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--- playground:s-nail [2021/11/01 04:48] – zilog
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-====An Introduction to Various BSD mailx style E-mail Clients on SDF====
-===History===
-In the beginning.. there was //mail//, which was included in Unix 1st Edition in 1971 according to the ancient texts (manuals). At this time, Unix had no remote communication facility at all, so //mail// would simply write to other users' files on a single machine.  As systems began to be networked //mailx// came on the scene with expanded features.  Eventually the two merged; these days //mail// and //mailx// are one and the same program and enjoy near-unversal presence across all flavors of Unix and Linux.  For a bit more //mailx// history see the [[http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx_history.html|Heirloom Project]].
-====Getting Started====
-One of the great features of //mailx// is it behaves like most traditional Unix commands; you can pipe the output of other commands to it or use it in a shell script or crontab.  With just the default settings a user should be able to send a message to themselves or another account on the local system like so:
-<code>$ mailx localuser</code>
-The sender will generally be prompted to enter a //Subject:// after which they simply type their message then press ''CTRL+D'' to signal //end of file// (EOF) and off it goes.
-To further automate sending simple messages the subject and an input file can generally be specified on the command line like so:
-<code>$ mailx -s "simple test" //some_user// < myfile </code>
-Most //mailx// implementations allow multiple addressees as well as CC / BCC recipients to be specified on the command line which makes it's fairly easy to automate the sending of regular broadcast-type emails.
-===Using mailx on SDF===
-There are many Mail User Agents (MUA) on SDF including at least 3 flavors of //mailx//:
-  * **mail,Mail,mailx** -- the native NetBSD //mailx// with MIME extensions
-  * **heirloom-mailx**  -- formerly //nail//; supports MIME + POP3, IMAP & SMTP (not actively developed)
-  * **s-nail/s-mailx**  -- an actively developed fork of heirloom-mailx
-Most likely the default SDF shell ''PATH'' variable will give the native tools precedence over those installed via a package manager.  This means typing ''mailx'' will mostl likely run ''/usr/bin/mailx'' (native //mailx//), not ''/usr/pkg/bin/mailx'' (heirloom-mailx).  A simple way to check:
-<code>$ which mailx
-/usr/bin/mailx  =>  this shell checks native tool locations first </code>
-Similarly for ''man(1)'' , the manpage reader; below is how to read each:
-<code>
-$ man mailx         # native mailx documentation
-$ man -S pkg mailx  # heirloom-mailx documentation
-$ man s-nail        # s-mailx documentation
-</code>
-Users on the SDF cluster will find additional documentation under ''/usr/share/'':
-  * Mail Reference Manual  -- ''/usr/share/doc/reference/ref1/mail/mail.txt''
-  * Mail Command Reference -- ''/usr/share/misc/mail.help''
-  * Mail Tilde Command Ref -- ''/usr/share/misc/mail.tildehelp''
-To read use any pager like //more// or //less//, or even the //lynx// browser.
-====Basic mailx Usage====
-Each of the 3 mailx programs are sufficently different that beyond the very basics they need to be covered separately in this tutorial.  That said, the following should work on all implementations:
-^ mailx cmd  ^ description                                    ^
-| header     | lists message headers; accepts range and +/-   |
-| type       | prints message(s); accepts range.              |
-| forward    | forwards current message with all headers      |
-| delete     | deletes mesaages; accepts range                |
-| mail       | compose a mew message; accepts multiple addrs  |
-| write      | write message(s) to file; allows MIME splits   |
-| reply      | reply to sender(s); use Reply for just primary |
-| list       | list all mailx commands                        |
-Most mailx commands can be abbreviated to their first letter and several aliases exist, for example //type// and //print// are the same, so are //file// and //folder//.  See the **Mail Command Reference** document for more info.
-Similarly, in composition mode there are several tilde commands that are common to all mailx clients:
-^ tilde cmd ^ description                                      ^
-|    ~p     | print current header and body of message buffer  |
-|    ~f     | read in a message; accepts range, curr. default  |
-|    ~d     | read in contents of dead.letter (DEAD)           |
-|    ~m     | read message in as ref.; usually prefixed w/ >   |
-|    ~e     | open message buffer in default editor            |
-|    ~h     | edit the message headers; use ~c, ~b for CC/BCC  |
-|    ~r     | read a local file into message buffer            |
-|    ~?     | list all tilde commands and their usage          |
-Once a composed message is ready to be sent an EOF (''CTRL+D'') is entered on a new line (traditionally BSD mail also accepts a single "." (dot) on a new line; enable the ''bsdcompat'' option in the config file for this behavor).  See the **Mail Tilde Command Ref** document and the manpages for additional info.
-====Specific mailx Client Configurations====
-[[playground:native Mail|playground:NetBSD Mailx (mail)]]
-[[playground:native Mail|playground:Heirloom Mailx (nail)]]
-[[playground:native Mail|playground:S-mailx (s-nail)]]