From csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv Thu Mar 30 13:51:03 1995 Path: csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: o.crepin-leblond@imperial.ac.uk (Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp,news.newusers.questions,alt.internet.services,alt.internet.access.wanted,alt.answers,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: FAQ: International E-mail accessibility Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 28 Mar 1995 22:20:47 GMT Organization: Imperial College London, UK. Lines: 597 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Expires: 11 May 1995 22:19:54 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: ocl@ic.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: This posting gives a list of country codes with email accessibility. It is helpful in finding-out if a country has easy access to email and internet facilities and is aimed at general email and internet users. X-Last-Updated: 1995/03/25 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: csus.edu comp.mail.misc:18667 comp.mail.uucp:10205 news.newusers.questions:54261 alt.internet.services:47944 alt.internet.access.wanted:26057 alt.answers:8255 comp.answers:10881 news.answers:40778 Archive-name: mail/country-codes Last-modified: 1995/03/24 Based on International Standard ISO 3166 Names Compiled by Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond E-mail: Release: 95.03.2 Release Notes: a. Sierra Leone (SL) with UUCP (*) b. World Wide Web (WWW) version available This document is Copyright 1995 by Olivier Crepin-Leblond. No part of this document may be reproduced in any commercial publication by any means - graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in an information retrieval system without prior written permission of the copyright holder. It may however be freely redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice, its headers "Archive-name", "Last-modified", and "Release" are not removed. Every now-and-then there are enquiries on the net regarding E-mail to a distant country. The question is often of the type "has that country got E-mail access ?". The following table is a guide of country codes, showing the countries which have access to Internet or general E-mail services. The country codes have been derived from the International Organization for Standardization standard ISO 3166. A country code is taken as a top level domain once it is registered at rs.internic.net so *not* all country codes listed are top level domains. At the bottom of the table, there is also a section of general top level domains, based on the information available at rs.internic.net. NOTES: 1. Description of codes: FI stands for FULL INTERNET access. This includes 'telnet', 'ftp', and internet E-mail. B stands for BITNET access although the address may be in internet DNS (Domain Name System) format. * (Asterisk) means that the country is reachable by E-mail. If this is not preceded by FI or B, it means that the connection may be a UUCP connection. An asterisk is included after FI or B for consistency. PFI stands for a provisional full internet connection.(+) P stands for provisional connection. (+) (+) This is used when one or more of the following is true: - address not verified or lack of address - UUCP dialup not active - net connection possible but not officially announced - premature official announcement of connection F stands for a country that is connected to Internet only via means of the FIDOnet network. It is assumed that the FIDO connection in this case is stable and reliable. 2. Networks which are not included: Networks such as MILNET (U.S. Military's unclassified portion of the DDN - Data Defense Network) have computers all around the world. It is generally possible to assume that wherever there is a U.S. military base, there will be a node reachable through gateways. Private company networks such as for DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.), or Sun Microsystems, for example, have nodes in many exotic locations. However the connection may take place via UUCP and cost a lot of money. Those networks have therefore not been included. In addition, those are PRIVATE networks. Many companies ( like U.S. Sprint, for example ) offer commercial services to many countries which are not readily available on the Internet. The service is VERY COSTLY, usually takes place via UUCP or X.400 connections. X.400 E-mail is usually charged to someone and if the telecommunication carrier cannot find someone to pay for the message transfer, it will reject it. As a result, those types of network have not been included in the list. Although a user may RECEIVE E-mail from a user on those networks, one may not be able to reply to it. 3. Updates: The situation changes from day to day. The growth in international networking is such that the information contained in this document may be out of date by the time it reaches you. If you have any update (i.e. knowledge that a new country is connected), please send a message to , including an example address from the country reached so that it can be verified. Furthermore, if you are a connection provider or could provide a low cost connection in a country, and are not listed as a provider in that country (see "FURTHER INFORMATION" section), please notify either Randy Bush or me. NOTE: This doesn't include providers for North America. If you are a North American provider, then please DON'T contact us. 4. .US sites While there are several hundreds of BITNET nodes in USA, none have a name in the format `.US'. That's why the .us domain is only FI and *. 5. .edu, .com, etc. The domains in this section are special in that some of them are used in more than one country. The domains which have full internet access are marked accordingly. However, this doesn't mean that *all* of those domains have full internet access. For example, only a small proportion of .mil sites have full internet access. The same is true for .com sites, for example. 6. UK and GB domains There are two codes for United Kingdom, namely UK and GB. While UK is used for addressing of most domains in DNS format, the field GB is used mainly in the X.400 addressing of United Kingdom sites. However, there is an increasing trend in some United Kingdom sites being directly connected to Internet under the GB domain. The GB domain is hence a perfectly suitable Internet top level domain. When looking for further information, it is worth looking at both UK and GB for United Kingdom. 7. Further information column This column contains information as follows: - E-mail address of a contact from which further information may be obtained and/or - Details of a gopher system that can be queried for further information in this case, look at Section 8: Where to find further information or - If no other information available: nameserver details, if any. This is the main nameserver as listed in the rs.internic.net database. Those often change as the network grows, and it is hard to keep track of all nameservers, but they should usually work. Nameservers can be queried by users using nslookup. 