Chris Bartram wrote:

> > I'm not too familiar with listserv software.
> > What would it take to host HP3000-L on an HP3000?
>
> An SMTP messaging engine compatible with Listerv's interrupts and
> file-passing formats.
> It's being "looked into". :-)

Geez, let me try to juggle non-disclosures and contracts and remain a
free man <g>.

> > Is there a posix version of listserv?
> I'll let Jeff address that one.

Here's a partial scoop I hoped to announce at HPWorld as "finished" but
at this point it is still under investigation.  Listserv was compiled on
MPE over a year ago, using C/iX (Posix c89) and Steve Elmer's libbsd.a
code.  It loaded and "ran" to the extent that it sent notification of
it's presence by mail to me and Lsoft's registry mailbox.  At that point
we were frozen by an inability to transfer incoming mail to Listserv's
spool queue.  Listserv is tailored for sendmail and/or LSMTP as a mailer
(it has no inherent mail transport) and LSMTP was out of MPE reach and
the MPE sendmail port was more or less out of the question (we were
using Chris's DeskLink SMTP gateway).  Brute-force methods of tying the
two were of no avail due to Posix quirks (scope of SIGnals).

Since Chris said I could adress this, I presume I can say that I have
provided them with the Listserv executable and they are investigating
the hooks necessary to provide Listserv linkage.  They are having
trouble with the Posix signals as well (not their fault - an HP
limitation) and are looking at a workaround.  Sendmail might could be
persuaded to work with some effort, but sendmail on MPE is an exercise
in futility given the performance profile of fork() on MPE.

In fairness to the vendors, let me point out that:
* Listserv was compiled and executed to the point of being
legitimately    "alive" in less than an afternoon (Eric Thomas of LSoft
generated the
  binary on our machine in a few hours).  Their [extensive] code was no
  problem for posix.
* The NetMail quirks are, as I recall, problems between IPC pipes and
  posix signals [and/or a timer?] such that a select() gets confused.
  No slight to Chris and 3k either.

Bottom line, in fairness to the readers, is that there is not a huge
market for Listserv on MPE, so neither vendor (nor myself - if I could
run HP3000-L on a 3000 I can't do it on our existing production systems)
is putting a high priority on fixing the missing link(s).  If there are
more solid interests, I would suggest that you voice them to Chris (3K)
and/or Eric (LSoft) and make your interests known.  Meanwhile, we will
continue to try to resolve this porting issue in the time available.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>

>                   -Chris Bartram
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