| 1 | .TH MAIL 1
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| 2 | .SH NAME
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| 3 | mail \- send and receive electronic mail
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| 4 | .SH SYNOPSIS
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| 5 | \fBmail\fR [\fB\-epqr\fR] [\fB\-f\fR \fIfile\fR]
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| 6 | .br
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| 7 | \fBmail\fR [\fB\-dtv\fR] [\fB\-s\fR \fIsubject\fR] \fIuser\fR [...]
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| 8 | .br
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| 9 | .de FL
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| 10 | .TP
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| 11 | \\fB\\$1\\fR
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| 12 | \\$2
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| 13 | ..
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| 14 | .de EX
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| 15 | .TP 20
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| 16 | \\fB\\$1\\fR
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| 17 | # \\$2
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| 18 | ..
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| 19 | .SH OPTIONS
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| 20 | .FL "\-e" "Exit with status TRUE or FALSE to indicate if there is mail in mailbox"
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| 21 | .FL "\-p" "Print all mail and then exit"
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| 22 | .FL "\-q" "Quit program if SIGINT received"
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| 23 | .FL "\-r" "Reverse print order, i.e., print oldest first"
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| 24 | .FL "\-f" "Use \fIfile\fR instead of \fI/usr/spool/mail/user\fR as mailbox"
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| 25 | .PP
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| 26 | .FL "\-d" "Force use of the shell variable \fIMAILER\fR"
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| 27 | .FL "\-t" "Show distribution list as Dist: header in message"
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| 28 | .FL "\-v" "Verbose mode (passed on to \fIMAILER\fR)"
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| 29 | .FL "\-s" "Use Subject: \fIsubject\fR"
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| 30 | .SH EXAMPLES
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| 31 | .EX "mail ast" "Send a message to \fIast\fR"
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| 32 | .EX "mail" "Read your mail"
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| 33 | .EX "cat mail.cdiff | mail -s ''Here's the diff!'' asw " "Pipe program output to mail with a subject line"
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| 34 | .EX "mail -f /usr/spool/mail/asw" "How root can read asw's mail"
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| 35 | .SH DESCRIPTION
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| 36 | .PP
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| 37 | \fIMail\fR is an extremely simple electronic mail program. It can be used
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| 38 | to send or receive email on a single
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| 39 | \s-1MINIX 3\s-1
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| 40 | system, in which case it functions
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| 41 | as user agent and local delivery agent.
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| 42 | If the flag \fIMAILER\fR is defined in \fImail.c\fR,
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| 43 | it can also call a trans\%port agent to handle remote mail as well.
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| 44 | No such agent is supplied with
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| 45 | \s-1MINIX 3\s-1.
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| 46 | .PP
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| 47 | When called by \fIuser\fR with no arguments, it examines the mailbox
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| 48 | \fI/usr/spool/mail/user\fR, prints one message (depending on the \fB\-r\fR
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| 49 | flag), and waits for one of the following commands:
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| 50 | .PP
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| 51 | .nf
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| 52 | .ta 0.25i 1.25i
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| 53 | <newline> Go to the next message
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| 54 | \- Print the previous message
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| 55 | !command Fork off a shell and execute \fIcommand\fR
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| 56 | CTRL-D Update the mailbox and quit (same as q)
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| 57 | d Delete the current message and go to the next one
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| 58 | q Update the mailbox and quit (same as CTRL-D)
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| 59 | p Print the current message again
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| 60 | s [\fIfile\fR] Save message in the named file
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| 61 | x Exit without updating the mailbox
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| 62 | .PP
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| 63 | .PP
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| 64 | To send mail, the program is called with the name of one or more recipients as
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| 65 | arguments. The mail is sent, along with a postmark line containing the date.
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| 66 | For local delivery, a file named after each recipient in the directory
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| 67 | \fI/usr/spool/mail\fR must be writable. If a spool file does not exist for
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| 68 | a recipient it will be created.
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| 69 | .PP
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| 70 | If the directory \fI/usr/spool/mail\fR does not exist then the mail is
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| 71 | dumped on the console, so that system programs have a way to notify
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| 72 | a user on a system that does not have a mail spool.
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| 73 | .PP
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| 74 | The received mail contains a To: header showing the recipient. If there
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| 75 | are multiple recipients and the \fB\-t\fR option is specified each recipient
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| 76 | will also see a Dist: header line showing the other recipients.
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| 77 | .PP
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| 78 | The \fB\-s\fR option allows a subject to be specified. The subject must be
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| 79 | quoted if it contains spaces. If no subject is specified the mail
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| 80 | will be delivered with Subject: No subject.
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| 81 | .SH NOTES
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| 82 | The \fB\-s\fR option was added to make this simple mail program
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| 83 | consistent with mail programs found in other *nix variants. Many
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| 84 | programs, including the version of cron distributed with MINIX 3 releases
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| 85 | 2.0.3 and later, report their outcome by piping output to the mail
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| 86 | program in order to send a mail message to root in lieu of writing a
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| 87 | log file. Such programs often expect the mail program to accept a
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| 88 | subject line using this option.
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| 89 | .SH BUGS
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| 90 | If an external \fIMAILER\fR is used it is likely the conditional code
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| 91 | supporting this will need some editing to be made to work correctly.
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| 92 | .SH AUTHOR
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| 93 | The original mail program for MINIX 3 was written by Peter B. Housel.
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| 94 | The -e and -t options were added by C. W. Rose. The -s option was added
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| 95 | by A. S. Woodhull. This man page revised by ASW 2003-07-18.
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| 96 |
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| 97 |
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| 98 |
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