MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
NAME
mail, edmail, sendmail, seemail, aliasmail, smtp, smtpd, to,
vwhois, vismon - mail commands
SYNOPSIS
mail [ arg ... ]
upas/edmail [ -cmpre ] [ -[fF] mfile ]
upas/sendmail [ -xr# ] person ...
upas/to [ -x# ]
seemail [ -as ] [ -u user ] [ -f file ] [ -r reminders ]
upas/aliasmail name ...
smtp [ -fdu ] [ -hhost ] [ -ggateway ] [ .domain ] address
sender rcpt-list
smtpd [ -d ]
vwhois people ...
vismon system
DESCRIPTION
Mail
Mail invokes edmail -m when no persons appear on the command
line. It invokes sendmail otherwise.
Mailbox Editing
Edmail edits a mailbox. The default mailbox is
/mail/box/username/mbox. The -f and -F command line options
and the s and S editing commands specify an alternate mail-
box. Unrooted path names are interpreted relative to
/mail/box/username for -f and s and relative to the current
directory for -F and S. If the mfile argument is omitted,
the name defaults to stored.
The options for edmail are:
-c Create a mailbox.
-r Reverse: print mail in first-in, first-out order.
-p Print all the mail messages without prompting for
commands.
-m Use a manual style of interface, that is, print no
messages unless directed to.
-f mfile Read messages from the specified file (see above)
instead of the default mailbox.
Page 1 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
-F mfile same as -f with different starting point for rela-
tive paths (see above).
-e Check silently if there is anything in the mail-
box; return zero (true) if so, non-zero otherwise.
Edmail prints messages one at a time, prompting between mes-
sages. After printing a prompt edmail reads a line from the
standard input to direct disposition of the message. Com-
mands, as in ed(1), are of the form `[range] command
[arguments]'. The command is applied to each message in the
(optional) range addressed by message number and/or regular
expressions in the style of ed(1). A regular expression in
slashes searches among header (postmark) lines; an expres-
sion in percent signs searches on message content.
address to indicate a single message header
address,address
to indicate a range of contiguous message headers
g/expression/
to indicate all message headers matching the reg-
ular expression.
The commands are:
b Print the headers for the next ten messages.
d Mark message to be deleted upon exiting edmail.
h Print the disposition, size in characters, and
header line of the message.
m person ...
Mail the message to the named persons.
M person ...
Same as m except that lines typed on the terminal
(terminated by EOT) are prefixed to the message.
p Print message. An interrupt stops the printing.
r Reply to the sender of the message.
R Like `r' but with the message appended to the
reply.
s mfile (Save) Append the message to the specified mail-
box (see above).
S mfile Same as s with different starting point for rela-
tive paths (see above).
q Put undeleted mail back in the mailbox and stop.
EOT (control-D)
Same as `q'.
w file Same as s with the mail header line(s) stripped.
W file Same as w with different starting point for rela-
tive paths (see above).
u Remove mark for deletion.
x Exit, without changing the mailbox file.
? Print a command summary.
|command Run the command with the message as standard
input.
!command Escape to the shell to do command.
Page 2 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
= Print the number of the current message.
Sending Mail
Sendmail takes the standard input up to an end-of-file and
adds it to each person's mailbox. When running in an 8½(1)
window, sendmail automatically puts the window into Hold
mode (see 8½(1)); this means that the message can be edited
freely, because nothing will be sent to sendmail until the
ESC key is hit to exit Hold mode. With option -#, sendmail
does not send mail, but instead reports what command would
be used to send the mail. With option -x, sendmail does not
send mail, but instead reports the full mail address of the
recipient. Option -r tells sendmail that its input is via a
pipe from another program. It won't turn on Hold mode and
will expect a From line at the start of the message to pro-
vide the name of the sender and timestamp.
The message is automatically postmarked with the sender's
name and date. Lines that look like postmarks are prefixed
with `>'.
Person is a user name on the local system, a name for which
there is an alias, or a network mail address.
To is a preprocessor for sendmail. It takes a mail message
as standard input, looks through it for To:, Cc:, and Bcc:
header lines, and calls sendmail with the addresses in those
header lines as destinations. The Bcc: header lines are
removed before passing the message to sendmail.
Addressing Conventions
The local convention for converting addresses is given by
rewrite rules in /mail/lib/rewrite; see rewrite(6). The con-
ventions generally used are:
- A person containing no `!' or `@' is considered a
local user or local alias. It is passed as an argument
to aliasmail which returns either the expanded alias or
local!person if there is no alias of that name.