8. Where to find further information A number of sites run on-line information databases, mail-servers, and gopher information systems where further information can be found. - rs.internic.net Part of this site, the InterNIC database services, contains the Internet "white pages". The "whois" section of the "white pages" has registration records for top level domains. "whois" can be accessed by connecting interactively (telnet rs.internic.net), or via gopher (gopher rs.internic.net) or using the "whois" command available on some computer systems (whois -h rs.internic.net). Registration records for a domain are sometimes useful since they provide Administrative and Technical Contacts for this domain and those may hence be able to provide further information. - gopher.ripe.net This is a gopher system run by ripe.net, the co-ordinator for European Internet nodes. It contains a lot of information regarding European IP, etc. It may be accessed either as "gopher gopher.ripe.net" or "telnet gopher.ripe.net" and logging-in appropriately. It also has a "whois" database. - GNET: an Archive and Electronic Journal This is co-ordinated by Larry Press Archived documents are available by anonymous ftp from the directory global_net at dhvx20.csudh.edu (155.135.1.1). To conserve bandwidth, the archive contains an abstract of each document, as well as the full document. In addition to the archive, there is a moderated GNET discussion list. To submit a document to the archive or subscribe to the moderated discussion list, use the address gnet_request@dhvx20.csudh.edu. - BITNIC Bitnet Network Information Center Bitnet LISTSERVs contain files which list all BITNET sites around the world. For a listing of all BITNET sites, in country code order, send a message to LISTSERV@Bitnic.educom.edu (or LISTSERV@BITNIC for BITNET folks), no subject, and the command: GET NODES INFO3 in the body of the message. A very long file of information on all international BITNET sites can be ftp'ed from Bitnic.educom.edu and is called BITEARN.NODES . It is more than 2Mb long. - gopher.psg.com This gopher system, maintained by the Network Startup Resource Center and PSGnet/RAINet contains perhaps the most comprehensive collection of information about country connectivity. It may be accessed as "gopher gopher.psg.com". For the gopher client impaired, one can telnet to gopher.psg.com and login as gopher. An important feature is an E-mail interface to access the information in the gopher system. Send E-mail to: server@gopher.psg.com any subject, and in the body of the message: send country/ Example: if you want further information about Brazil (country code BR) send country/BR Many thanks to Randy Bush and to John Klensin for setting-up this site and this collaborative effort. 9. Archiving Once released, this document is archived in a number of archive sites around the world. Amongst them: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/ ftp://lth.se:/pub/netnews/news.answers/mail/ #ftp://ftp.uu.net:/usenet/news.answers/mail/ #ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk:/pub/uunet/usenet/news.answers/mail/ #ftp://grasp.insa-lyon.fr:/pub/faq/mail/ (#) those may not be accessible via Bear access or direct PC access in some cases. Via E-mail request as follows: mail ftpmail@grasp.insa-lyon.fr Subject: no one cares open [mime] get pub/faq/mail/country-codes quit where [ ] = optional All FAQs are also available via listserv@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be or listserv@blekul11.bitnet . For an index of all FAQs available, put the command GET NETFAQS FILELIST in the body of your message. The document is also retrievable by E-mail from rtfm.mit.edu by sending an E-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu , blank subject line and the command: send usenet/news.answers/mail/country-codes The up-to-date, pre-release document is also available using an experimental simple mail-server that I have setup from my account. Send E-mail to: with a subject: archive-server-request and the command: get mail/country-codes in the body of your message. The document is also distributed automatically once a month on a mailing list. To subscribe to that mailing list, send a message to: listserver@ic.ac.uk with the command in the body of the message: SUBSCRIBE country-codes where "" is your real name. 10. New World-Wide-Web (WWW) document An experimental (i.e: under construction) WWW version of this document is available as: http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/misc/country-codes.html This is currently experimental, so its reference may change at short notice, and some of the links in the document are currently not working. HTTP references for Top-Level information servers for a particular country should be sent to . ISO 3166 Codes + Top level domains. WARNING: The link to some countries marked as being connected to Internet via UUCP or FIDO is often an expensive telephone dialup link. The people in those countries pay dearly for every byte of information sent to them. It is therefore not advised to send an electronic mail to a remote node in such a country asking "how's the weather there". When it comes to money, people take things very seriously, especially since funds are scarce. It is a matter of net etiquette to keep this in mind. Junk mail sent to any node that has to pay a lot for its telephone connection will clearly be dealt with HARSHLY and evasive action may well be taken against those not respecting this notice. Code Country Conn Notes Further information ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ AD Andorra AE United Arab Emirates P Apparently dead ns.uu.net AF Afghanistan(Islamic St.) AG Antigua and Barbuda * upr1.upr.clu.edu AI Anguilla AL Albania P gwd2i.cnuce.cnr.it AM Armenia FI * Ex-USSR AN Netherland Antilles AO Angola (Republic of) * gopher gopher.psg.com AQ Antarctica FI * intermittent luxor.cc.waikato.ac.nz AR Argentina FI B * Uni. de Buenos Aires gopher gopher.psg.com AS American Samoa AT Austria FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net AU Australia FI * munnari.oz.au AW Aruba * gopher gopher.psg.com AZ Azerbaijan FI B * Ex-USSR gopher gopher.psg.com BA Bosnia-Herzegovina BB Barbados * upr1.upr.clu.edu BD Bangladesh F BE Belgium FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net BF Burkina Faso * gopher gopher.psg.com BG Bulgaria FI B * Daniel Kalchev BH Bahrain B * Gulfnet BI Burundi BJ Benin BM Bermuda FI * BN Brunei Darussalam BO Bolivia * gopher gopher.psg.com BR Brazil FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com BS Bahamas * upr1.upr.clu.edu BT Bhutan BV Bouvet Island BW Botswana * gopher gopher.psg.com BY Belarus FI * Ex-USSR gopher gopher.psg.com BZ Belize * gopher gopher.psg.com CA Canada FI B * relay.cdnnet.ca CC Cocos (Keeling) Isl. CF Central African Rep. CG Congo * gopher gopher.psg.com CH Switzerland FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net CI Ivory Coast * gopher gopher.psg.com CK Cook Islands CL Chile FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com dcc.uchile.cl CM Cameroon FI * in .fr domain gopher gopher.psg.com CN China FI * ns.cnc.ac.cn gopher gopher.psg.com CO Colombia FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com cunixd.cc.columbia.edu CR Costa Rica FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com CS Czechoslovakia ******** not a top-level domain anymore ******** CU Cuba * gopher gopher.psg.com CV Cape Verde CX Christmas Island CY Cyprus FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net CZ Czech Republic FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net DE Germany FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net gopher gopher.psg.com DJ Djibouti DK Denmark FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net DM Dominica * upr1.upr.clu.edu DO Dominican Republic * gopher gopher.psg.com DZ Algeria FI * gopher gopher.psg.com EC Ecuador FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com EE Estonia FI * Juhan Poeldvere EG Egypt FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com EH Western Sahara ER Eritrea F gopher gopher.psg.com ES Spain FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net ET Ethiopia F gopher gopher.psg.com FI Finland FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net FJ Fiji FI * FK Falkland Isl.