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\bold{Installation Notes for the AUIS-63L2-MAIL Package
}
}
\bold{FORWARD}
This is another of several planned versions of "packages" of the
\bold{Andrew User Interface System} (\bold{\italic{AUIS}}). AUIS can be
difficult to describe fully since it encompasses such a large variety of
applications and uses. In an effort to break this into something more
manageable, both in size and scope, I have created this particular package
which is aimed principally at people interested in those who are seeking a
\bold{MULTI-MEDIA and BETTER MAIL INTERFACE}. \italic{Messages} was the
one of the very first MIME-compliant mailers.
This package requires that you have already installed the AUIS Word
Processing package, auis63L2-wp.tgz. Do not mix versions (for example, L1
with L2), as this can result in surprising and undesirable behavior. This
document assumes you already have a working mail system. I assume you
already can send mail and have something to receive and display mail sent
to you. This software will do nothing for you until that works. Think of
this software as a better version of "elm" (for instance).
\italic{Messages} is also a MIME mailer. It was written by the originator
of the MIME rfc, Nathaniel Borenstein. With \italic{messages} you can mail
pictures and text with fonts to others who have MIME-compliant mailers. \
Be forewarned. The \italic{messages} program is \bold{NOT} fully
compatible with other mailers. It saves mail you receive as separate (and
indexed) files in $HOME/Mailbox, rather than in a single file in $HOME/Mail
(more on this elsewhere in the document).
Watch for a series of articles on AUIS to appear in the Linux Journal
beginning in August 1994.
\flushright{Terry Gliedt \
tpg@mr.net \
}
\bold{INSTALLATION}
This packaged is distributed as a single tar file of approximately 2.0 MB
which will expand to approximately 5.3 MB of ADDITIONAL disk space over
that required for the word processing package. To install this package, do
the following as root:
\indent{cd /
tar xzf [path]/auis63L2-mail.tgz
/usr/andrew/etc/complete-setup mail
}
This will add files to \italic{/usr/andrew} that you created earlier with
the -wp package.
\bold{USING MESSAGES}
This assumes you already know your way around \italic{ez} - because the
\italic{messages} program uses precisely the same menu-scheme, scroll-bars
etc.
You MUST also have a working mail system already in place. If you do not,
get it working \bold{FIRST} and \bold{THEN} try out \italic{messages}.
Messages will not magically start making e-mail work for your system. In
particular this means the /etc/sendmail command works as expected.
\bold{Your First Multi-Media Mail}
I know you're anxious to try your first multi-media mail, so we have
something all set up for you. Do the following:
mkdir $HOME/Mailbox
cp /usr/andrew/lib/Hello $HOME/Mailbox/mbox \
cp /usr/andrew/lib/Hello2 $HOME/Mailbox/mbox2
There is a pre-canned folder which demonstrates various aspects of
\italic{messages}. To see these in action, do the following:
/usr/andrew/etc/gendemo -force ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo
cd /usr/andrew/.MESSAGES/demo
tar cf - . | (cd ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo; tar xf -)
Hold on to your chair and now enter:
/usr/andrew/bin/messages
Select "Expose All" on the "Messages Folders" menucard
Click on the "amsdemo folder"
\bold{Further Information on Messages}
Enter "\bold{auishelp messages}" in your \italic{xterm} for help on the
mail system.
AUIS applications are highly tailorable for your personal needs and
preferences. This is especially so for the mail application,
\italic{messages}. After you become accustomed to \italic{messages}, you
will want to begin enabling some of the options it provides.
\italic{Messages} provides its own interface for setting preferences.
Begin by selecting the \italic{Set Options} menu item on the \italic{Other}
menu card. \italic{Messages} will write the preference settings you select
to your $HOME/preferences file.
Using \italic{messages} does not prevent you from sending mail with any
other program or receiving mail with another program. The only difference
is that once you \italic{\bold{receive}} mail, the two mailers
(\italic{messages} and \italic{elm}, for instance) will not know about the
mail the other received.
\bold{NOW WHAT'S THIS ABOUT COMPATIBILITY?}
\italic{Messages} is part of a very complex set of software called the
Andrew Message System (AMS). This has the ability to act as a news reader,
has support for bulletin boards and can deliver mail directly to other
Andrew File System cells (without using \italic{sendmail}). Most of this
function has been disabled in the version you have here.
