[Tfug] Diverted stdin problem

[jblais]

Hello -

Thanks for all the help in the past - here's a new "problem" or "opportunity
for improvement"  :-(

I have 2 virtual PC's running on XP :-| Each is loaded with Fedora Core 5,
each was installed/loaded separately so I don't remember all the selections.
I think one is like the "everything" bagel.  Then I have a Linux partition
on the same PC, with the same version. And then I have a handful of
instruments, again with the same version.  These were from an install that
we "ghosted"

On these I have a small app that I found, with the help of Tfug, called
email.  It simply sends emails.  You can call it one way and it will invoke
vi to edit the email.  Or you can redirect a text file to stdin, and that
will be sent.  When it sends it puts a copy of the sent email, with nitty
gritty email header junk, into a file called sent.mail.

On all the machines I can successfully send an email manually, doing this
from a cmd line:
$ email -s 'subject of email' my.email at my.company.com
This works every time, invoking vi.

I can also do:
$ email -t
This simply tests my config file that has parms in it like server, port,
password.... and it works.

I can also do this from the cmd line:
$ email -s 'subject of email' my.email at my.company.com < /tmp/Outbound.txt
This too works every time, manually, sending the outbound text without
invoking vi.

I can put the above line into a script file and successfully send email.

Now, I have a C++ program, that simply creates a file at /tmp/Outbound.txt
and calls:
  system( "email -s 'subject of email' my.email at my.company.com <
/tmp/Outbound.txt" ) ;
I've also done  (something like this):
  pid = fork();
  if ( pid == 0 )
  {
    execpl( "/bin/sh", "sh", "-c", "email -s 'subject of email'
my.email at my.company.com < /tmp/Outbound.txt", 0 ) ;
    exit(1) ;
  }

The bit of magic works on one virtual pc, and all my instruments.  On the
other virtual pc, and my linux partition, it fails with somethig like:
email:  ERROR: Smtp 500 unrecognized command

So I searched the web for the '500 error', and examples point to things like
not having a <crlf> or something in the command line.  SO I tried all manner
of stuff to fix that, even the fork();exec() stuff, rather than system()
which apparently can have issues if the application has the permission to
change user ID or whatever. -- this is because of some security stuff
(?political stuff like SE Linux and the NSA? conspiricy everywhere!-)  --
and perhaps where one install differs from another - if that's the problem--
opportunity:-)

So anyway-- this fails on 2 out of 4 machines, each installed with the same
version of Fedora Linux.
  system( "email -s 'subject of email' my.email at my.company.com <
/tmp/Outbound.txt" ) ;

but this works...(on the ones that otherwise fail):
  system( "email -s 'subject of email' my.email at my.company.com" ) ;
but the way it works is a bit unexpected.  vi doesn't come up as the editor,
instead, the body of the email (which is successfully sent) is the text (the
nitty gritty portion anyway) that normally gets put into the the sent.mail
log file!

So, on some installs, the redirect of the desired text file to stdin, of the
email that is invoked by the system() call, works correctly, and on others
the " < /tmp/junk.txt" fails, and instead (probably) the redirected stdout
which would normally be appended to the sent.mail file, is instead diverted
to stdin, as the message!

I even tried calling the script which works when called manually, and it
fails with the same error.
  system( "./SendScript" ) ;

I have the whole mess working on my instruments so I'm kind of OK, but why
does it work on one install, and not on another?

Thanks

Joe