Unix Mail App.

GadgetLover

GadgetLover

Senior Member & Tech Guru
Can someome please teach me about the Unix Mail app. I'd like to learn how to use it -- how to read mail with it, etc.

I sometimes find that when my email app is running (Entourage) and I load the Terminal, the terminal reports that I have "new mail." (1) How does it know? And (2) how do I read mail through Unix; and (3) how do I 'clear' the new mail notification, etc....

;)
 
Simply type mail at the prompt in the terminal. This will start the unix mail program which is somewhat painfull to use. Type a '?' to get help.

Also its worth noteing that when the terminal tells you that you have mail, its most likely not talking about the same type of mail that Entourage is. It is usualy talking about the messages sent to you from the output of scripts or other things. This is if you have not set up a local MTA or have something like fetchmail downloading your mail to your local mail directory.
 
type: ' man mail ' at the terminal prompt, it is worth a quick read.

also, by default you really should not be getting any messages from the script that run in the background on you mac via cron or whatever...unless you have changed the contents of /var/root/.forward or you have installed something thatputs in a new cron under you user.

type " crontab -l ' at the the terminal prompt to find out.

if you get something from that, then your have a crontab under your user accoutn. this happend to me when i foolishly installed a beta of Norton AV for OS X. It sets up a cron and this cron sends you a message everyday.

here the thread on that: Norton Util beta and a funny message from a cron
 
Originally posted by holmBrew
also, by default you really should not be getting any messages from the script that run in the background on you mac via cron or whatever...

type " crontab -l ' at the the terminal prompt to find out.

if you get something from that, then your have a crontab under your user accoutn. this happend to me when i foolishly installed a beta of Norton AV for OS X. It sets up a cron and this cron sends you a message everyday. [/URL]
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Mother F*****! You are right! I once DID install the beta before the final version was released and ... sure enough ... there it was when I entered crontab! How do I delete that nonsense? Will the other thread explain it?
 
Thanks! I just went to the thread you referred me to and did a crontab -r and all is fine now!

This is why I love helping people in forums ... because people do the same for me! Long Live MacOSX.com and the Mac Community at large! Hail! Hail!
 
If you have the dev tools installed, you might want to consider downloading and installing pine (if it's not already installe, I forget). It's a much more pleasant mail package to use, I find.
 
Originally posted by scruffy
If you have the dev tools installed, you might want to consider downloading and installing pine (if it's not already installe, I forget). It's a much more pleasant mail package to use, I find.
Click to expand...

Definitely. But there used to be basically two camps for UNIX mailers: elm and pine (oh, there's also emacs :) ). I was an elm person. Elm is basically dead, but mutt took over, and then some. I've been using mutt now for about five years, and it has just gotten better and better. Wonderful mail client. We seem to get a lot of ex-pine users on the mutt email list, too. Try them both and see what works best for you.
 
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