Technical data

Customizing the Operating System
5.7 Customizing Mail
On VAX systems, if neither 8 nor 16 is in the value for MAIL$SYSTEM_FLAGS,
the system checks to see whether DECnet for OpenVMS or DECnet-Plus is
running on the system and operates as if the appropriate bit were set. If
MAIL$SYSTEM_FLAGS accidently specifies both DECnet and DECnet-Plus,
the Mail utility defaults to DECnet-Plus.
MAIL$INTERNET_MODE
Certain network addresses can be interpreted by the Mail utility as either
DECnet-Plus names or SMTP names. These ambiguous network names have
the following features:
• The address does not contain double quotation marks (")
• The address contains an at sign (@)
• There are no periods to the right of the at sign
You can control the default system interpretation of those names with the
MAIL$INTERNET_MODE logical name.
To specify the mail address mode, define logical name MAIL$INTERNET_MODE
as follows:
$ DEFINE/SYSTEM MAIL$INTERNET_MODE address_mode
You must have SYSNAM privilege or write (W) access to the system logical name
table. The following table describes the values of address_mode and the effect of
each value of MAIL$INTERNET_MODE.
Address Mode Effect
HYBRID
(default)
If the node component of the address contains a period (.), Mail
uses SMTP address mode. If there are no periods, Mail uses DECnet
address mode.
DECNET Mail always interprets the node component of the address as a DECnet
node specification.
SMTP Mail always interprets the node component of the address as an
Internet address specification. The default address mode is SMTP
unless you use logical name MAIL$INTERNET_TRANSPORT to define
a different transport (and therefore different address mode).
For more information about using logical names to control the use of internet
address modes by the Mail utility, see the OpenVMS User’s Manual.
5.8 Setting Up the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)
Utility
MIME is the standard used to attach nontext files to mail messages to send
them over the Internet. The MIME utility allows users to read and compose
MIME-encoded mail messages on OpenVMS systems.
Understanding the MIME Utility
With MIME, users can encode and send nontext files such as graphics or audio
files encoded as plain text; however, those files are often unreadable. The MIME
utility decodes MIME files sent over the Internet to their original form. MIME
also allows users to create MIME-encoded files, which can be sent as mail
messages using the OpenVMS Mail utility.
For more information on how users can use the MIME utility, refer to the
OpenVMS User’s Manual.
5–34 Customizing the Operating System