Getting Lotus Softswitch EMX Email to Internet

The Lotus subsidary Softswitch has made a emailswitch, with capacity to handle mail from fx. ccMail, MS-Mail and to/from Internet/X.400.

Unfortunatly the switch had a deficiency from the beginning. It could not send mail directly from a MS-Mail user to a receiver on Internet/X.400, without having in his/her prevously received a letter from the intended receiver or that the sysadmin registred the receiving address in the switch.

AmuGruppen, now Lernia, started in 1993 to use the SS EMX as it main email postoffice, but during the winter -93/-94, it where found that the switch did not work as intended. The systemadmin at AmuGruppen Mitt AB challanged me to find a solution. It where one and it whas simple enough.

1. You see to that you get a external user address on a UNIX crate with sendmail, registred in the switch.
2. To this address you connects a shell script, that reads down the incoming letters in a file and processes this file. The letters shall have the real receiver's address on the first line formated like "To: internet address"
3. In the case of Amu, we tied the script to cron, that where running it once every minute. If any letters in the box, the addresses both for receiver as sender where rewritten to hide the detour.
4. Any replies went directly to the sender through the EMX switch. Through this the external user got automaticly registred in the switch, so future communications became streamlined.

In spring -96 Lotus Softswitch came with their own solution to the problem, similar to mine, but not needing an external server. My solution can be of interest to others with other gateways, having similar problems.

One interesting note though, I was looking to making a X.400 interpreter when Lotus released their version, having both Internet/X.400. While I where thinking of using regex to decide if the address was a Internet or X.400 address, Lotus solution requires that the user have to write "To Inet: " or "To x.400:". Where did the knowledge of regex go ?

My script has also been discussed at length in the previous mentioned article in Sys Admin Magazine.

The code for the shell script for inetmail.