The reason for telling you this all is that in doing all this, the original
designers chose to not keep \italic{messages} compatible with
\italic{mail}/\italic{elm} mailers with respect to its database. In
conventional Un*x mailers (e.g. mail) when mail is received, it is stored
in /usr/spool/mail/$USER as a conventional "flat" file. All the mail is
mashed together as one physical file. Its up to the mailer to sort these
out. This works fine when the file is small, but when you have 100 pieces
of multi-media mail, each 50K in size, it starts getting unwieldy and slow.
Now when you invoke your mailer (e.g. \italic{elm}), the mailer shows you
whats in /usr/spool/mail/$USER. When you save the mail to a folder, the
mail is appended to some file in $HOME/Mail (e.g. ~/Mail/tpg in my case).
Just as with the mail in /usr/spool/mail, this is also a simple file with
many logical files (pieces of mail) in it. It will suffer even more from
performance problems as you keep more and more mail around.
In the world where AUIS was developed, it is not unusal for one to have
thousands of pieces of mail (and large multi-media mail at that). So
another, incompatible approach was taken. Messages keeps each individual
piece of mail as a separate file in a folder (i.e. directory) and builds an
index so it can quickly show whats in the folder. Each of these folders is
kept in the directory $HOME/.MESSAGES. When you file a piece of mail in a
"folder", it really is saving the mail as a file in a directory under
$HOME/.MESSAGES.
\bold{SWITCHING to MESSAGES}
After you've tried \italic{messages} for a little bit, you might want to
"convert" your existing mail to \italic{messages}. Here's a technique I
have found workable. Now be careful here! This is not guarenteed to work
in all cases. It worked for me. Be careful. If you don't erase any files,
the worst case is that you will mess up some copies of mail. Here's the
approach I have used:
\bold{Goal}: Get mail I have received from \italic{elm} into
\italic{messages}
\indent{\italic{Elm} saves my mail in the folder $HOME/Mail/$USER (or
unread mail in $HOME/Mail/received). This looks pretty much like it did
when it was originally in /usr/spool/mail/tpg. So the trick is to copy it
there and tell \italic{messages} to read the "new" mail.
\description{1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER. This should
be a file of zero bytes.
2. cp $HOME/Mail/$USER /usr/spool/mail/$USER
3. Select "Read Mail" on the "messages" menu card. This will copy the mail
from /usr/spool/mail to $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail and show you the "new" mail.
Just like it just arrived the first time.
}}
\bold{Goal}: Get mail I have received by \italic{messages} back to
something \italic{elm} understands
\indent{\italic{Elm} saves my unread mail in $HOME/Mail/received as one
large file (just like it was in /usr/spool/mail/$USER). \italic{Messages}
has saved my mail in some folder like $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail as a set of
individual files. These files all have strange names (since you are
normally not supposed to even look at these, that's as expected). So
suppose you want to "convert" all of these back to \italic{elm}? The trick
is to copy the individual files to $HOME/Mail/received in the right format.
\description{1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER. This should
be a file of zero bytes.
2. Copy the files to /usr/spool/mail/$USER with something like the
following:
\example{/bin/csh
cd $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail
foreach f (*)
echo $f
echo "From dummy Sat May 28 11:32:01 1994" >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER
cat $f >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER
echo "" >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER
end
}
3. Invoke \italic{elm} (or whatever your mail reader is) and with any
luck, they will all be recognized.
}}
Hopefully these notes will make you more comfortable with trying another
mailer. As long as you do not delete any mail (in either \italic{elm} or
\italic{messages}), you still have it. Give it a try. I think
\italic{messages} is by far the best mailer I have seen and I hope you'll
agree. \
\bold{CHANGELOG}
Release auis63L0-mail has the following changes:
\indent{- Now based on AUIS 6.3
- An animator object called \italic{fad} is available in this package. I
did not have room in the -wp package and still be able to keep the tgz file
small evough to fit on one diskette.
- Minor changes made to some menus
- UseNewShadows enabled to provide better shadowing in scrollbars
- MIME mailcap supports TIFF now
}
Release auis63L1-mail has the following changes:
\indent{- Contains a very few fixes to AUIS 6.3
- This was built on Slackware 2.0
- Messages will no longer fail with some MIME mail.
