mail -N not working

[Tor Stenvaag]

I have a server application that uses the command "mail -N". It has been working in Ubuntu server for "I do not know how many years". After an "apt-get dist-upgrade" yesterday this command broke. It now states that an argument is needed.

$ mail -N
mail: option requires an argument -- 'N'
usage: mail [-dEIinv] [-a header] [-b bcc-addr] [-c cc-addr] [-s subject] to-addr ...
mail [-dEIiNnv] -f [name]
mail [-dEIiNnv] [-u user]

When tracking the mail command I end up with

$ ls -l /usr/bin/bsd-mailx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 97384 Jan 5 18:05 /usr/bin/bsd-mailx
$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/bsd-mailx
bsd-mailx: /usr/bin/bsd-mailx
$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS
Release: 12.04
$ apt-cache policy bsd-mailx
bsd-mailx:
  Installed: 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1ubuntu0.1
  Candidate: 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1ubuntu0.1
  Version table:
 *** 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1ubuntu0.1 0
        500 http://no.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1 0
        500 http://no.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

[Tor Stenvaag (tor-5)]

The "T" argument is removed from the getopt argument, but the corresponding ":" is not removed.

+Index: bsd-mailx-8.1.2-0.20111106cvs/main.c
+===================================================================
+--- bsd-mailx-8.1.2-0.20111106cvs.orig/main.c 2015-01-05 11:39:00.136339604 -0500
++++ bsd-mailx-8.1.2-0.20111106cvs/main.c 2015-01-05 11:39:00.132339587 -0500
+@@ -115,18 +115,8 @@
+ subject = NULL;
+ header = NULL;
+ replyto = NULL;
+- while ((i = getopt(argc, argv, "EINT:a:b:c:defins:u:v")) != -1) {
++ while ((i = getopt(argc, argv, "EIN:a:b:c:defins:u:v")) != -1) {

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package bsd-mailx - 8.1.2-0.20141216cvs-2

---------------
bsd-mailx (8.1.2-0.20141216cvs-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Add 27-Fix-getopt-string.patch to fix `-N' flag that does not take
    an argument (LP: #1411623).

 -- Robert Luberda <email address hidden> Sun, 15 Mar 2015 11:27:33 +0100