MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
NAME
mail, marshal, nedmail, send, aliasmail, smtp, smtpd,
vwhois, filter, fs, biff, pop3 - mail commands
SYNOPSIS
mail [ arg ... ]
upas/marshal [ -t mime-type ] [ -[aA] attachment ] [ -s
subject ] [ -r ] [ -x ] [ -# ] [ -n ] [ mailaddr ... ]
upas/send [ -b ] [ -i ] [ -r ] [ -x ] [ -# ] [ -n ] [
mailaddr ... ]
upas/nedmail [ -c [dir] ] [ -r ] [ -f mailfile ] [ -s
mailfile ]
upas/fs [ -f mailbox ] [ -b ] [ -n ] [ -p ]
upas/biff
upas/filter [ -bh ] rcvr mailbox regexp file [ regexp file
]*
upas/pop3
DESCRIPTION
Mail
Mail is a shell script that invokes upas/nedmail when no
recipients appear on the command line and upas/marshal oth-
erwise. All command line options are passed through.
Sending mail
Marshal builds a mail message from standard input and passes
it to send for transmission or delivery. It adds to the
beginning of the message any headers in the file
/mail/box/username/headers. This allows the addition of
personal headers like From: lines with a full name or a dif-
ferent return address. The message format is both RFC 822
and MIME conformant, so marshal adds any required headers
not already in the message. Command line options direct
marshal to add a subject line and append attachments. The
arguments to marshal are the addresses of the recipients.
When running in a rio(1) window, marshal automatically puts
the window into hold mode (see rio(1)); this means that the
message can be edited freely, because nothing will be sent
to marshal until the ESC key is hit to exit hold mode.
The options are:
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-afile directs marshal to append file as a mime attach-
ment. Unless explicitly specified by the -t
option, the type of the attachment is determined by
running the file(1) command.
-Afile is like -a but the message disposition is marked as
inline directing any mail reader to display the
attachment (if it can) when the mail message is
read.
-ttype sets the content type for the attachments from all
subsequent -a and -A options.
-ssubject
adds a Subject: header line to the message if one
does not already exist.
-#xnr are all passed as command line options to the send
that marshal invokes.
Send reads a message from standard input and disposes of it
in one of four ways:
+o If mailaddr refers to a local mailbox, it appends it to
the recipient's mailbox.
+o If mailaddr is remote, it queues the mail for remote
delivery.
+o If the -r option is given and the mail is undeliverable,
it returns the mail to the sender.
+o if the -r option is not given and the mail is undeliver-
able, it appends the mail to
/mail/box/username/dead.letter and prints a message to
standard error.
The file /mail/lib/rewrite determines exactly how to deliver
or queue the mail. The decision is based purely on the
recipient address.
The options are:
-b suppresses the addition of the To: line.
-i let the message input be terminated by a line containing
only a period, for compatibility with old mailers.
-x do not send mail, but instead report the full mail
address of the recipient.
-# do not send mail, but instead report what command would
be used to send the mail.
-r input is via a pipe from another program. Expect a From
line at the start of the message to provide the name of
the sender and timestamp. This implies the -b option.
Reading mail
Nedmail edits a mailbox. The default mailbox is
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MAIL(1) MAIL(1)
/mail/box/username/mbox. The -f command line option speci-
fies an alternate mailbox. Unrooted path names are inter-
preted relative to /mail/box/username. If the mailfile
argument is omitted, the name defaults to stored.
The options are:
-c dir Create a mailbox. If dir is specified, the new
mailbox is created in
/mail/box/username/dir/mbox. Otherwise, the
default mailbox is created.
-r Reverse: show messages in first-in, first-out
order; the default is last-in, first-out.
-f mailfile Read messages from the specified file (see
above) instead of the default mailbox.
-s mailfile Read a single message file mailfile, as pro-
duced by fs, and treat it as an entire mailbox.
This is provided for use in plumbing rules; see
faces(1).
Nedmail starts by reading the mail box, printing out the
number of messages, and then prompting for commands from
standard input. Commands, as in ed(1), are of the form
`[range] command [arguments]'. The command is applied to
each message in the (optional) range.
The address range can be:
address to indicate a single message header
address,address
to indicate a range of contiguous message
headers
g/expression/ to indicate all messages whose headers match
the regular expression.
g%expression% to indicate all messages whose contents match
the regular expression.
