Computer Science @ Florida State University

Introduction to Sending and Receiving Electronic Mail

Introduction

By using email, you are able to send messages or entire files at your convenience to anyone, anywhere on the internet. The system automatically stores your mail until you are ready to read it. The mail clients available to you are Elm, Pine, Xmail, and Procmail. This guide is intended to introduce you to the basic uses of these programs. To learn about Procmail, read Procmail HowTo.

How to Send/Receive Mail

Elm, Pine, and Xmail can be used to send and receive email and should be used from your home machine (ex. quake,shell,diablo). Procmail can be configured to sort incoming mail and do various processing tasks. Xmail must be used in an Xwindows environment (On a linux machine or through Xwin32 on a Windows machine). From the command line just type:

[program name] [-optional command line argument]

Type
[program name] -h

for a list of command-line options.

Reading Email
To read email (a message tells you that you have received mail when you login), typing "elm" or "pine" will enter you into one of these two interactive, menu-driven mailers. After reading your mail, you can save it, reply, delete it, and a variety of other functions. See the elm man page for full details.

Both Pico and Elm are menu-driven and fairly simple but if problems arise, consult the man pages: man pine, elm, xmail, procmail.

Also, ACNS has online tutorials for both Pine and Elm here.

Forwarding Email Messages

To have your mail automatically forwarded to another mailbox you must modify your .forward file. At the command line when in your home directory type pico .forward add one line per address and save the file. If you would still like your mail to be sent to your cs account, you must also include a line with your cs address on it. All future incoming mails should be forwarded before they are placed in your mail directory.

Mailing a file to another person

The procedure for sending a file to another person can be done from the command-line. The format for sending a file is:

% pine "address" <  "filename" (return)

EXAMPLE:

% pine bjp@sura.net < set.list  (return)

This command tells the system that you want to send mail to bjp@sura.net and the mail is to contain a file entitled set.list. The redirection sign < tells the system that a file is to be sent. To add a message to a file see the section on vi.

Using Xmail

To view your mail with xmail while in a Linux environment just type xmail & at the command line. If you are on a Windows machine, then you will need to start an XWin-32 session. If you do not know how to do this, see XWin32. A divided screen will pop up with a list of all mail in the top half and a selected mail message open for reading on the bottom half. Scroll up/down to change the message selection. In the middle there are a number of menu options which are pretty intuitive to use. If you have your mail filtered with procmail, then you will need to specify which folder you would like to look at by typing in the pathname at the "File: " textbox and press the Folder button.

Sending a message with Xmail

The Xmail send button will open a window for you to type in your message. If you make a mistake, it is possible to edit the line that you are currently typing by simply backspacing and re-entering the text. To edit other lines you should use vi, the Unix text editor.

When you are finished entering your message, to save and quit type

:qw (return)

You will then be prompted for subject, address, etc.

Aliasing/Mail Lists

Elm Aliasing

To create an alias database in elm, do the following:

1. Edit this file: %HOME/.elm/aliases.txt

In this format:

alias-list-name = [lastname [; firstname]], optional comment = address-list

alias-list: a blank- or comma- separated list of alias names
address-list: a blank- or comma- separated list of addresses

Example:
me, myself = cahill; janel , What a gal = cahill@cs.fsu.edu, jlc0839@acns.fsu.edu, 
janljovial@aol.com

This creates two aliases for myself, namely "me" and "myself". Three addresses are associated with each alias and a name and a comment are also associated.

Personal or Group Aliases

A personal or individual alias has only one address in address-list,
as in:

dave, taylor = Dave Taylor = taylor@company.com

A group alias has two or more addresses in address-list, as in:

gurus = Unix Gurus = alan, john, dave, mike, richard, larry, t_richardson

Other Rules

Entries can be continued over several lines; the continuation lines must start with a blank (a space or tab).

A comment is any line starting with a number sign (#). It is ignored.

Blank lines and comments can be interspersed within entries.

2. Type the command newalias to update your elm alias list.

3. Run elm and .... use your aliases

Pine Aliasing

Using aliases in Pine is much easier than in elm, just go to the Pine Address book, select address, and write the address-list in the address space.

Appending a Signature

In pine, you can create a custom signature by selecting Setup from the main menu, and by typing the signature command, s, from the setup menu. You will then be given a screen to type in your signature and choose ^X to save and exit. Your signature will then be automatically appended to all emails.

(Comments or questions may be directed to help@cs.fsu.edu.

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