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User Commands mail(1)
NAME
mail, rmail - read mail or send mail to users
SYNOPSIS
Sending Mail
mail [-tw] [-m message_type] recipient...
rmail [-tw] [-m message_type] recipient...
Reading Mail
mail [-ehpPqr] [-f file]
Debugging
mail [-x debug_level] [other_mail_options] recipient...
DESCRIPTION
A recipient is usually a domain style address
("user@machine") or a user name recognized by login(1). When
recipients are named, mail assumes a message is being sent.
It reads from the standard input up to an end-of-file
(Control-d) or, if reading from a terminal device, until it
reads a line consisting of just a period. When either of
those indicators is received, mail adds the letter to the
mailfile for each recipient.
A letter is composed of some header lines followed by a
blank line followed by the message content. The header lines
section of the letter consists of one or more UNIX post-
marks:
From sender date_and_time [remote from remote_system_name]
followed by one or more standardized message header lines of
the form:
keyword-name: [printable text]
where keyword-name is comprised of any printable, non-
whitespace characters other than colon (`:'). A MIME-
version: header line indicates that the message is formatted
as described in RFC 2045. A Content-Length: header line,
indicating the number of bytes in the message content, is
always present unless the letter consists of only header
lines with no message content. A Content-Type: header line
that describes the type of the message content (such as
text/plain, application/octet-stream, and so on) is also
present, unless the letter consists of only header lines
with no message content. Header lines may be continued on
the following line if that line starts with white space.
OPTIONS
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 1
User Commands mail(1)
Sending Mail
The following command-line arguments affect sending mail:
-m message_type A Message-Type: line is added to the message
header with the value of message_type.
-t A To: line is added to the message header
for each of the intended recipients.
-w A letter is sent to a remote recipient
without waiting for the completion of the
remote transfer program.
If a letter is found to be undeliverable, it is returned to
the sender with diagnostics that indicate the location and
nature of the failure. If mail is interrupted during input,
the message is saved in the file dead.letter to allow edit-
ing and resending. dead.letter is always appended to, thus
preserving any previous contents. The initial attempt to
append to (or create) dead.letter is in the current direc-
tory. If this fails, dead.letter is appended to (or created
in) the user's login directory. If the second attempt also
fails, no dead.letter processing is done.
rmail only permits the sending of mail; uucp(1C) uses rmail
as a security precaution. Any application programs that gen-
erate mail messages should be sure to invoke rmail rather
than mail for message transport and/or delivery.
If the local system has the Basic Networking Utilities
installed, mail can be sent to a recipient on a remote sys-
tem. There are numerous ways to address mail to recipients
on remote systems depending on the transport mechanisms
available to the local system. The two most prevalent
addressing schemes are Domain-style and UUCP-style.
Domain-style addressing
Remote recipients are specified by appending an `@' and
domain (and possibly sub-domain) information to the
recipient name (such as user@sf.att.com). (The local
system administrator should be consulted for details on
which addressing conventions are available on the local
system.)
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 2
User Commands mail(1)
UUCP-style addressing
Remote recipients are specified by prefixing the reci-
pient name with the remote system name and an exclama-
tion point, such as sysa!user. If csh(1) is the default
shell, sysa\!user should be used. A series of system
names separated by exclamation points can be used to
direct a letter through an extended network (such as
sysa!sysb!sysc!user or sysa\!sysb\!sysc\!user).
Reading Mail
The following command-line arguments affect reading mail:
-e Test for the presence of mail. mail prints
nothing.
An exit status of 0 is returned if the user
has mail. Otherwise, an exit status of 1 is
returned.
-E Similar to -e, but tests only for the pres-
ence of new mail.
An exit status of 0 is returned if the
user has new mail to read, an
exit status of 1 is returned if the
user has no mail, or an exit status of 2
is returned if the user has mail
which has already been read.
-h A window of headers are initially displayed
rather than the latest message. The display
is followed by the ? prompt.
-p All messages are printed without prompting
for disposition.
-P All messages are printed with all header
lines displayed, rather than the default
selective header line display.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 3
User Commands mail(1)
-q mail terminates after interrupts. Normally
an interrupt causes only the termination of
the message being printed.
-r Messages are printed in first-in, first-out
order.
-f file mail uses file (such as mbox) instead of the
default mailfile.
mail, unless otherwise influenced by command-line arguments,
prints a user's mail messages in last-in, first-out order.
The default mode for printing messages is to display only
those header lines of immediate interest. These include, but
are not limited to, the UNIX From and >From postmarks,
From:, Date:, Subject:, and Content-Length: header lines,
and any recipient header lines such as To:, Cc:, Bcc:, and
so forth. After the header lines have been displayed, mail
displays the contents (body) of the message only if it con-
tains no unprintable characters. Otherwise, mail issues a
warning statement about the message having binary content
and not display the content. This can be overridden by means
of the p command.
