man(1) Manual page archive


     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

     NAME
          mail, edmail, sendmail, seemail, aliasmail, smtp, smtpd, to,
          vwhois, vismon -  mail commands

     SYNOPSIS
          mail [ arg ... ]

          upas/edmail [ -cmpre ] [ -[fF] mfile ]

          upas/sendmail [ -xr# ] person ...

          upas/to [ -x# ]

          seemail [ -as ] [ -u user ] [ -f file ] [ -r reminders ]

          upas/aliasmail name ...

          smtp [ -fdu ] [ -hhost ] [ -ggateway ] [ .domain ] address
          sender rcpt-list

          smtpd [ -d ]

          vwhois people ...

          vismon system

     DESCRIPTION
        Mail
          Mail invokes edmail -m when no persons appear on the command
          line.  It invokes sendmail otherwise.

        Mailbox Editing
          Edmail edits a mailbox.  The default mailbox is
          /mail/box/username/mbox.  The -f and -F command line options
          and the s and S editing commands specify an alternate mail-
          box.  Unrooted path names are interpreted relative to
          /mail/box/username for -f and s and relative to the current
          directory for -F and S.  If the mfile argument is omitted,
          the name defaults to stored.

          The options for edmail are:

          -c        Create a mailbox.
          -r        Reverse: print mail in first-in, first-out order.
          -p        Print all the mail messages without prompting for
                    commands.
          -m        Use a manual style of interface, that is, print no
                    messages unless directed to.
          -f mfile  Read messages from the specified file (see above)
                    instead of the default mailbox.

     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

          -F mfile  same as -f with different starting point for rela-
                    tive paths (see above).
          -e        Check silently if there is anything in the mail-
                    box; return zero (true) if so, non-zero otherwise.

          Edmail prints messages one at a time, prompting between mes-
          sages.  After printing a prompt edmail reads a line from the
          standard input to direct disposition of the message.  Com-
          mands, as in ed(1), are of the form `[range] command
          [arguments]'.  The command is applied to each message in the
          (optional) range addressed by message number and/or regular
          expressions in the style of ed(1). A regular expression in
          slashes searches among header (postmark) lines; an expres-
          sion in percent signs searches on message content.

          address    to indicate a single message header
          address,address
                     to indicate a range of contiguous message headers
          g/expression/
                     to indicate all message headers matching the reg-
                     ular expression.

          The commands are:
          b          Print the headers for the next ten messages.
          d          Mark message to be deleted upon exiting edmail.
          h          Print the disposition, size in characters, and
                     header line of the message.
          m person ...
                     Mail the message to the named persons.
          M person ...
                     Same as m except that lines typed on the terminal
                     (terminated by EOT) are prefixed to the message.
          p          Print message. An interrupt stops the printing.
          r          Reply to the sender of the message.
          R          Like `r' but with the message appended to the
                     reply.
          s mfile    (Save) Append the message to the specified mail-
                     box (see above).
          S mfile    Same as s with different starting point for rela-
                     tive paths (see above).
          q          Put undeleted mail back in the mailbox and stop.
          EOT (control-D)
                     Same as `q'.
          w file     Same as s with the mail header line(s) stripped.
          W file     Same as w with different starting point for rela-
                     tive paths (see above).
          u          Remove mark for deletion.
          x          Exit, without changing the mailbox file.
          ?          Print a command summary.
          |command   Run the command with the message as standard
                     input.
          !command   Escape to the shell to do command.

     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

          =          Print the number of the current message.

        Sending Mail
          Sendmail takes the standard input up to an end-of-file and
          adds it to each person's mailbox.  When running in an 8½(1)
          window, sendmail automatically puts the window into Hold
          mode (see 8½(1)); this means that the message can be edited
          freely, because nothing will be sent to sendmail until the
          ESC key is hit to exit Hold mode.  With option -#, sendmail
          does not send mail, but instead reports what command would
          be used to send the mail.  With option -x, sendmail does not
          send mail, but instead reports the full mail address of the
          recipient.  Option -r tells sendmail that its input is via a
          pipe from another program.  It won't turn on Hold mode and
          will expect a From line at the start of the message to pro-
          vide the name of the sender and timestamp.

          The message is automatically postmarked with the sender's
          name and date.  Lines that look like postmarks are prefixed
          with `>'.

          Person is a user name on the local system, a name for which
          there is an alias, or a network mail address.

          To is a preprocessor for sendmail. It takes a mail message
          as standard input, looks through it for To:, Cc:, and Bcc:
          header lines, and calls sendmail with the addresses in those
          header lines as destinations.  The Bcc: header lines are
          removed before passing the message to sendmail.

        Addressing Conventions
          The local convention for converting addresses is given by
          rewrite rules in /mail/lib/rewrite; see rewrite(6). The con-
          ventions generally used are:

          -    A person containing no `!'  or `@' is considered a
               local user or local alias.  It is passed as an argument
               to aliasmail which returns either the expanded alias or
               local!person if there is no alias of that name.

