mailintro(1)

mailintro -- introduction to mail commands and services

Description

This manual page provides a brief introduction to mail and also serves as a central reference of mail-related manual pages.

For a full description of the UnixWare mail system, refer to the Mail and Messaging topic.

Overview and definitions

Logically, the mail system consists of two primary components:

a mail transport agent (MTA) is responsible for delivering mail into the right inbox
one or more user agents (MUAs) that can read mailboxes, display them, allow new messages to be composed, and submit these new messages to the MTA for delivery

These components are also available:

High-performance Internet servers for POP3 and IMAP4, that allow mail folders to be accessed remotely by any compatible client, are also available.
A Message Store used by the MUAs, the MTA, and the Internet servers to read and write folders. This allows folder options to be configured on a system-wide basis. Users can individually override the system-wide folder configuration.

Messages are formatted to support Internet standards, commonly called RFC822 and MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). For the purposes of these manual pages, we reference MIME support, but do not document the format itself.

The Mail Transport Agent (MTA)

For UnixWare, sendmail is the MTA. It supports local mail delivery and SMTP (network and Internet) delivery. It can theoretically be configured to connect to any arbitrary mail system. UUCP delivery is also supported.

The Mail User Agents (MUAs)

For UnixWare, mailx(1), pine(1), dtmail, and Netscape, are the supported MUAs.

The Message Store supports both sendmail (standard UNIX) and MMDF folder formats. It support inboxes located in either the system spool directory or in each user's home directory.

Lastly, graphical administration tools are provided for both user options and system-administrator options.

References

The following is a reference of all mail man pages by category, with a brief description of each.

sendmail MTA and related utilities

sendmail (1M): Basic sendmail manual page, with overview and command line options.
aliases(4): Describes the format of the aliases file.
forward(4): Similar to .maildelivery in function, sendmail processes .forward files to customize the receipt of personal mail. The format and options of .forward are described on this manual page.
hoststat(1M): Lists the status of the last mail transaction with all remote hosts.
maildelivery(4): Mail delivery configuration file.
mailq(1): Prints out all entries in sendmail's queue.
mailstats(1M): Prints out sendmail statistics.
makemap(1M): Builds a Berkeley (sendmail-compatible) database file from a text file. Map files can be accessed much faster than a plain text file.
mfck(1): Mail folder check, folder recovery and conversion program.
newaliases(1M): Rebuilds aliases.db from aliases.
purgestat(1M): Resets host statistics.
praliases(1M): Prints out contents of the alias file.
rmail(1M): UUCP uses rmail to post incoming mail to the sendmail MTA.
sendmail.cf(4): The sendmail configuration file. Normally, the graphical administration tool (mailadmin) is used to edit sendmail.cf.
slocal(1): The delivery agent used by sendmail for final, local delivery. User-specific defaults affecting mail delivery are configured in the file ~/.maildelivery. The Vacation Notification Manager (see Vacation Notification Manager in Vacation Notification Manager) is used to edit this file for the purpose of setting up automatic absence notification.
smrsh(1M): sendmail restricted shell, sendmail can use this to run command lines specified in .forward files for enhanced security.
vacation(1): Notifies other users that the recipient is away. This program is backwards-compatible with MMDF's rcvtrip.

UnixWare provides m4(1) macros, unmodified from the original Berkeley sendmail distribution, to generate a sendmail configuration file (sendmail.cf) that is not compatible with the scoadmin(1M) graphical administration tool. However, these macros are available for those administrators who wish to use them. They are supplied under the directory /etc/mail/cf.

Message store configuration files

mail(4): Describes the format of the message store configuration files (/etc/default/mail and .maildef) for those who wish to hand-edit them. The graphical administration utilities are normally used to edit these files.

Mail User Agent commands

mail(1): A line oriented mail reader, also known as mailx, that has basic IMAP client and MIME capabilities.
pine(1): A full-screen character based mailer, developed at the University of Washington, that has advanced IMAP client and MIME capabilities.
pinef(1): A version of pine using function keys instead of Control characters for commands.

Netscape Mail, described in Netscape Help, contains an IMAP client. There is no separate manual page for Netscape Mail or for dtmail.

Mail notification utilities

mailcheck(1): Checks for the existence of new mail in your mailbox.
xbiff(X1): The graphical version of mailcheck; an animated icon appears when new mail arrives.

Internet servers

imapd (1M): The IMAP4 server.
ipopd (1M): The POP3 server.

Graphical administration commands

mailadmin(1M): Graphical administration for sendmail and the message store. mailadmin also provides a command line interface. The manual page primarily describes the command line interface.
multihome(1): Graphical administration for sendmail multihome aliasing mailer.

Informational and miscellaneous commands

mailaddr(1M): Describes valid Internet mail address formats.

Mail development system commands

maillock(3X): Describes how to manage the locking and unlocking of a user's mailbox.

The underlying API for the message store is described in Message store programming in Message store programming.

metamail utilities

metamail is used only by mailx to provide MIME support and is composed of several utilities and files:

metamail(1): Master metamail program, which in turn calls the rest of the metamail programs.
extcompose(1): Composes a reference to an external data source for inclusion in a mail message.
getfilename(1M): Prompts for a filename of a certain type when composing a MIME message.
mailcap(4): metamail capabilities file, used to add new MIME types.
mailto(1): Provides a simple user interface to compose a MIME message.
metasend(1): Provides a basic user interface to send a binary or other non-textual message.
mimencode(1): Encodes or decodes MIME messages when sending or reading mail.
richtext(1M): Displays a richtext file on a standard ASCII terminal.
showexternal(1M): Displays the body of a mail message which is referenced externally from within a MIME message.
shownonascii(1M): Displays a MIME message which contains data in a non-ASCII character set in its own, correctly-configured X window.
showpartial(1M): Displays the parts of a mail message which are referenced externally from within a MIME message.
showpicture(1M): Displays a picture received in a MIME message by bringing up the associated graphical viewer.
splitmail(1): Splits a message into several MIME-conformant pieces.