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E-Mail

The use of E-Mail is now such that everyone should be able to use and understand it. Within Premvet it is used for:

EVERY site does have access to E-Mail and EVERY site can send and receive it.

In addition, behind the scenes your computer is carrying out maintenance and administrative tasks without you having to do anything, if the system needs to alerts you to anything it will send you a mail message.

These messages include:

Someone does have to check the mail periodically (that is 2/3 times a week if not daily).

So how do you go about this?

Mail readers are a very emotive subject, everyone has their own likes and dislikes - on a basic system there are at least five different readers installed. This FAQ will look at what you have available and give a brief summary on each, which reader you use is a personal choice and it can be set on a per user basis.

As some mail readers are restricted to graphical screens we will leave them till last, to start with, lets look at the character based readers that will work with ANY terminal type.

bin mail This is the mailer supplied with the system. It is VERY VERY basic and should only be used as a last resort. The only advantage this has is it will be on every system. We do not recommend you use it.
elm Elm has been around for many years, it is easy to use and has many nice features however, it is not being developed any more. This means it is not up-to-date and the version installed on most systems is NOT year 2000 compliant and does not handle attachments very well.
mutt Mutt has taken over from where elm has left off. The user interface is very similar to elm's, it has all the functionality of elm and a lot more. Mutt is the mailer Premvet uses internally if the report/file can be mailed. Mutt would be our recommendation if you have not used others readers in the past.
mail This is a pseudo entry, all machine have either /bin/mail, elm or mutt 'linked' to the command mail. We cannot say which, all we can say is it will be one of the above. Try it and see is the only way to be sure.
The option within Premvet (on Sys. Management -> Other Apps -> E-Mail) will either call a Windows mailer (if you are on a PC) or this 'mail' option.

Lets look at mutt and elm in a little more detail (for details on /bin/mail please see the manuals that came with the system on on-line at http://localhost:457/mailhome.html).

To access either of the above, get to a #, $ or Vet> prompt and type either elm or mutt.

Elm

If you type elm you will see something similar to: 


        Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/root' with 3 messages [ELM 2.5 PL6]


     1   Mar 17 * Superuser          (23)
     2   Mar 17 * Anonymous UUCP sit (23)
     3   Mar 16 * postmaster@tkrh.de (100)  FOUND VIRUS IN MAIL from lgabriel@










   You can use any of the following commands by pressing the first character;
 d)elete or u)ndelete mail,  m)ail a message,  r)eply or f)orward mail,  q)uit
    To read a message, press .  j = move down, k = move up, ? = help

Command:

Here is a quick summary of the common options:

Mutt

If you type mutt you will see something similar to: 


q:Quit  d:Del  u:Undel  s:Save  m:Mail  r:Reply  g:Group  ?:Help
   1     Mar 16 postmaster@tkrh (  83) FOUND VIRUS IN MAIL from lgabriel@tpg.com
   2   + Mar 17 Anonymous UUCP  (   2)
   3   + Mar 17 Superuser       (   2)



















---Mutt: /usr/spool/mail/root [Msgs:3 6.0K]---(date/date)---------------(all)---
You are on the last message.

Here is a quick summary of the common options:

For those of you paying attention - you will have noticed that the above options are IDENTICAL to elm - as mutt grew out of elm this is not surprising. So if you can use one you can use the other.

Using either of the mailers above you can read, look, print and reply to any message you receive. One point to remember, all the 'administrative' messages are usually sent to the 'Super User' e.g. root so you should log in as root (the same way as you would login to do a shutdown or backup) and type elm/mutt at the # prompt.

You may receive individual e-mail, in that case use F6 to shell out of Premvet and use mutt/elm at the Vet> prompt. There is not just ONE mail box - there is a mail box per user.

Before we go on to look at sending mail and some other neat tricks lets look at the other mailers you have available to you:

Unix Graphical Mailers
The graphical mailers are all available on the Desktop. To start up a graphical session use the Main Console and type startx at either the # or Vet> prompt or login as 'admin' and select 'X-Session' from the menu.
   
ScoMail From the Desktop, click the mail icon (an envelope).
For details on using it select Help from the mailer or point a browser at: http://localhost:457/XMailHelp/CONTENTS.html.
Netscape Netscape has a built in mail reader, select the Netscape Icon and the browser will start up. Select either Communicator -> Messenger (or press Alt 2 on the keyboard). For help click help (top right on the toolbar).
   
Windows Graphical Mailers
If you have a PC networked into the system you can use ANY mailer available under Microsoft Windows to access your mail. Two of the common mailers are Microsoft Outlook and Eudora. Rather than go into details here on setting them up please look at the FAQ How Do I ... Use a Windows Mailer.

I want to send a mail message

At the $ or # prompt type: 

	mutt <address>

or if the mail reader is currently open on the screen, select mail and you will be prompted for the address to send 'To'. <address> can be any valid local user or a user on another machine e.g.

mail tom User tom on local machine
mail support@vetsolutions.co.uk User 'support' in Edinburgh
mail tom@vetsolutions.co.uk User 'tom' at 'vetsolutions.co.uk'

You will then be prompted with: 

Subject:

Type in here a _brief_ heading for the message e.g. Problem with AP Don't start typing the full message here. The Subject will appear on the header 'index' when the recipient looks at his/her mail.

You will then be taken into the editor to compose your message.

When you exit the editor you have the choice to alter any of the 'headers' e.g. Carbon Copy, To, Reply to etc. and an option to send/quit.

The system will delivery the mail, you don't have to worry about it.

Mail Trivia