          -    A canonical network mail address has the form
               machine!...!name, with one or more machines mentioned.

        Aliasmail
          Aliasmail expands mail aliases, its arguments, according to
          alias files.  Each line of an alias file begins with # (com-
          ment) or with a name.  The rest of a name line gives the
          expansion.  The expansion may contain multiple addresses and
          may be continued to another line by appending a backslash.
          Items are separated by white space.

          In expanding a name, the sender's personal alias file

     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

          /mail/box/username/names is checked first.  Then the system
          alias files, listed one per line in /mail/lib/namefiles, are
          checked in order.  If the name is not found, the expansion
          is taken to be local!name.

        Mailboxes
          Incoming mail for a user username is put in the file
          /mail/box/username/mbox unless either the file
          /mail/box/username/forward or /mail/box/username/pipeto
          exists.  The mailbox must have append-only and exclusive-
          access mode (see chmod(1)). A user must create his or her
          own mailbox using the -c option of edmail. Mailboxes are
          created writable (append-only) but not readable by others.

        Forwarding
          If the file /mail/box/username/forward exists and is read-
          able by everyone, incoming mail will be forwarded to the
          addresses contained in the first line of the file.  The file
          may contain multiple addresses.  Forwarding loops are caught
          and resolved by local delivery.

        Filtering
          If the file /mail/box/username/pipeto exists and is readable
          and executable by everyone, it will be run for each incoming
          message for the user.  The message will be piped to it
          rather than appended to his/her mail box.  The file is run
          as user none.

        Misc
          The seemail command notifies when a new message arrives in
          your mailbox.  It reads a log file, default /sys/log/mail,
          of incoming messages.  It runs continuously where it is
          invoked, displaying the names and icons of senders of new
          messages.  The -a flag causes it to initialize by displaying
          all the faces in the log; -s causes it to overwrite multiple
          appearances of the same face rather than repeatedly display-
          ing it.  The -u option displays incoming mail for the speci-
          fied user instead of yourself.

          Seemail's -r option causes it to announce appointments
          described in the file reminders. Each line of the appoint-
          ment file contains the month, day, hour, minute and room
          (any string of non-spaces) of an appointment, in a format
          compatible with calendar(1). The hour is 24-hour time.  The
          fields may be separated by white space, commas, slashes or
          colons, and the room may be followed by arbitrary text.  On
          the day of each appointment, seemail displays a clock-face
          icon with the appointment's room and time, once at midnight
          (or when the program starts), then an hour before, then 15
          minutes before, then 1 minute before, then at the appoint-
          ment time.  At the same time, it displays the room and any
          following text on a line below the clock time at the top of

     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

          its window.

          Vwhois just displays in the seemail window the icons of
          people. Vismon is a version of seemail that connects to a
          remote Unix (not Plan 9) system to look for mail arriving
          there.

          Smtp sends the mail message from standard input to the users
          rcpt-list on the host at network address address using the
          Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.  The return address of the
          mail will contain the local system name from the environment
          variable sysname and the user sender. If .domain is given,
          it is appended to the end of the system name.  The -u option
          sends the mail in the standard Unix format instead of RFC822
          format.  The -f flag just prints out the converted message
          rather than sending it to the destination.  The -g option
          specifies a gateway system to pass the message to if smtp
          can't find an address or MX entry for the destination sys-
          tem.  The -d option turns on debugging output to standard
          error.

          Smtpd receives a message using the Simple Mail Transfer Pro-
          tocol.  Standard input and output are the protocol connec-
          tion.  The -d option turns on debugging output to standard
          error.  Smtpd is normally run by a network listener such as
          listen(8).

     FILES
          /sys/log/mail            mail log file
          /mail/box/*              mail directories
          /mail/box/*/mbox         mailbox files
          /mail/box/*/forward      forwarding address(es)
          /mail/box/*/pipeto       mail filter
          /mail/box/*/L.reading    mutual exclusion lock for multiple
                                   mbox readers
          /mail/box/*/L.mbox       mutual exclusion lock for altering
                                   mbox
          /mail/box/*/dead.letter  unmailable text
          /mail/box/*/names        personal alias files
          /mail/lib/rewrite        rules for handling addresses
          /mail/lib/namefiles      lists files to search for aliases
                                   in
          /lib/face/48x48x?        directories of icons for seemail

     SOURCE
          /rc/bin/mail
          /sys/src/cmd/upas  source for commands in /bin/upas
          /sys/src/cmd/seemail
          /rc/bin/vismon
          /rc/bin/vwhois

     SEE ALSO

     MAIL(1)                                                   MAIL(1)

          face(6), rewrite(6)

     BUGS
          Edmail truncates long headers for searching.