For each message, the user is prompted with a ? and a line
is read from the standard input. The following commands are
available to determine the disposition of the message:
# Print the number of the current mes-
sage.
- Print previous message.
<new-line>,+, or n Print the next message.
!command Escape to the shell to do command.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 4
User Commands mail(1)
a Print message that arrived during
the mail session.
d, or dp Delete the current message and print
the next message.
d n Delete message number n. Do not go
on to next message.
dq Delete message and quit mail.
h Display a window of headers around
current message.
h n Display a window of headers around
message number n.
h a Display headers of all messages in
the user's mailfile.
h d Display headers of messages
scheduled for deletion.
m [ persons ] Mail (and delete) the current mes-
sage to the named persons.
n Print message number n.
p Print current message again, over-
riding any indications of binary
(that is, unprintable) content.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 5
User Commands mail(1)
P Override default brief mode and
print current message again,
displaying all header lines.
q, or Control-d Put undeleted mail back in the mail-
file and quit mail.
r [ users ] Reply to the sender, and other
users, then delete the message.
s [ files ] Save message in the named files
(mbox is default) and delete the
message.
u [ n ] Undelete message number n (default
is last read).
w [ files ] Save message contents, without any
header lines, in the named files
(mbox is default) and delete the
message.
x Put all mail back in the mailfile
unchanged and exit mail.
y [ files ] Same as -w option.
? Print a command summary.
When a user logs in, the presence of mail, if any, is usu-
ally indicated. Also, notification is made if new mail
arrives while using mail.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 6
User Commands mail(1)
The permissions of mailfile can be manipulated using
chmod(1) in two ways to alter the function of mail. The
other permissions of the file can be read-write (0666),
read-only (0664), or neither read nor write (0660) to allow
different levels of privacy. If changed to other than the
default (mode 0660), the file is preserved even when empty
to perpetuate the desired permissions. (The administrator
can override this file preservation using the
DEL_EMPTY_MAILFILE option of mailcnfg.)
The group ID of the mailfile must be mail to allow new mes-
sages to be delivered, and the mailfile must be writable by
group mail.
Debugging
The following command-line arguments cause mail to provide
debugging information:
-x debug_level mail creates a trace file containing
debugging information.
The -x option causes mail to create a file named
/tmp/MLDBGprocess_id that contains debugging information
relating to how mail processed the current message. The
absolute value of debug_level controls the verboseness of
the debug information. 0 implies no debugging. If
debug_level is greater than 0, the debug file is retained
only if mail encountered some problem while processing the
message. If debug_level is less than 0, the debug file is
always be retained. The debug_level specified via -x over-
rides any specification of DEBUG in /etc/mail/mailcnfg. The
information provided by the -x option is esoteric and is
probably only useful to system administrators.
Delivery Notification
Several forms of notification are available for mail by
including one of the following lines in the message header.
Transport-Options: [ /options ]
Default-Options: [ /options ]
>To: recipient [ /options ]
Where the "/options" can be one or more of the following:
/delivery Inform the sender that the message was suc-
cessfully delivered to the recipient's mail-
box.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 7
User Commands mail(1)
/nodelivery Do not inform the sender of successful
deliveries.
/ignore Do not inform the sender of failed
deliveries.
/return Inform the sender if mail delivery fails.
Return the failed message to the sender.
/report Same as /return except that the original
message is not returned.
The default is /nodelivery/return. If contradictory options
are used, the first is recognized and later, conflicting,
terms are ignored.
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported for sending mail:
recipient A domain style address ("user@machine") or
user login name recognized by login(1).
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of mail
and rmail when encountering files greater than or equal to 2
Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes).
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of mail: LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
TZ Determine the timezone used with date and time
strings.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion when the user had mail.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 8
User Commands mail(1)
1 The user had no mail or an initialization error
occurred.
>1 An error occurred after initialization.
FILES
dead.letter unmailable text
/etc/passwd to identify sender and locate reci-
pients
$HOME/mbox saved mail
$MAIL variable containing path name of
mailfile
/tmp/ma* temporary file
/tmp/MLDBG* debug trace file
/var/mail/*.lock lock for mail directory
/var/mail/:saved directory for holding temp files to
prevent loss of data in the event of
a system crash
/var/mail/user incoming mail for user; that is, the
mailfile
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 9
User Commands mail(1)
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
chmod(1), csh(1), login(1), mailx(1), uucp(1C),
uuencode(1C), vacation(1), write(1), attributes(5),
environ(5), largefile(5)
Solaris Advanced User's Guide
NOTES
The interpretation and resulting action taken because of the
header lines described in the Delivery Notifications section
only occur if this version of mail is installed on the sys-
tem where the delivery (or failure) happens. Earlier ver-
sions of mail might not support any types of delivery notif-
ication.
Conditions sometimes result in a failure to remove a lock
file.
After an interrupt, the next message might not be printed.
Printing can be forced by typing a p.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 Jun 2004 10
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