- A canonical network mail address has the form
machine!...!name, with one or more machines mentioned.
Aliasmail
Aliasmail expands mail aliases, its arguments, according to
alias files. Each line of an alias file begins with # (com-
ment) or with a name. The rest of a name line gives the
expansion. The expansion may contain multiple addresses and
may be continued to another line by appending a backslash.
Items are separated by white space.
In expanding a name, the sender's personal alias file
Page 3 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
/mail/box/username/names is checked first. Then the system
alias files, listed one per line in /mail/lib/namefiles, are
checked in order. If the name is not found, the expansion
is taken to be local!name.
Mailboxes
Incoming mail for a user username is put in the file
/mail/box/username/mbox unless either the file
/mail/box/username/forward or /mail/box/username/pipeto
exists. The mailbox must have append-only and exclusive-
access mode (see chmod(1)). A user must create his or her
own mailbox using the -c option of edmail. Mailboxes are
created writable (append-only) but not readable by others.
Forwarding
If the file /mail/box/username/forward exists and is read-
able by everyone, incoming mail will be forwarded to the
addresses contained in the first line of the file. The file
may contain multiple addresses. Forwarding loops are caught
and resolved by local delivery.
Filtering
If the file /mail/box/username/pipeto exists and is readable
and executable by everyone, it will be run for each incoming
message for the user. The message will be piped to it
rather than appended to his/her mail box. The file is run
as user none.
Misc
The seemail command notifies when a new message arrives in
your mailbox. It reads a log file, default /sys/log/mail,
of incoming messages. It runs continuously where it is
invoked, displaying the names and icons of senders of new
messages. The -a flag causes it to initialize by displaying
all the faces in the log; -s causes it to overwrite multiple
appearances of the same face rather than repeatedly display-
ing it. The -u option displays incoming mail for the speci-
fied user instead of yourself.
Seemail's -r option causes it to announce appointments
described in the file reminders. Each line of the appoint-
ment file contains the month, day, hour, minute and room
(any string of non-spaces) of an appointment, in a format
compatible with calendar(1). The hour is 24-hour time. The
fields may be separated by white space, commas, slashes or
colons, and the room may be followed by arbitrary text. On
the day of each appointment, seemail displays a clock-face
icon with the appointment's room and time, once at midnight
(or when the program starts), then an hour before, then 15
minutes before, then 1 minute before, then at the appoint-
ment time. At the same time, it displays the room and any
following text on a line below the clock time at the top of
Page 4 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
its window.
Vwhois just displays in the seemail window the icons of
people. Vismon is a version of seemail that connects to a
remote Unix (not Plan 9) system to look for mail arriving
there.
Smtp sends the mail message from standard input to the users
rcpt-list on the host at network address address using the
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The return address of the
mail will contain the local system name from the environment
variable sysname and the user sender. If .domain is given,
it is appended to the end of the system name. The -u option
sends the mail in the standard Unix format instead of RFC822
format. The -f flag just prints out the converted message
rather than sending it to the destination. The -g option
specifies a gateway system to pass the message to if smtp
can't find an address or MX entry for the destination sys-
tem. The -d option turns on debugging output to standard
error.
Smtpd receives a message using the Simple Mail Transfer Pro-
tocol. Standard input and output are the protocol connec-
tion. The -d option turns on debugging output to standard
error. Smtpd is normally run by a network listener such as
listen(8).
FILES
/sys/log/mail mail log file
/mail/box/* mail directories
/mail/box/*/mbox mailbox files
/mail/box/*/forward forwarding address(es)
/mail/box/*/pipeto mail filter
/mail/box/*/L.reading mutual exclusion lock for multiple
mbox readers
/mail/box/*/L.mbox mutual exclusion lock for altering
mbox
/mail/box/*/dead.letter unmailable text
/mail/box/*/names personal alias files
/mail/lib/rewrite rules for handling addresses
/mail/lib/namefiles lists files to search for aliases
in
/lib/face/48x48x? directories of icons for seemail
SOURCE
/rc/bin/mail
/sys/src/cmd/upas source for commands in /bin/upas
/sys/src/cmd/seemail
/rc/bin/vismon
/rc/bin/vwhois
SEE ALSO
Page 5 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
face(6), rewrite(6)
BUGS
Edmail truncates long headers for searching.
Page 6 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)