MAIL(1) 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 postmarks:

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

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 editing 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 directory. 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 generate 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 system. 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.)


UUCP-style addressing
Remote recipients are specified by
prefixing the recipient name with the
remote system name and an exclamation
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 presence 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.


-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 contains 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 message.


-
Print previous message.


<new-line>,+, or n
Print the next message.


!command
Escape to the shell to do command.


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.


hn
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 message to the
named persons.


n
Print message number n.


p
Print current message again, overriding any
indications of binary (that is, unprintable)
content.


P
Override default brief mode and print current
message again, displaying all header lines.


q, or Control-d
Put undeleted mail back in the mailfile 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 usually
indicated. Also, notification is made if new mail arrives while using
mail.


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 messages 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 overrides 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 successfully
delivered to the recipient's mailbox.


/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(7) 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(7) 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.


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 recipients


$HOME/mbox
saved mail


$MAIL
variable containing path name of mailfile


/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


/var/tmp/ma*
temporary file

SEE ALSO

chmod(1), csh(1), login(1), mailx(1), vacation(1), write(1),
uucp(1C), uuencode(1C), attributes(7), environ(7), largefile(7)


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 system where the delivery
(or failure) happens. Earlier versions of mail might not support any
types of delivery notification.


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.

May 17, 2020 MAIL(1)