(Malvinas) FM Micronesia FO Faroe Islands FI * danpost.uni-c.dk FR France FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net gopher gopher.psg.com FX France (European Ter.) ??? GA Gabon GB Great Britain (UK) FI * X.400 & IP ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk GD Grenada P upr1.upr.clu.edu GE Georgia * Ex-USSR ns.eu.net GF Guyana (Fr.) * gopher gopher.psg.com GH Ghana * gopher gopher.psg.com GI Gibraltar GL Greenland FI * gopher gopher.psg.com GM Gambia F gopher gopher.psg.com GN Guinea PFI * dial-IP GP Guadeloupe (Fr.) P gopher gopher.psg.com GQ Equatorial Guinea GR Greece FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net GS South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands GT Guatemala * ns.uu.net GU Guam (US) FI * in US domains gopher gopher.psg.com GW Guinea Bissau GY Guyana HK Hong Kong FI B * hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk HM Heard & McDonald Isl. HN Honduras * ns.uu.net HR Croatia FI * dns.srce.hr HT Haiti P gopher gopher.psg.com HU Hungary FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net gopher gopher.psg.com ID Indonesia FI * gopher gopher.psg.com ns.uu.net IE Ireland FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net IL Israel FI B * relay.huji.ac.il IN India FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com sangam.ncst.ernet.in IO British Indian O. Terr. IQ Iraq IR Iran FI B * Ali Shokoufandeh Ebrahim Mashayekh Akbar Behzadi IS Iceland FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net IT Italy FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net JM Jamaica FI * gopher gopher.psg.com JO Jordan JP Japan FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com jp-gate.wide.ad.jp KE Kenya * gopher gopher.psg.com KG Kyrgyz Republic Ex-USSR KH Cambodia * KI Kiribati KM Comoros KN St.Kitts Nevis Anguilla P upr1.upr.clu.edu KP Korea (North) P KR Korea (South) FI B * ns.kaist.ac.kr KW Kuwait FI * No BITNET gopher gopher.psg.com KY Cayman Islands KZ Kazachstan FI * Ex-USSR LA Laos LB Lebanon FI * gopher gopher.psg.com LC Saint Lucia * upr1.upr.clu.edu LI Liechtenstein FI * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net LK Sri Lanka FI * intermittent gopher gopher.psg.com LR Liberia LS Lesotho * gopher gopher.psg.com LT Lithuania FI * Ex-USSR aun.uninett.no LU Luxembourg FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net LV Latvia FI * Ex-USSR lapsene.mii.lu.lv LY Libya MA Morocco PFI * FI late'94/'95 gopher gopher.psg.com MC Monaco MD Moldova FI * intermittent MG Madagascar (Republic of) * gopher gopher.psg.com MH Marshall Islands MK Macedonia (former Yugo.) * gopher gopher.psg.com ML Mali * gopher gopher.psg.com MM Myanmar MN Mongolia * gopher gopher.psg.com MO Macau FI * hkuxb.hku.hk MP Northern Mariana Isl. MQ Martinique (Fr.) MR Mauritania MS Montserrat MT Malta P ns.iunet.it MU Mauritius * gopher gopher.psg.com MV Maldives MW Malawi F MX Mexico FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com mtecv1.mty.itesm.mx MY Malaysia FI B * mimos.my MZ Mozambique * gopher gopher.psg.com NA Namibia * gopher gopher.psg.com NC New Caledonia (Fr.) * gopher gopher.psg.com NE Niger * in .fr domain gopher gopher.psg.com NF Norfolk Island NG Nigeria F gopher gopher.psg.com NI Nicaragua FI * gopher gopher.psg.com NL Netherlands FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net NO Norway FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net NP Nepal * gopher gopher.psg.com NR Nauru NU Niue NZ New Zealand FI * truth.waikato.ac.nz OM Oman * PA Panama FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com PE Peru FI * gopher gopher.psg.com PF Polynesia (Fr.) * gopher gopher.psg.com PG Papua New Guinea * munnari.oz.au PH Philippines FI * ns.uu.net PK Pakistan * Imran Anwar PL Poland FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net gopher gopher.psg.com PM St. Pierre & Miquelon PN Pitcairn PR Puerto Rico (US) FI B * sun386-gauss.pr PT Portugal FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet gopher.ripe.net PW Palau PY Paraguay * ns.uu.net QA Qatar RE Reunion (Fr.) FI * In .fr domain inria.inria.fr RO Romania FI B * roearn.ici.ac.ro RU Russian Federation FI B * Ex-USSR RW Rwanda F gopher gopher.psg.com SA Saudi Arabia FI B * dial-ip gopher gopher.psg.com SB Solomon Islands SC Seychelles * gopher gopher.psg.com SD Sudan F SE Sweden FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net SG Singapore FI B * gopher solomon.technet.sg gopher gopher.psg.com SH St. Helena SI Slovenia FI * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net SJ Svalbard & Jan Mayen IsFI * in .no domain SK Slovakia (Slovak Rep) FI B * gopher gopher.ripe.net telnet ns.ripe.net SL Sierra Leone * gopher gopher.psg.com SM San Marino SN Senegal * gopher gopher.psg.com SO Somalia SR Suriname * upr1.upr.clu.edu ST St. Tome and Principe SU Soviet Union FI B * Still used. gopher gopher.psg.com SV El Salvador gopher gopher.psg.com SY Syria SZ Swaziland * gopher gopher.psg.com TC Turks & Caicos Islands TD Chad TF French Southern Terr. TG Togo * gopher gopher.psg.com TH Thailand FI * gopher gopher.psg.com chulkn.chula.ac.th TJ Tadjikistan Ex-USSR TK Tokelau TM Turkmenistan * Ex-USSR in .su domain TN Tunisia FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com alyssa.rsinet.tn TO Tonga TP East Timor TR Turkey FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com knidos.cc.metu.edu.tr TT Trinidad & Tobago * gopher gopher.psg.com TV Tuvalu TW Taiwan FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com TZ Tanzania F gopher gopher.psg.com UA Ukraine FI * UA Network Enq. UG Uganda F gopher gopher.psg.com UK United Kingdom FI B * ISO 3166 is GB telnet news.janet.ac.uk gopher news.janet.ac.uk UK Network Enq. gopher gopher.psg.com UM US Minor outlying Isl. US United States FI * see note (4) venera.isi.edu UY Uruguay FI B * gopher gopher.psg.com UZ Uzbekistan Ex-USSR VA Vatican City State VC St.Vincent & Grenadines P upr1.upr.clu.edu VE Venezuela FI * nisc.jvnc.net VG Virgin Islands (British) VI Virgin Islands (US) * VN Vietnam * gopher gopher.psg.com VU Vanuatu * gopher gopher.psg.com WF Wallis & Futuna Islands WS Samoa YE Yemen YT Mayotte YU Yugoslavia B * effectively cut-off completely ZA South Africa FI * gopher gopher.psg.com ZM Zambia FI * intermittent gopher gopher.psg.com ZR Zaire ZW Zimbabwe FI * gopher gopher.psg.com See Note [5] for the next top level domains (rs.internic.net): ARPA Old style Arpanet * alias still works ns.nic.ddn.mil COM Commercial FI * telnet whois.internic.net EDU Educational FI B * telnet whois.internic.net GOV Government FI * telnet whois.internic.net INT International field FI * used by Nato ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk MIL US Military FI * ns.nic.ddn.mil NATO Nato field * soon to be deleted ??? NET Network FI * telnet whois.internic.net ORG Non-Profit OrganizationFI * telnet whois.internic.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCLAIMER: while every effort is made to provide accurate information, this list is not guaranteed to be accurate. This document is in NO WAY an official document. The information given should not be used as a basis for routing tables but only as general end-user information. This is a voluntary effort. I would appreciate greatly if errors/omissions could be pointed out to me and they would be corrected in the next release. The information included in this document implies no view whatsoever regarding questions of sovereignty or the status of any place listed. Affiliation to Imperial College is given for identification purposes only. -- Olivier M.J. Crepin-Leblond, Digital Comms. Section, Elec. Eng. Department Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London SW7 2BT, UK Mobile (GMT): +44 (0)956 84 111 3 From csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv Thu Mar 30 13:51:03 1995 Path: csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: Piero@Strider.Inet.IT (Piero Serini) Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm,news.answers,comp.answers Subject: Pointer to Elm FAQ Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 28 Mar 1995 22:21:51 GMT Organization: Piero Serini Place Lines: 94 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Distribution: world Expires: 18 Apr 1995 22:19:54 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: Elm-FAQ@Strider.Inet.IT NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: This posting contains infos on how to get the Elm FAQ X-Last-Updated: 1994/09/26 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: csus.edu comp.mail.elm:15310 news.answers:40768 comp.answers:10878 Archive-name: elm/FAQ-pointer Last-modified: 1994/09/12 Version: $Id: Pointer,v 1.5 1994/08/05 10:26:25 piero Exp $ Hi all. Here is the pointer to Elm FAQ file. Please, RTFM and the FAQs before asking how to append a signature to your mail, or how to compile Elm on IBM AIX. Frequently Asked Questions Elm 2.4 [23] Piero Serini piero@strider.inet.it (C) Piero Serini 1993, 1994 - All Rights Reserved This is an unofficial Frequently Asked Questions (with answers) list about Elm. Syd Weinstein kindly checked this, but he is not responsible for the errors in the answers, which are my fault, unless otherwise specified. I do NOT claim to be a member of the Elm Development Group. 