HOW TO USE UNIX MAIL

--Jim Pickrell

Here are the instructions for retrieving mail using standard Unix Mail. Unix mail is sometimes convenient to use when Eudora is not available.

Dial up to Brand X using a terminal program such as procomm, or telnet into brandx.net. Do not try to check mail on other computers such as the web servers, it will not work right.
Type in your username and password to log into the computer.
Type "mail" and you will see a listing of messages.
To read a message, type the numeral of the message. (e.g., 1 to read the first message)
To reply to a message, type r; the system will set up a new message to the both the sender and recipient.
Type the message. When you are done, do a hard return and type a period. You will see the letters EOT.
To see the list of messages again, type h 1.
To type a new message, type "mail recipient", where "recipient" is a valid email address such as "president@whitehouse.gov."
To exit the mail system, type q or x (see below). X is the choice to make if you want to be able to come back later and still find the same messages in your mail queue.

For a list of commands, type ?. You will see the following list of mail commands:

    Mail   Commands

t (message list)                	type messages
n                               	goto the next message
e (message list)                	edit messages
f (message list)                	give head lines of messages
d (message list)                	delete messages
s (message list) file           	append messages to file
u (message list)                	undelete messages
R (message list)                	reply to message senders
r (message list)                	reply to message senders and all recipients
pre (message list)              	make messages go back to /usr/spool/mail
m (user list)                   	mail to specific users
q                               	quit, saving unresolved messages in mbox
x                               	quit, do not remove system mailbox
h                               	print out active message headers
!                               	shell escape
cd [directory]                  	chdir to directory or home if none given

A (message list) consists of integers, ranges of same, or user names separated by spaces. If omitted, Mail uses the last message typed.

A (user list) consists of user names or aliases separated by spaces. Aliases are defined in .mailrc in your home directory.

There are many other tricks that can be used with mail, but this should be enough to get you started. For more information consult the Unix Man pages (online you can find them at www.brandx.net/help) or any standard reference on Unix.