لطفا منتظر باشید ...
What You Need in Order to Use Local E-Mail
Any UNIX system handles local e-mail for users on that system. To exchange e-mail with the outside world, your computer must be on a network — or at least have a phone line and a modem. You definitely don’t want to know how to set up a mail network — if your computer doesn’t already have e-mail on it, it’s time to talk to a UNIX wizard.In the great tradition of UNIX standardization, UNIX has about 14 different mail-sending-and-receiving programs. (Fortunately, they all can exchange mail with each other.) To find out whether your computer can do e-mail, try using the simple mail program to see whether you have any mail waiting. Just type this line:We can’t list all the mail programs that exist, but this table gives you a brief summary.
Program name | Description |
|---|---|
One of many plain-text mail readers. | |
Another plain-text reader. | |
mailx | You guessed it, another plain-text reader. |
elm | A fairly old plain-text mail reader, with some support for attachments. |
pine | A newer plain-text mail reader, based partially on elm (PINE stands for Pine Is Not Elm). |
mutt | Yet another mail reader. |
mh | A particularly arcane mail reader — lots of gurus use it, everyone else thinks they’re crazy. |
Mozilla | It’s a Web browser! It’s a mail reader! It’s. . . Mozilla! |
KMail | The graphical mail reader that comes with KDE. |
Evolution | The all-in-one mail reader, calendar, and personal assistant that comes with GNOME. |
nail | A program evolved from mailx , but with support for MIME. |
exmh | Early graphical client, providing a friendly front-end to mh . |
spruce | Another graphical e-mail client, based on GNOME. |
XFMail | Don’t have enough graphical e-mail clients? Here’s another. |
balsa | Another mail program named after a tree. |
We mention all these and give special attention to a few of them, throughout this chapter. But don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.
UNIX says No mail if no mail is waiting or blats a copy of the first unread message to your screen. In the latter case, if you don’t want to read your mail right now, press x (for exit) and press Enter to get out. We talk more about reading your mail later in this chapter.To receive mail, you need a mailbox. (Not one of those tasteful roadside mailboxes, in this case. It’s an invisible mailbox made up entirely of electronic data.) Your system administrator can make (or already has made) one for you if your organization uses e-mail. The mailbox comes in the form of a file named something like /var/mail/ yourusername. It contains your unread mail and any mail you choose to leave lying around. You may also have a directory named mail or Mail (some systems capitalize it, some don’t — sigh) in your home directory that you can use to sort your mail into piles and keep it for historical reference.
To read the mail in your mailbox and send mail, you use a program such as mail or elm or Pine. If you use KDE or GNOME, you can use a fancy X Windows mail program, such as exmh . A whole lot of these mail programs are available — see the nearby sidebar, "UNIX mail programs."