0.0 Organization and availability This FAQ is posted monthly, the 15th, on news.answers, comp.answers and comp.mail.elm. It is available: - from the above USENET groups - from all the USENET archives - ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS/elm/FAQ (ftp.cs.ruu.nl is 131.211.80.17) - mail request from cs.ruu.nl: send mail to mail-server@cs.ruu.nl with the following commands in the message body: send NEWS.ANSWERS/elm/FAQ end * WARNING: * The old ftp site: - ftp://ghost.dsi.unimi.it/pub/FAQs/Elm (ghost.dsi.unimi.it is 149.132.1.2) is now carrying old version of the FAQ, and is no more supported. I strongly discourage getting the FAQ or other related stuff from that site. * END WARNING * I *found* the ftp site. Many thanks to Syd, as usual. I plan the ftp site to be operative within a week or so. A file containing instructions on how to buid and install Elm un- der Next is on the same sites in .../Next.Z. A context diff file containing the differences between this FAQ and the previous release is posted on comp.mail.elm and is avail- able from the same sites in the file Elm/diffs.Z. This FAQ is NOT reposted if modified, until the next issue date. I will modify the ftp file only. I suggest using ftp to get the latest version of this document. This FAQ refers to latest patchlevel I put my hands on. Ques- tions about a specific patchlevel are kept if of common interest. Actually, all relevant questions concerning PL 21 are kept in this file, as many users still run PL 21. This FAQ consists of six parts: 0.* Organization. (0.1 Copyright) 1.* Operational Questions (and answers). 2.* Installation Questions (and answers). 3.* Filter Questions (and answers). This part is maintained by Jan Djarv (Jan.Djarv@sa.erisoft.se) 4.* Bugs list. 5.* Archivers, what they archive, how to download. At the end of this file you can also find: - Copyright Notice - Warranty Disclaimer - Publishing Notes 0.1 Copyright This FAQ is Copyright (C) 1994 by Piero Serini. All Rights are reserved. Please check the full Copyright notice, Warranty disclaimer and Publishing notes at the end of this document. From csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis Thu Mar 30 13:51:04 1995 Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,comp.mail.misc,news.answers,comp.answers Path: csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) Subject: UNIX Email Software Survey FAQ [Part 1 of 3] Summary: How to set up Email on UNIX systems. Message-ID: Supersedes: Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 14:20:07 GMT Expires: Thu, 4 May 1995 14:20:03 GMT Reply-To: mailfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Mail FAQ commentary reception) Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada Keywords: mail software survey UNIX FAQ Followup-To: poster Lines: 594 Xref: csus.edu news.admin.misc:38318 comp.mail.misc:18703 news.answers:40898 comp.answers:10912 Archive-name: mail/setup/unix/part1 Last-modified: Thu Jan 26 01:28:19 EST 1995 UNIX EMail Software - a Survey Chris Lewis clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca [and a host of others - thanks] Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, Chris Lewis Redistribution for profit or altered content/format prohibited without permission of the author. Other redistribution must contain this copyright notice and attribution. Changes are marked with a preceding "|". You can skip to them by typing g^| in (most) newsreaders. Note: this FAQ has been formatted as a digest. Many newsreaders can skip to each of the major subsections by pressing ^G. Please direct comments or questions to mailfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca - note Reply-to: line - automatic if you reply to this article. Many changes made in the second and third parts. ------------------------------ Subject: Introduction Configuring electronic mail systems can be quite a complicated subject. Often far more complicated than, say, setting up a Usenet news feed. This is because, unlike news, email is expected to traverse multiple types of networks using their own protocol, whereas, Usenet news tends to be a single protocol supported by hook or by crook on different networks. This document is intended for system administrators who need to know how to set up their UNIX systems for email communication with the outside world. It is intended for the email-naive SA who gets more than a little confused by the acronyms, RFC's and plethora of software. This is intended to be a general survey of the software available, so I won't spend too much time on some of the details. Most of the available software comes with documentation that can explain things much better than I can. Additional detail can be obtained from several sources, such as: Quarterman, John S.: "The Matrix -- Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide", Digital Press 1990, (Order No. EY-C176E-DP), ISBN 1-55558-033-5. Adams, Rick and Frey, Donnalyn: !%@:: A Directory of Mail Addressing and Networks, 3rd Ed., O'Reilly & Associates 1993, Provides a good reference for people seeking information on how to access the various email networks. ISBN 1-56592-031-7. Kehoe, Brendan P.: Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition, Prentice Hall 1992, ISBN 0-13-010778-6. Edition 1 is available via FTP on cs.widener.edu in the tar file zen-1.0.tar.Z. [I think] Krol, Ed: The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog. First edition, O'Reilly & Associates Sept. 1992. ISBN: 1-56592-025-2. Very good introduction to the Internet, history, facilities, uses, services, etc. I learned a lot. Albitz, Paul & Liu, Cricket: DNS and BIND, First edition, O'Reilly & Associates, October 1992. ISBN: 0-56592-010-4. Describes in great detail everything from what a domain is, to how to install and configure BIND. A *MUST* for people setting up large networks, or connecting machines to the Internet. It has become mandatory reading for network administrators in a large corporation for good reason. Costales, Bryan and Allman, Eric and Rickert, Neil: Sendmail. O'Reilly & Associates, Nov (?) 1993. ISBN 1-56592-056-2 (ISBN from galley proof, which I've had a preview of). An absolute necessity for anyone diving into the configuration of sendmail. The material is presented in a very clear form, and is quite exhaustive in its coverage. Perhaps a bit too wordy and overlong, but that's a more than welcome contrast to previous documentation (or lack thereof) on sendmail. Further, this is primarily oriented towards UNIX email systems. This is unfortunate, because it would be nice to have a general document covering email in all of its forms. However, each operating system tends to have radically different email mechanisms, so it would be difficult to do justice to any other environment. It seems more useful to cover one environment well here, and have companion documents for other environments. Speaking of which, why hasn't anybody else stepped in to do FAQs on other environments? Like DOS, Mac etc. And finally, this document is not intended to be pedantically correct. Knowledgeable readers will know that I'm glossing over a lot of detail, and absolute precision has been balanced against readability and effectiveness in helping people get going. ------------------------------ Subject: Layout This FAQ is laid out in the following sections: + An overview of how mail systems go together. + A glossary of the important terms to know. + A list of general do's and don'ts of mail systems. + Configuration Issues + Several suggested mail configurations. + General overviews of specific software. ------------------------------ Subject: Electronic mail - A General Overview of Structure Electronic mail generally consists of three basic pieces: 1) The link level transport - which could be UUCP, TCP/IP, or a host of others. We'll call this the "transport medium" (TM) 2) the "Mail Transport Agent" (MTA) which is responsible for transporting mail from source to destination, possibly transforming protocols, addresses, and routing the mail. The MTA often has several components: - Routing mechanisms - Local delivery agent (LDA) - Remote delivery agent Many MTA's have all of these components, but some do not. In other cases, it is possible to replace certain components for increased functionality. 