}
Release auis63L2-mail has the following changes:
\indent{- Contains a very few fixes to AUIS 6.3.1
- This was built on Slackware 2.0
}
\bold{SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW}
\description{
If you use some sort of POP server, you might want to configure
\italic{messages} to call your POP client code (to fetch your mail)
directly. This can be done by setting the \bold{AMS_MailCollectionCommand}
entry in \italic{/usr/andrew/etc/AndrewSetup}. An example of what this
shell might look like follows (your mileage may vary):
\indent{#!/bin/csh
#
# Bring up slip if need be
# Get whatever mail is queued for me
# Invoke pgm to copy from /usr/spool/mail/$USER to $HOME/Mailbox
#
if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then # First time, bring up SLIP if you can
/usr/local/bin/slipup
endif
# Check if SLIP is up now. If not this time, exit with error,
# causing messages to generate a somewhat-bogus-looking error
if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then
echo "SLIP connection failed." \
exit 2
endif
sleep 2 # Just give it a little bit of time
# Get mail from SLIP server
# Option -v is verbose; -c put data to stdout; -k keep mail at MR.NET
/usr/local/bin/popclient -3 -o /usr/spool/mail/$USER -u slipuserid -p
slippasswd sliphost.domain
# Last step, Get mail into $HOME/Mailbox
/usr/andrew/bin/eatmail
}
Now that you are into multi-media mail, you might want to follow the
newsgroup comp.mail.mime.
If you try \italic{messages} and get the error message "There are no
messages in your incoming mailbox.", then you do not have /usr/andrew/bin
on your PATH or your PATH is set up so that /usr/bin/messages is found
before /usr/andrew/bin/messages.
\italic{Messages} has lots and lots of very useful options. Be sure to
select Other ->Set Options and look at all the options. Give serious
consideration to enabling "Keystroke commands", "Basic folder
menus/features", "File into...menus", "Hide after sending", "Clear after
sending", "Sign mail", and "Hide by Vanishing". \
When you first bring up mail, if you get an error dialog box with the
message "\italic{Messages in ...../Mailbox could not be properly read and
delivered (.....))}", then be sure to check the permissions of
\bold{/usr/spool/mail/$USER}. This should be owned and writable by you
(not \italic{root}). This is because \italic{messages} runs under your
authority and it tries to remove this file (after copying the data). If
this fails, messages \italic{generates} the error you see.
When you first bring up mail, if you get an error dialog box with the
message "\italic{Messages in ...../Mailbox could not be properly read and
delivered (.....))}", then the problem is that you have a "\italic{set
hold}" in your \bold{/usr/lib/Mail.rc}. You may edit this file and remove
it, or If you do not want to modify \bold{Mail.rc}, you can add the line
"unset hold" to your \bold{$HOME/.mailrc}.
One of the things that MIME's \italic{metamail} will be looking for is a
"mailcap" entry. This tells \italic{metamail} what to do with various
kinds of data. A sample mailcap file can be found in
\bold{/usr/andrew/etc}. You should copy this to
\italic{\bold{$HOME/.mailcap}} or \italic{\bold{/etc/mailcap}}. See
"a\italic{uishelp mime}" for more details.
If you have audio support on your system and want MIME to properly handle
\bold{audio insets}, you will likely need to modify
\italic{\bold{/usr/andrew/bin/showaudio}}. Once you have this working,
please tell me what you did so I can consider providing it to others.
The MIME \italic{metamail} command will invoke \italic{xv} for tiff insets.
To change this modify the \bold{mailcap} file mention above.
Using \italic{efax} 0.6 and some simple shell scripts, its pretty easy to
receive a fax and have it converted into MIME mail. Contact the author for
some details if you are interested in pursuing this further.
If you build your UCB \italic{sendmail} with the ``DBM'' option set,
aliases in \bold{/usr/lib/aliases} are case-sensitive; if you build it
without that option, they're case-insensitive. For purposes of validating
user names, \italic{Messages} assumes that aliases in
\bold{/usr/lib/aliases} are case-insensitive. This might mean that a name
that validates OK with AMS might be rejected by UCB \italic{sendmail}, if
that \italic{sendmail} uses DBM to do its alias lookup.
You might be interested in always using MIME format for your mail. Issue
the command "auishelp preferences" and check out the entries under
\bold{mailsendingformat}. \
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