The addresses can be:
number to indicate a particular message
address.number
to indicate a subpart of a particular message
/expression/ to indicate the next message whose header
matches expression
%expression% to indicate the next message whose contents
match expression
empty or . to indicate the current message
-address to indicate backwards search or movement
Since messages in MIME are hierarchical structures, in
nedmail all the subparts are individually addressable. For
example if message 2 contains 3 attachments, the attachments
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are numbered 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.
The commands are:
a args Reply to all addresses in the To:, From:, and Cc:
header lines. Marshal is used to format the
reply and any arguments the user specifies are
added to the command line to marshal before the
recipient. The possibility of making a fool of
yourself is very high with this command.
A args Like a but with the message appended to the
reply.
b Print the headers for the next ten messages.
d Mark message to be deleted upon exiting nedmail.
f Append the message to the file
/mail/box/username/sendername where sendername is
the account name of the sender.
h Print the disposition, size in characters, and
header line of the message.
help Print a summary of the commands.
m person ...
Forward the message as a mime attachment to the
named persons.
M person ...
Like m but allow the user to type in text to be
included with the forwarded message.
p Print message. An interrupt stops the printing.
r args Reply to the sender of the message. Marshal is
used to format the reply. If and optional Args
are specified, they are added to the command line
to marshal before the recipient's address.
R args Like r but with the original message included as
an attachment.
rf Like r but append the message and the reply to
the file /mail/box/username/sendername where
sendername is the account name of the sender.
Rf Like R but append the message and the reply to
the file /mail/box/username/sendername where
sendername is the account name of the sender.
s mfile Append the message to the specified mailbox. If
mfile doesn't start with a `/', it is interpreted
relative to the directory in which the mailbox
resides.
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.
This can be used to save binary mail bodies.
u Remove mark for deletion.
x Exit, without changing the mailbox file.
|command Run the command with the message as standard
input.
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!command Escape to the shell to do command.
= Print the number of the current message.
Here's an example of a mail session that looks at a summary
of the mail messages, saves away an html file added as an
attachment to a message and then deletes the message:
% mail
7 messages
: ,h
1 mul 4410 Jul 22 12:30 noone@madeup.net "Add Up To 2
1.1 txt 1413
1.2 html 1966
2 txt 504 Jul 22 11:43 jmk
3 mul 784 Jul 20 09:05 presotto
3.1 txt 136
3.2 txt 323 Jul 12 16:16 presotto
4 txt 822 Jul 11 09:23 xxx@yyy.net "You don't call, you don
5 txt 193 Jul 6 16:55 presotto
6 txt 529 May 7 19:42 jmk
7 txt 798 Sep 2 13:55 howard
: 1.2w /tmp/northwest.html
!saved in /tmp/northwest.html
1.2: d
1: q
!1 message deleted
%
Notice that the delete of message 1.2 deleted the entire
message and not just the attachment.
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
/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. Under the -f option, alias files
listed in /mail/lib/fromfiles are consulted instead, and the
domain part only of the expansion is printed.
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-
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access mode (see chmod(1)). A user must create his or her
own mailbox using the -c option of nedmail. 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 with arguments of the resolved address of
username (e.g. local!presotto) and his/her mail box name.
Filter provides simple mail filtering. The first two argu-
ments are the recipient's address and mailbox, i.e., the
same arguments provided to pipeto. The remaining arguments
are all paired; a regular expression and a file name. With
no flags, the sender's address is matched against each regu-
lar expression starting with the first. If the expression
matches, then the message is delivered to the file whose
name follows the expression. The file must be world writ-
able and should be append only. A message that matches none
of the expressions is delivered into the user's standard
mail box. The flags are:
h the regular expression is matched against the message
header rather than the address.
b the regular expression is matched against both the
header and the body of the message.
For example, to delete any messages of precedence bulk,
place in your pipeto file:
/bin/upas/filter -h $1 $2 'Precedence: bulk' /dev/null
Mime File system
Fs is a user level file system that reads mailboxes and pre-
sents them as a file system. A user normally starts fs in
his/her profile after starting plumber(4) and before start-
ing a window system, such as rio(1) or acme(1). The file
system is used by nedmail and acme(1)'s mail reader to parse
messages. Fs also generates plumbing messages used by biff
and faces(1) to provide mail announcements.
The mailbox itself becomes a directory under /mail/fs. Each
message in the mailbox becomes a numbered directory in the
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mailbox directory, and each attachment becomes a numbered
directory in the message directory. Since an attachment may
itself be a mail message, this structure can recurse ad nau-
seam.