3) The "User Agent" (UA) is the user interface - the software that the user uses to read his mail, sort things around in folders, and send mail. Sometimes called "Mail User Agent" (MUA). ------------------------------ Subject: Glossary Rather than alphabetic, this glossary tends to group terms referring to similar functionality together. Transport Medium: UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program): Back in the mists of time, UNIX systems communicated only over RS232 serial lines, usually over modems. UUCP is a suite of programs developed back in the early 70's to provide this communications link. All that UUCP does is transfer files from one system to another. There is an additional mechanism where one system can direct the destination system to run a file through a specific program. Electronic mail in UUCP is simply requesting the destination machine to run "mail" on a data file. UUCP communicates by means of "protocols", the most common being "g", a method for transmission of data over telephone lines and ensuring that the data is not corrupted. There are several other protocols, none universally available, and most oriented towards communication media other than telephone voice lines (such as dialup X.25, PAD X.25, or LAN connects). UUCP operates over fixed system-to-system links, so sending mail from one system to another often has to traverse other intermediate systems. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): TCP/IP is a protocol that allows any system on a network to talk "directly" to any other, by passing packets of information back and forth. TCP/IP (and its later relative OSI) is usually used over networks built on top of Ethernet, Token-Ring, Starlan and other LANS. SMTP: Or, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", is the communications protocol used most commonly over TCP/IP links in UNIX environments for mail. SMTP usually operates directly between the source and destination machines, so intermediate machines don't get involved (except for gateways, see below). SMTP is usually part of the MTA. SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol): SLIP is an implementation of TCP/IP designed for use over RS232 serial lines (ie: modems). The other difference is that some SLIP implementations have the ability to "dial the phone" to make a connection for a specific transfer, whereas LAN TCP/IP is physically continuously connected. You'd also need TCP/IP to run a SMTP mail connection. PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol): A successor to SLIP. X.25/X.29: X.25 is a packet switched data network which is usually half-duplex. In this context, it's really an alternative to dialup over voice telephone lines with modems. X.25 is available in several "flavours", either direct X.25 trunk connects over leased lines, through "PAD" interfaces, or by ordinary dialup modem access to X.25 "ports". To be useable in the context of mail transfers, you also have to use a file transfer protocol/mechanism of some sort on top of X.25. The most common being UUCP "f" protocol (through PADS or dialup), or "x" with direct X.25 connects. Whether you use X.25 or phones plus modems depends on a number of factors - usually the determining factor is cost. In North America, high speed modems (eg: 9600 baud and above) over telephone lines tends to be less expensive. However, Europe's really wierd phone system structure usually makes X.25 more cost-effective, and therefore, X.25 use in UNIX mail systems is much more common in Europe than North America. X.29 is the command set used to configure and establish X.25 connections when you're using asynchronous connections to a PAD. Networks: Internet: An "internet" is a network comprised of computers that talk to each other using TCP/IP, and usually SMTP for mail. The "Internet" is a vast network of hundreds of thousands of machines using SMTP protocol mail, communicating with each other over relatively high speed lines. But not all "internets" are connected to *the* Internet. The Internet grew out of a US government funded project in inter-computer communications that grew into an enormous network of systems. One of the principle characteristics of this network is that machines are addressed by domain names which identify the destination, rather than addresses that are constructed out of the route from machine-to-machine-to-machine. UUCP Network: The UUCP network is that set of machines that talk to each other via UUCP. Sending mail through this network requires that the sender know the network topology of UUCP links, and specify a path from one machine to the next. (There are, of course, ways around this. See the section on "do's and don'ts".) Mail addresses: Addresses: An email address is a method of specifying a given person on a specific machine. There are scads of conventions, usually determined by the presence of "@"'s, "!"'s and other special characters in the name. An address usually consists of two parts: a userid/name and a machine specification. A Domain address usually looks like: userid@domain-address Whereas a UUCP address usually looks like: siteA!siteB!siteC!userid Domain Addresses: Domains are a way of uniquely specifying a destination. Much like a postal address, a domain specifies a set of progressively more restrictive "domains" of the potential address space. It would perhaps be illustrative to give an example: clewis@ferret.marketing.fooinc.com You read these things right to left: "com" means the commercial domain. "fooinc" is the name of an organization within the commercial domain. "Marketing" is the name of a suborganization within fooinc, and ferret gives the name of a machine (usually). Domains can have any number of levels. The top level domain (com in the above example) has many possible values. In the United States, "com", "mil", "edu", and "gov" are fairly standard. Elsewhere, the top level domain tends to be a country code, the second level tends to be a province or state, OR a classification like "edu" or "ac" for academic (such as ac.jp, go.jp, ac.uk, edu.au, etc) and the third an organization. But, for example, there are many .com and .edu sites in Canada and other countries. FQDN A fully-qualified-domain-name (FQDN) has a entry for each level of the domain, from individual machine to top-level domain. In many cases, an organization has implemented an organizational "gateway" at a higher level of domain, so that people from outside don't have to specify FQDN's to get to a specific person. In the above example, for instance, "fooinc.com" may be sufficient to get to anyone inside fooinc, and "ferret.marketing" may not be necessary. On the other hand, people sometimes leave out the higher levels of the address, as in "ferret.marketing". This is a bad idea - because if the mail is cc'd out of the organization, chances are the external recipient cannot reply, because "ferret.marketing" is incomplete. So use addresses that are specified sufficiently for external users to use. (fooinc.com if a organizational gateway is used, the whole ferret.marketing.fooinc.com if not) NIC Internet TOP-LEVEL domains (edu, com, gov, mil) are controlled by a single organization, the NIC (internic.net). An organization "gets a piece" of the namespace by registering with the NIC, and then they are free to administer their own namespace (everything under fooinc.com) as they choose. The same is true for foreign countries; Once they have their top-level domain (usually the two-letter ISO country code) registered with the NIC, they do the rest, and divide it as they see fit. In contrast, on UUCPnet, all machine names everywhere share a single flat namespace. So it is important to choose a name that has not been used before. (See do's and don'ts). This is why FQDN's help. We can tell the