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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Problems using Unix mail command (2) Post 302579293 by Clovis_Sangrail on Monday 5th of December 2011 10:55:14 AM
Old 12-05-2011
Problems using Unix mail command (2)

I recently generated myself the following error when attempting to use the Unix mail command:

The flags you gave make no sense since you're not sending mail.

There is a recent thread about this issue here in unix.com (with a title very much like this thread's title), but it was closed without explaining the reason for this error message, or at least not explaining the reason why I got this error, so I'm posting this message.

It turned out that I was calling the mail command and not giving it a destination address, even though I thought that I was:
Code:
cat exception_rpt |  mail -s "$BNK Exception Report `date`" $addr

I was reading email addresses out of a file and into the "$addr" variable, and executing the above command, but my file had blank lines in it! When I ran my shell script in debug mode (#!/bin/sh -x) I saw that each blank line resulted in an "extra" call to the mail command, with "$addr" set to a null string.

I suspect that this is the most common way to get the error:

"The flags you gave make no sense since you're not sending mail."

Last edited by Franklin52; 12-07-2011 at 05:52 AM.. Reason: Please use code tags for code and data samples, thank you
 

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mail.local(1M)                                            System Administration Commands                                            mail.local(1M)

NAME
mail.local - store mail in a mailbox SYNOPSIS
/usr/lib/mail.local [-f sender] [-d] recipient DESCRIPTION
mail.local reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it to each user's mail file (mailbox). This program is intended to be used by sendmail(1M) as a mail delivery agent for local mail. It is not a user interface agent. Messages are appended to the user's mail file in the /var/mail directory. The user must be a valid user name. Each delivered mail message in the mailbox is preceded by a "Unix From line" with the following format: From sender_address time_stamp The sender_address is extracted from the SMTP envelope address (the envelope address is specified with the -f option). A trailing blank line is also added to the end of each message. The mail files are locked with a .lock file while mail is appended. The mail files are created with mode 660, owner is set to recipient, and group is set to mail. If the ``biff'' service is returned by get- servbyname(3SOCKET), the biff server is notified of delivered mail. This program also computes the Content-Length: header which will be used by the mailbox reader to mark the message boundary. OPTIONS
The following options are supported: -f sender Specifies the "envelope from address" of the message. This flag is technically optional, but should be used. -d Specifies the recipient of the message. This flag is also optional and is supported here for backward compatibility. That is, mail.local recipient is the same as mail.local -d recipient. -l Turn on LMTP mode. -r from Specify the sender's name (for backward compatibility). -7 Do not advertise 8BITMIME support in LMTP mode. -b Return a permanent error instead of a temporary error if a mailbox exceeds quota. OPERANDS
The following operand is supported: recipient The recipient of the mail message. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
TZ Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 Successful operation. >0 An error occurred. FILES
/tmp/local.XXXXXX temporary files /tmp/lochd.XXXXXX temporary files /var/mail/user_name user's mail file ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWsndmu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
mail(1), comsat(1M), sendmail(1M), getservbyname(3SOCKET), attributes(5) SunOS 5.10 11 Apr 1997 mail.local(1M)
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