Each message and attachment directory contains the files:
body the message minus the RFC822 style headers
cc the address(es) from the CC: header
date the date in the message, or if none, the time
of delivery
digest an SHA1 digest of the message contents
disposition inline or file
filename a name to use to file an attachment
from the from address in the From: header, or if
none, the address on the envelope.
header the RFC822 headers
info described below, essentially a summary of the
header info
inreplyto contents of the in-reply-to: header
mimeheader the mime headers
raw the undecoded MIME message
rawbody the undecoded message body
rawheader the undecoded message header
replyto the address to send any replies to.
subject the contents of the subject line
to the address(es) from the To: line.
type the MIME content type
unixheader the envelope header from the mailbox
The info file contains the following information, one item
per line. Lists of addresses are single space separated.
sender address
recipient addresses
cc addresses
reply address
envelope date
subject
MIME content type
MIME disposition
filename
SHA1 digest
bcc addresses
in-reply-to: contents
RFC822 date
message senders
message id
number of lines in body
Deleting message directories causes the message to be
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removed from the mailbox.
The mailbox is reread and the structure updated whenever the
mailbox changes. Message directories are not renumbered.
The file /mail/fs/ctl is used to direct fs to open/close new
mailboxes or to delete groups of messages atomically. The
messages that can be written to this file are:
open path mboxname opens a new mailbox. path is the file
to open, and mboxname is the name that
appears under /mail/fs.
close mboxname close mboxname. The close takes affect
only after all files open under
/mail/fs/mboxname have been closed.
delete mboxname number ...
Delete the messages with the given num-
bers from mboxname.
The options are:
-ffile use file as the mailbox instead of the default,
/mail/box/username/mbox.
-b stands for biffing. Each time new mail is
received, a message is printed to standard output
containing the sender address, subject, and number
of bytes. It is intended for people telnetting in
who want mail announcements.
-n Don't open a mailbox initially. Overridden by -f.
-p turn off plumbing. Unless this is specified, fs
sends a message to the plumb port, seemail, from
source mailfs for each message received or deleted.
The message contains the attributes
sender=<contents of from file>, filetype=mail,
mailtype=deleted or new, and length=<message length
in bytes>. The contents of the message is the full
path name of the directory representing the mes-
sage.
-s causes fs to put itself in /srv with a name of the
form /srv/upasfs.user.
-m specifies a mount point other than /mail/fs.
Fs will exit once all references to its directory have dis-
appeared.
Mail Announcements
Biff is the textual equivalent of faces(1). It listens to
plumbing messages from fs and for each new message prints to
standard output a line containing the sender address, sub-
ject, and number of bytes. It exists for people without
graphics capability or with screens too small to dedicate
the space faces(1) requires. It forks to place itself in
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the background.
Remote delivery
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. The -h option uses
host as the local system name; it may be fully-qualified or
not. If .domain is given, it is appended to the end of the
system name. The -f option 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
system. 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 options are:
-d turns on debugging output to standard error.
-r turns on forward DNS validation of non-trusted
sender address.
-f prevents relaying from non-trusted networks.
-n tcp-directory
specifies the name of the network directory
assigned to the incoming connection. This is
used to determine the peer IP address. If this
flag is not specified, the peer address is deter-
mined using standard input.
-h domain specifies the receiving domain. If this flag is
not specified, the receiving domain is inferred
from the host name.
-s causes copies of blocked messages to be saved in
a sub-directory of /mail/queue.dump.
-k IP address
causes connections from the host at IP address to
be dropped at program startup. Multiple
addresses can be specified with several -k
options. This option should be used carefully;
it is intended to lessen the effects of denial of
service attacks or broken mailers which continu-
ally connect. The connections are not logged and
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the remote system is not notified via the proto-
col.
Smtpd is normally run by a network listener such as
listen(8). Most of the command line options are more conve-
niently specified in the smtpd configuration file stored in
/mail/lib/smtpd.conf.
Mail server
Pop3 is a rudimentary POP3 server that uses APOP for authen-
tication. It predates upas/fs and does not use it. It will
soon be replaced by one that uses upas/fs. See also the
IMAP4 server described in ipserv(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/faces
/rc/bin/vwhois
SEE ALSO
face(6), rewrite(6) ipserv(8)
BUGS
Nedmail truncates long headers for searching.
Biff and the -b option of fs perform the same function but
in slightly different environments. The duality is confus-
ing. The -b option exists because starting both fs and biff
in a Telnet session results in a number of processes that
don't die when the session is terminated; the plumber(4) is
held open by fs and biff still having it mounted, while fs
is held open by biff which is blocked waiting for plumbing
input.
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