difference between ferret.fooinc.com and ferret.blah.edu by their full names. (Instead of UUCP paths which may turn out to be wrong, and autorouting will probably send the mail to the wrong machine) MX record: A non-SMTP/Internet site that wishes to register on the Internet will need to get a "nearby" Internet site to set up a MX record for them. An MX record is essentially a domain-server database record that (effectively) registers your domain name on the Internet, and indicates that the Internet site knows how to forward mail to you. Usually via some non-SMTP/Internet route, such as UUCP. You can get an MX record for one site, or a "wildcard" MX record so that you can have your own subdomains. Bang-Paths: With UUCP mail, the MTA has to specify a route to get from one machine to another. "A!B!C!userid" means go to machine A, then B, then C, then user "userid" on C. You should strive, however, for a MUA that allows you to use domain addressing, and let the MTA figure out the bang routing as appropriate. Miscellaneous: Gateways: There are several meanings of this term, only three are relevant here. The first is a mechanism for getting from one network to another network that uses different protocols. The second is a mechanism for getting from one logical (often organizational) network to another using the same protocol. Often for example, there will be a LAN in one department of an organization, and one machine in the LAN has the connection to another LAN in another department. This means that mail from one LAN to the other has to pass thru the gateway machine. Another form, which we'll mention later is that of mail to news gatewaying. Routers: There are several definitions, but the most important is that part of the TA that figures out how to send a message to a given machine. This often uses a database that provides routes from one machine to the other machines on the network. Smarthost: In many cases, your machine won't know how to get to a specific destination. You can usually set up your mail system to send mail, that it doesn't know how to deliver, to a machine that is more likely to. RFC's: A set of documents that include formal descriptions of mail formats used on the Internet, and are adhered to by many non-Internet systems. More specifically, in the "worldnet" of Usenet, Internet and UUCP, the RFC's set the standards for mail exchange. RFC822, 1123 and 976 are the most important for Internet/UUCP mail. It should be pointed out, however, that there are some regions where the RFC's are not entirely respected. For example, the British academic email networks (JANET) uses domains, but they're specified backwards (they drive on the wrong side of the road too ;-). MIME: Mime is the official proposed standard format for multimedia Internet mail encapsulated inside standard Internet RFC 822 messages. Facilities include sending multiple objects in a single message, character sets other than US-Ascii, multi-font text messages, non-textual material such as images and audio fragments, and other extensions. For an | overview of Mime, see ftp.uu.net:networking/mail/metamail/MIME-overview.txt.Z. The defining document is Internet RFC 1341: N Borenstein & N Freed, ``Mime (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) mechanisms for specifying and describing the format of Internet message bodies'' (June 1992). Also see RFC 1344: N Borenstein, ``Implications of Mime for Internet mail gateways'' (June 1992). RFC1341 and 1342 have since been superceded by RFC 1521 and 1522. Mime covers only message bodies, not message headers; to see how to represent non-Ascii characters in message headers, see Internet RFC 1342: K Moore, ``Representation of non-Ascii text in Internet message headers'' (June 1992). X.400: A CCITT standard for email formats, more or less an alternative to RFC 822/976/1123. This format will probably start taking over from RFC 822/976/1123 mail. It is likely to (already has?) become an ISO/IEEE standard along with OSI etc. "The Maps": A set of files describing machine-to-machine links distributed over Usenet in the group comp.mail.maps. These are usually posted on a monthly schedule, and can be automatically received and transformed into a routing database that describes the "optimal" route to each machine. These are operated by the "UUCP Mapping Project". See the README posted along with the maps for more details. Aliases: Aliases are a mechanism by which you can specify the destination for mail on your machine. Through the use of aliases you can redirect mail to "virtual userids". For example, you should have a mail destination on your machine called "postmaster", which is aliased to send the mail to the System Administrator (ie: you probably). Aliasing often also permits you to send mail to groups of users (not necessarily on the same machine as you) pipelines of commands or to specific files. Mailing lists: Are similar to Usenet newsgroups. They are usually aliases pointing to groups of users, and allow mail to be sent to the whole group at once. Mailing lists are set up to carry certain subjects. The difference between a mailing list and a Usenet newsgroup is that the messages are sent by mail, probably as a copy to each recipient, rather than broadcast. ------------------------------ Subject: Do's and Don'ts: 1) Register a domain name. Even on UUCP, where .UUCP is often used as a kludge, it is MUCH preferred that you obtain a real domain address. If you are directly connecting to the Internet, you will get one as part of your registration with the NIC. If you aren't connecting directly to the Internet, obtaining a registration will usually require you finding a nearby friendly Internet site willing to act as a mail forwarder to you from the Internet - the site that will set up a "MX record" for you. Many sites will do this for you for free, and several of the commercial email services (eg: uunet) will do it for you for a nominal charge (without requiring you buy the rest of their services). There are occasions where you can join what is called a "domain park". These are most often small regional groups of systems that have gotten one of their number properly registered as a domain, and provides forwarding services out to other systems. For example, in my address "ferret.ocunix.on.ca", "ocunix.on.ca" is a domain park made up of the Ottawa-Carleton UNIX User's Group, one of the other machines in the group provides a gateway between our systems and the Internet. 2) If your machine is going to "speak" UUCP to the outside world, choose a unique UUCP name. You can find out whether a name you want is taken by consulting the UUCP maps. Or by asking someone else who's using them. 3) Register your machine with the UUCP Mapping Project if you're going to use UUCP. Information on how to do this is included in the monthly maps postings in the file "README". This is usually only required when your machine talks UUCP to the outside world, or when other machines have to address you by your UUCP name. If you don't do this, somone else may choose the same name, and gross confusion will arise when smart routers won't be able to tell whether to send a piece of mail to you, or your doppelganger[s]. If you register with the UUCP Mapping Project, you have prior use, and people who choose the same name afterwards will be told to get a new one. If you're "behind" an organizational gateway, don't do this. (Your organizational gateway is the thing that needs to be registered) If you do fill in a map, please take the time to fill it in carefully, giving contact people and phone numbers. Just in case your machine goes crazy and starts doing something nasty. Note expecially the latitude and longitude. Get it right, or omit it. Brian Reid gets really annoyed with sites that are half a world away from where they really are. 4) If you're going to be setting up multiple machines, have only one or two connections to the outside world. 