.TH MAIL 1 .SH NAME mail \- send and receive electronic mail .SH SYNOPSIS \fBmail\fR [\fB\-dpqrv\fR]\fR [\fB\-f \fIfile\fR] [\fIuser\fR]\fR .br .de FL .TP \\fB\\$1\\fR \\$2 .. .de EX .TP 20 \\fB\\$1\\fR # \\$2 .. .SH OPTIONS .FL "\-d" "Force use of the shell variable \fIMAILER\fR" .FL "\-f" "Use \fIfile\fR instead of \fI/usr/spool/mail/user\fR as mailbox" .FL "\-p" "Print all mail and then exit" .FL "\-q" "Quit program if SIGINT received" .FL "\-r" "Reverse print order, i.e., print oldest first" .FL "\-v" "Verbose mode" .SH EXAMPLES .EX "mail ast" "Send a message to \fIast\fR" .EX "mail" "Read your mail" .SH DESCRIPTION .PP \fIMail\fR is an extremely simple electronic mail program. It can be used to send or receive email on a single \s-2MINIX\s+2 system, in which case it functions as user agent and local delivery agent. If the flag \fIMAILER\fR is defined in \fImail.c\fR, it can also call a trans\%port agent to handle remote mail as well. No such agent is supplied with \s-2MINIX\s+2. .PP When called by \fIuser\fR with no arguments, it examines the mailbox \fI/usr/spool/mail/user\fR, prints one message (depending on the \fB\-r\fR flag), and waits for one of the following commands: .PP .nf .ta 0.25i 1.25i <newline> Go to the next message \- Print the previous message !command Fork off a shell and execute \fIcommand\fR CTRL-D Update the mailbox and quit (same as q) d Delete the current message and go to the next one q Update the mailbox and quit (same as CTRL-D) p Print the current message again s [\fIfile\fR] Save message in the named file x Exit without updating the mailbox .PP .PP To send mail, the program is called with the name of the recipient as an argument. The mail is sent, along with a postmark line containing the date. For local delivery, a file named after the recipient in the directory \fI/usr/spool/mail\fR must be writable. .PP If the directory \fI/usr/spool/mail\fR does not exist then the mail is dumped on the console, so that system programs have a way to notify a user on a system that does not have a mail spool.