From owner-freebsd-bugs Wed Sep 18 00:59:23 1996 Return-Path: owner-bugs Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id AAA21310 for bugs-outgoing; Wed, 18 Sep 1996 00:59:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from freebsd.gaffaneys.com (dialup4.gaffaneys.com [134.129.252.23]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA21277 for ; Wed, 18 Sep 1996 00:59:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from zach@localhost) by freebsd.gaffaneys.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA01793; Wed, 18 Sep 1996 03:00:30 -0500 (CDT) To: Toomas Tamm Cc: bugs@freebsd.org, toomas@neon.pc.helsinki.fi Subject: Re: Mail dumps core if USER not set References: <323F957E.18BA2A84@chem.helsinki.fi> From: Zach Heilig Date: 18 Sep 1996 03:00:29 -0500 In-Reply-To: Toomas Tamm's message of Wed, 18 Sep 1996 09:23:58 +0300 Message-ID: <87enk0s15u.fsf@freebsd.gaffaneys.com> Lines: 47 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Sender: owner-bugs@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Toomas Tamm writes: > Hello! > I am having trouble submitting this bug report because no-one seems > consier it 'theirs'. Maybe you can suggest some address who might be > interested? Obviously, since you are having a problem with the RedHat Linux, They should be responsible for problems with their own system. > The RedHat Linux (Rembrandt 3.0.3) appears to use BSD mail (Mail?) > program as the command-line mail user agent. However since Linux is > sysV'ish, there are situations where the USER environment variable > is not set. One of these is when a script is run by cron (vixie cron > under this Linux). I did not notice this behavior with the 'mail' program that comes with FreeBSD: Script started on Wed Sep 18 02:51:53 1996 (zach-ttyv2)$ echo $USER (zach-ttyv2)$ echo $LOGNAME (zach-ttyv2)$ mail No mail for zach (zach-ttyv2)$ exit Script done on Wed Sep 18 02:52:03 1996 They are obviously using a different version of the mail program (perhaps it is even from a completely different source tree?). > When the USER is not set, the mail program dumps core, instead of > producing an intelligent error message. This was not trivial to > figure out, since under a login shell, USER is always set properly. > It can be easily verified, however, by unset'ing USER under a login > shell. As I noted above, I did not notice this behavior. BTW, I am running FreeBSD 2.1.5, if that makes any difference. -- Zach Heilig (zach@blizzard.gaffaneys.com) | ALL unsolicited commercial email Support bacteria -- it's the | is unwelcome. I avoid dealing only culture some people have! | with companies that email ads.