5) Install a mail system that understands domain addressing, even if you aren't registered. (In fact, all of the suggested configurations in this FAQ do) 6) *Never* use UUCP bang-routing with the MUA if you can possibly avoid it - each of the suggested mail configurations provide mechanisms where you, the user, do not have to specify routes to the MUA - you can specify domains, and the TA will do the routing (possibly bang-routing) for you. Important: many mailers that understand UUCP attempt to be pedantically "UUCPish" in the construction of headers, such as generating "bang routes" in From:/To: etc. lines. Which, given that the whole "mail network" is generally converging on more Internet-like standards, and that even UUCP sites are using fully domain-capable mailers, is a big mistake. RFC976 attempts to codify a "meta standard" that allows the coexistance of RFC822/1036 (Internet mail) with UUCP-based networks. What this means is, essentially, that headers are formed in the SMTP form, even if the transport will be via UUCP. Unfortunately, however, many mailers insist on "UUCP-izing" perfectly useable Internet/domain headers. "Fixing" them to prevent this is sometimes difficult. Sendmail is almost always a problem in this regard. 7) Find a friendly neighboring SA to help. A SA who has already operating mail in your area will help smooth over the regional "gotchas" that are bound to crop-up. And advise you on the right software to use, where to obtain it, and how to install it. 8) Do NOT use "any old" Map unpacking program. Most available map unpacking programs automatically run the shell (or shar) to unpack map articles. Since it is trivially easy to forge map articles, using this type of unpacking program can easily let very destructive trojan horse or virus programs into your machine. The two specific map unpackers described in this FAQ are known to be secure from such attacks. Do not run any other unpacker unless you are aware of the issues and can inspect the code for such vulnerabilities. [If you know of other "secure" map unpackers that are generally available, please let me know] 9) If the people on your site, or small network, receive mailing lists, it's often a good idea to gateway them to news: Netnews often performs many of the same services as email. The primary difference is that messages are centrally stored, rather than delivered to individual's mailboxes, and that distribution looks more like a broadcast then a set of point-to-point communications. This means usually means that news can handle more volume, more efficiently, then email can. Because of the differences (and also the similarities) people often want to tie news and mail together. This is known as "gatewaying." For example, a small software development site might subscribe to the X Windows mailing list. Rather than have (say) eight copies of each mail message sent to their host, they would rather have it stored as a local newsgroup that everyone in the company can read, and which can be centrally archived. This is a typical use of a "mail to news" gateway. When a user makes a posting to this local group the article should be sent back out to the mailing list; this is a typical use of a "news to mail" gateway. On a larger scale, the "inet" groups are bi-directional gateways of Internet mailing lists. Within mainstream Usenet, many popular groups such as comp.windows.x, comp.protocols.tcp-ip, comp.unix.wizards, and so on, are gatewayed to mailing lists and back. Many subtle issues often come up when gatewaying mail and news, so unless you are experienced you should use one of the already-available packages for your local organization. For example, you probably do not want to write a brand-new Perl script and create a new "inet" newsgroup. The C News distribution includes some basic gateway tools in the contrib/nntpmail directory. Many people use Rich $alz's "newsgate" package that appeared in comp.sources.unix Volume 24; it includes discussion of some of the more subtle issues that come up. Before starting a mailing list gateway, apart from the technical aspect of the job you should also be aware of one important point: mailing-lists are considered private, whereas newsgroups are public. One can know who gets a list, but not who reads the group. It is always wise to get the authorization of the mailing-list manager and of the readers before creating a mail/news gateway. 10) If you're connecting to the Internet, or are setting up a large local internet, you really should get a copy of the DNS and BIND book mentioned in the bibliography. -- Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_ Phone: Canada 613 832-0541 Latest psroff: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/psroff3.0pl17/* Latest hp2pbm: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/hp2pbm/* From csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis Thu Mar 30 13:51:05 1995 Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,comp.mail.misc,news.answers,comp.answers Path: csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) Subject: UNIX Email Software Survey FAQ [Part 2 of 3] Summary: How to set up Email on UNIX systems. Message-ID: Supersedes: Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 14:20:12 GMT Expires: Thu, 4 May 1995 14:20:03 GMT Reply-To: mailfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Mail FAQ commentary reception) References: Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada Keywords: mail software survey UNIX FAQ Followup-To: poster Lines: 607 Xref: csus.edu news.admin.misc:38319 comp.mail.misc:18704 news.answers:40899 comp.answers:10913 Archive-name: mail/setup/unix/part2 Last-modified: Thu Jan 26 01:28:55 EST 1995 UNIX EMail Software - a Survey Chris Lewis clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca [and a host of others - thanks] Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, Chris Lewis Redistribution for profit or altered content/format prohibited without permission of the author. Other redistribution must contain this copyright notice and attribution. ------------------------------ Subject: Configuration Issues: What you need for email connectivity is determined by: 1 What networks you intend to connect to. The Internet (hence SMTP)? UUCP sites? X.400? Bitnet? Others? Combinations? 2 What links you have or are willing to install Internet T1? T2? UUCP? Other? [Details on how to make your connections is beyond the scope of this FAQ, but can usually be found out from the provider (other end) of the link] 3 what user interface you want to use. This is largely an independent issue, so consult the Specific Package Reviews directly. ------------------------------ Subject: Recommended MTA Configurations: These configurations are based upon my own experience, and the experience of others. Careful installation of any of these configurations will result in a solid, reliable mail system that respects the appropriate "do's and don'ts". Each configuration represents a compromise of ease of installation and maintenance versus sophistication and capabilities. One thing you should consider is what you already have on your system. You will invariably have "binmail", and will have a good chance at already having sendmail. Some systems come with smail (if 2.3, junk it) The configurations shown below are *minimal* configurations, so you should consider whether you want to use what you already have or not. Scenario 1: Only UUCP connections. Smail 2.5. If you want to set up a routing database of your own, you will also need pathalias, and unpackmaps or uuhosts. Instead, though, you can configure smail 2.5 to smart-host most destinations to a nearby friendly site who'll do your routing for you without having to run the routing software. Note further, that you can run pathalias on just a subset of the full set of maps. [Unpackmaps makes this particularly easy to do] Smail 2.5, as shipped, does not support mail-to-pipeline or mail-to-file aliasing. If you need these, at a minimum, you should obtain lmail. If you intend more than casual use of these features, it is recommended that you obtain deliver or procmail instead of lmail. Even if you have sendmail already, you can integrate smail 2.5 with it to do your UUCP routing. (though, some later versions of sendmail can do routing themselves) If you're a little more demanding of your mail connections, smail 3 is also