of times, then rejected. For user level details read the help file. If the file motd is present then its contents are inserted at the start of any responses. ARCHIVES -------- This packages is available from: file://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ftpmail/ http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ftpmail/ gopher://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/1/packages/ftpmail/ file://grasp.univ-lyon1.fr/pub/unix/mail/tools/ftpmail/ file://ftp.sterling.com/mail/ftpmail/ UPGRADING --------- See README.upgrade. WHERE SERVERS ARE ----------------- See the WWW file: http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/ftpmail-servers.html or FTP file://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ftpmail/ftpmail-servers.txt for details about where ftpmail servers are running. TO INSTALL ---------- Create an account called 'ftpmail', the home directory of ftpmail is where all the scripts will be installed and subdirectories of it form the queues. Edit config.pl to reflect your local details. (If you change the default site also edit help.) The auth file is just a series of regexps, so a line of just dot would allow all email addresses to use ftpmail. Once you have edited the above files run inst.pl. inst.pl will create the ftpmail directories based on values in config.pl and copy in various files. Its a bit of a hack. At src.doc.ic.ac.uk I only allow requests to be submitted via email. The ftpmail account is not present on any general machine, just on the main mail gateway . On that I use the PP .mailfilter script mechanism to cause any mail delivered to that ftpmail to invoke q.pl. But anything that causes q.pl to be run on the input request will do. Under sendmail create ~ftpmail/.forward containing: |"/public/ic.doc/ftpmail/q.pl || exit 75" (Or similar.) The file crontab contains a suggested cron entry that should be run as the user ftpmail. This calls dq.pl that dequeues the entries and runs them. dq.pl should run forever once started. But as I am a paranoid person I call it every half hour just to be safe. Note that mail sent is sent by ftpmail not ftpmail-request. ftpmail does other tricks to prevent mail loops forming. I tried running with mail being sent by ftpmail-request and ftpmail-request aliases to me. I found that most of the traffic to ftpmail-request is from people who submit jobs by replying to ftpmail responses in order to submit new jobs. SOCKET.PH && SOLARIS 2.x ------------------------ Although there is a socket.ph in this distribution you should really use the one generated by h2ph when installing perl. Socket.ph is architecture specific so the socket.ph I use is unlikely to work unless you are on a Sparc running Sunos 4.1.x. Unfortunetly the sys/socket.ph generated on Solaris 2.x by perl's h2ph is incorrect so you will have to install socket.ph-solaris from this distribution as /usr/local/lib/perl/sys/socket.ph (or whereever appropriate on your system). THANKS ------ Thanks to all those who suggested improvements. Also special thanks to Christophe.Wolfhugel@hsc-sec.fr for all his work on mime and the new queing system which formed the basis for some of the new code. WORKERS ------- If you want to help develope ftpmail then there is now a mailing list: ftpmail-workers@doc.ic.ac.uk To subscribe email to: ftpmail-workers-request@doc.ic.ac.uk a message like: Subject: add me subscribe ftpmail-workers Your Full Name Here COPYRIGHT --------- Writen by Lee McLoughlin You can do what you like with this except claim that you wrote it or give copies with changes not approved by Lee. Neither Lee nor any other organisation can be held liable for any problems caused by the use or storage of this package. SPECIAL NOTE June 1997: ----------------------- As I no longer run an ftpmail service it is harder for me to test/develope new features. So the 'part' command which you'll find in the source is untested.