'mail' does not recognize/accept the "-s" switch. Specifically, it still prompst for the "Subject" line (which it shouldn't with the -s switch) and then it gets a permissions error when the mail is submitted. This behavior obviously did not happen in previous versions. This breaks a lot of automated scripts that pipe data onto mail and then use the -s flag to set the subject. ---------------------------------------------------------------- $ mail `whoami` -s test Subject: test2 test3 . EOT WARNING: RunAsUser for MSP ignored, check group ids (egid=501, want=51) can not chdir(/var/spool/clientmqueue/): Permission denied Program mode requires special privileges, e.g., root or TrustedUser. -------------------------------------------------------------------- $ls -ald /bin/mail /usr/bin/*sendmail* /var/spool/clientmqueue lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 5 Nov 19 14:15 /bin/mail -> mailx* lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 25 Nov 19 14:40 /usr/bin/mailq.sendmail -> ../sbin/sendmail.sendmail* lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 25 Nov 19 14:40 /usr/bin/newaliases.sendmail -> ../sbin/sendmail.sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 73348 Sep 16 14:55 /usr/bin/rmail.sendmail* drwxrwx---. 2 smmsp smmsp 4096 Nov 26 04:52 /var/spool/clientmqueue/
Since the Fedora-10, we use the same version of mailx-12.4 as for rawhide too. > $ mail `whoami` -s test According to the POSIX standards, you should use options *before* the arguments. not after. IOW, try: $ mail -s test `whoami` Perhaps the previous implementation of mailx supported such a syntax, but the current one not. Please, fix your scripts. The "options messed up with arguments" case could affect not "mailx"'s new implementation only, the other commands might be affected in the future as well... > WARNING: RunAsUser for... Can't reproduce. If you have a patch which adds a needed compatibility with the previous mailx implementation, please, send it upstream: http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx.html
OK. Good to know that it works if you put options first (and I will change my scripts to reflect that). But just for the record, at least up until Fedora 8, 'mail' also worked with the name before the options. In any case problem solved.