This section covers how to use inc
,
show
, scan
,
next
, prev
,
rmm
, rmf
, and
msgchk
. One of the best things about
MH is the consistent interface
between programs. One thing to keep in mind when using these
commands is how to specify message lists. In the case of
inc
this does not really make any sense but
with commands like show
it is useful to
know.
A message list can consist of something like 23
20 16
which will act on messages 23, 20 and
16. This is fairly simple but you can do more useful things
like 23-30
which will act on all the
messages between 23 and 30. You can also specify something
like cur:10
which will act on the
current message and the next 9 messages. The
cur
, last
, and
first
messages are special messages
that refer to the current, last or first message in the
folder.
If you just type in inc
and hit
return you will be well on your way to
getting started with MH. The first
time you run inc
it will set up your account
to use all the MH defaults and ask
you about creating a Mail
directory under
your HOME directory. If you have mail waiting to be downloaded
you will see something that looks like:
This is the same thing you will see from a
scan
(see Section 2.3, “scan
—shows you a scan of your
messages”). If you just run
inc
with no arguments it will look on your
computer for email that is supposed to be coming to
you.
A lot of people like to use POP for grabbing their email.
MH can do POP to grab your
email. You will need to give inc
a few
command line arguments.
%
inc -host mail.pop.org -user username
-norpop
That tells inc
to go to
mail.pop.org
to download your email,
and that your username on their system is
username
. The
-norpop
option tells inc
to use plain POP3 for downloading your
email. MH has support for a few
different dialects of POP. More than likely you will never
ever need to use them though. While you can do more complex
things with inc
such as audit files and
scan format files this will get you going.
The msgchk
command is used to get information
on whether or not you have new email. msgchk
takes
the same -host
and -user
options that inc
takes.
show
is to show a letter in your current
folder. Like inc
, show
is a fairly
straightforward command. If you just type show
and hit return then it displays the current
message. You can also give specific message numbers to
show:
%
show 32 45 56
This would display message numbers 32, 45 and 56 right
after each other. Unless you change the default behavior
show
basically just does a more
on the
email message.
next
is used to move onto the next message and
prev
will go to the previous message. Both
commands have an implied show
command so that when
you go to the next message it automatically displays
it.
scan
will display a brief listing of the
messages in your current folder. This is an example of what
the scan
command will give you.
Like just about everything in MH this display is very
configurable. This is the typical default display. It gives
you the message number, the date on the email, the sender, the
subject line, and a sentence fragment from the very beginning
of the email if it can fit it. The +
means that
message is the current message, so if you do a
show
it will display that message.
One useful option for scan is the
-reverse
option. This will list your messages
with the highest message number first and lowest message
number last. Another useful option with scan
is to
have it read from a file. If you want to scan your incoming
mailbox on FreeBSD without having to inc
it you
can do scan -file
/var/mail/
. This can be used
with any file that is in the mbox format.username
rmm
is used to remove a mail
message. The default is typically to not actually remove the
message but to rename the file to one that is ignored by the
MH commands. You will periodically
need to go through and physically delete the
“removed” messages.
The rmf
command is used to remove folders.
This does not just rename the files but actually removes the
from the hard drive so you should be careful when you use this
command.
The first thing that you will want to do is
inc
your new mail. So at a shell prompt just type
in inc
and hit return.
%
inc
Incorporating new mail into inbox...
36+ 01/19 Stephen L. Lange Request...<<Please remove me as contact for pind
37 01/19 Matt Thomas Re: kern/950: Two PCI bridge chips fail (multipl
38 01/19 Amancio Hasty Jr Re: FreeBSD and VAT<<>>> Bill Fenner said: > In
%
This shows you the new email that has been added to your
mailbox. So the next thing to do is show
the email
and move around.
%
show
Received: by sashimi.wwa.com (Smail3.1.29.1 #2)
id m0tdMZ2-001W2UC; Fri, 19 Jan 96 13:33 CST
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 13:33:31 -0600 (CST)
From: "Stephen L. Lange" <stvlange@wwa.com>
To: matt@garply.com
Subject: Request...
Message-Id: <Pine.BSD.3.91.960119133211.824A-100000@sashimi.wwa.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Please remove me as contact for pindat.com
%
rmm
%
next
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by whydos.lkg.dec.com (8.6.11/8
.6.9) with SMTP id RAA24416; Fri, 19 Jan 1996 17:56:48 GMT
Message-Id: <199601191756.RAA24416@whydos.lkg.dec.com>
X-Authentication-Warning: whydos.lkg.dec.com: Host localhost didn't use HELO pro
tocol
To: hsu@clinet.fi
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: kern/950: Two PCI bridge chips fail (multiple multiport ethernet
boards)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:18:36 +0100."
<199601182318.AA11772@Sysiphos>
X-Mailer: exmh version 1.5omega 10/6/94
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 17:56:40 +0000
From: Matt Thomas <matt@lkg.dec.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk
This is due to a typo in pcireg.h (to
which I am probably the guilty party).The rmm
removed the current message and the
next
command moved me on to the next message. Now
if I wanted to look at ten most recent messages so I could
read one of them here is what I would do:
%
scan last:10
26 01/16 maddy Re: Testing some stuff<<yeah, well, Trinity has
27 01/17 Automatic digest NET-HAPPENINGS Digest - 16 Jan 1996 to 17 Jan 19
28 01/17 Evans A Criswell Re: Hey dude<<>From matt@tempest.garply.com Tue
29 01/16 Karl Heuer need configure/make volunteers<<The FSF is looki
30 01/18 Paul Stephanouk Re: [alt.religion.scientology] Raw Meat (humor)<
31 01/18 Bill Lenherr Re: Linux NIS Solaris<<--- On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 1
34 01/19 John Fieber Re: Stuff for the email section?<<On Fri, 19 Jan
35 01/19 support@foo.garpl [garply.com #1138] parlor<<Hello. This is the Ne
37+ 01/19 Matt Thomas Re: kern/950: Two PCI bridge chips fail (multipl
38 01/19 Amancio Hasty Jr Re: FreeBSD and VAT<<>>> Bill Fenner said: > In
%
Then if I wanted to read message number 27 I would do a
show 27
and it would be displayed. As
you can probably tell from this sample session
MH is pretty easy to use and
looking through emails and displaying them is fairly intuitive
and easy.
This, and other documents, can be downloaded from http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
For questions about FreeBSD, read the
documentation before
contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.