a good choice, and works particularly well for systems that are UUCP connected to Internet sites. Scenario 2: SMTP connections (optionally, some UUCP connections too). Generally speaking, sendmail will do this for you and you have a good chance to have it already. However, for the novice, it is recommended that smail 3 be used instead [see review of sendmail below]. Smail 3 includes all of the routing software and can do mail-to-pipeline and mail-to-file, so none of the auxiliary programs mentioned in scenario 1 are necessary. Most sendmails don't include UUCP routing mechanisms, so you would need pathalias and unpackmaps or uuhosts if you wish to set up a UUCP routing database. Further, most sendmails don't know how to query a pathalias database directly, so you may have to hack your own path lookup program into the sendmail.cf (smail 2.5 can be used for this purpose provided that you will have a UUCP link to the outside world) Both MMDF and PP can also be used, but PP is usually overkill. Deliver or procmail are still quite useful in this configuration for extended alias facilities. Scenario 3: Connections to other networks (optionally including SMTP or UUCP), or very high loading. Your best bets are MMDF, PP or zmailer. You can implement other network interfaces with sendmail, but not only will you probably have to roll your own, but sendmail can't cope with high loading very well. Ditto smail 3. There are other configurations. See the Package Reviews to determine which packages are appropriate. ------------------------------ Subject: Package Reviews Honesty requires me to point out which software packages were reviewed by their author (including me ;-). I do so by appending a "*" to the name of the author. In some cases, the material has been cribbed from FAQ's or general information blurbs. It is worth noting, though, that most of these packages are well known, and have been in operation at many sites for periods of a year or more. These packages do their job well, and have been extensively thrashed out in the best debugging laboratory in the universe (Usenet ;-) A few packages have been mentioned prior to their release. (unpackmaps 4, the occasional beta version). It is recommended that these versions be avoided by novices until they have had a chance to settle for a little while. This FAQ will note when such software seems (according to rumour *I* hear) to be stable enough for general use. Some of these packages are capable, by various bits of hackery, of doing a lot more than is claimed for them. But I refrain on telling you how to "take the covers off". Given the intended audience, that would be tantamount to trying to teach preschoolers do-it-yourself brain surgery. Please don't take this as condescending - I've been working on/in/with email systems for over 12 years and I *still* won't play with (as just one example) sendmail.cf's. Therefore, I restrict myself largely to "out-of-the-box" functionality, "fill-in-the-blank" configurability, and normal documented installation procedures. Beyond that, you're on your own. binmail binmail is usually really called "mail". On System V prior to Release 4, it is a really simple UA that does dual duty as the TA. It's pretty awful because it doesn't know how to set up headers properly, doesn't even know what a "Subject:" line is, and there's no way to do any kind of aliases. On BSD, binmail invokes sendmail to do the MTA function. On System V prior to Release 4, you really do want to replace binmail's MTA functionality with something else. However, you should not replace it in its "mail" (UA) functionality, because many system-level administration mechanisms will break. Any new UA should be installed as a different name than "mail". Beginning with System V Release 4, "binmail"'s transfer agent capabilities were considerably enhanced to have similar capabilities to Smail 3 and sendmail. There is usually no need to replace it with another mail agent. (See SVR4 mail discussion below) Binmail stores mail in "mbox" format. rmail binmail's TA functionality is implemented by linking mail to rmail. It's rmail that you'd want to replace with smail 2.5 etc. Mail The original BSD UA. It can support local profiles, aliases, folders, header previewing, out-going mail recording and all sorts of good stuff. An "okay" UA. Available from BSD "freed-sources" archives. Mail stores mail in "mbox" format. mailx AT&T's answer to BSD "Mail", from which it is descended. Some versions, such as the 3b1 one, should be avoided because of a buggy port. Not available in source form (it's proprietary but ubiquitous enough to be mentioned here). Mailx stores mail in "mbox" format. mush: author Dan Heller* The "Mail User's Shell" is a "shell" for mail users. That is, it has its own environment where you can configure not only the user interface, but the actual internal mechanisms. Internally, mush has a csh-like scripting language, altho it's not as powerful as csh. It has command-line aliases, file completion, if-else state- ments, command piping, and so on. Because you can build your own commands, you can virtually build your own library of email features. Mush has two tty-based interfaces: the standard tty-mode (ala BSD Mail or sys-v mailx) and the fullscreen/curses mode (ala vi, emacs or even Elm). You can set up key bindings that execute one or more mush commands, personalized commands or even UNIX commands. You can even emulate keyboard input with keyboard macros and mappings. Mush also has a SunView interface that is more powerful than Sun's Mailtool, yet backwards compatible with most versions. Most sunview users (if there are any left these days) prefer MushView over Mailtool. The current version of Mush is 7.2.3, last posted in comp.sources.misc volume 18 (with subsequent patches). All three interfaces are available in one runtime binary. Except for the MushView interface (which is only available on for suns), Mush is portable to everything that runs UNIX. There is also a DOS port available for PCs and can run on most 286 machines. An older version of Mush (6.5) can run on as little as 640 of RAM. (Mush-PC is typically used with UUPC.) The "next generation" of Mush is a commercial product called Z-Mail from Z-Code Software (mail info@z-code.com for details). All aspects of Mush are retained, yet it has grown to be far more powerful. It runs under X windows with either a Motif or Open Look interface and also supports multi-media, user "functions" and a suite of new features. Mush stores its messages in "mbox" format, or MMDF format if you're using MMDF as your MTA. The newsgroup comp.mail.mush is dedicated to it. [Note: Z-Mail is not related at all to Zmailer. Zmailer is a MTA] elm: coordinator Syd Weinstein* (cribbed from comp.mail.elm FAQ) Elm is designed to run with "sendmail" or "/bin/rmail" (according to what's on your system) and is a full replacement of programs like "/bin/mail" and "mailx". The system is more than just a single program, however, and includes programs like "frm" to list a 'table of contents' of your mail, "printmail" to quickly paginate mail files (to allow 'clean' printouts), and "autoreply", a systemwide daemon that can autoanswer mail for people while they're on vacation without having multiple copies spawned on the system. The most significant difference between Elm and most other mail systems is that Elm is screen-oriented. Upon further use, however, users will find that Elm is also quite a bit easier to use, and quite a bit more "intelligent" about sending mail and so on. Current release is Elm 2.4 PL24.. Information on access is available from the server at DSI.COM: send mail to archive-server@DSI.COM send elm index [Ed: elm is particularly good for novices. The only drawback that I've heard is that elm is a bit less user configurable than, say, mush] MM: Contact Joseph Brennan* Columbia University in the City of New York (cribbed from MM man page.) mm is a powerful electronic mail system which allows you to send, read, edit and manage messages quickly and easily. It is designed to have the same interface as the MM program written and developed for DEC20s over a period of many years. mm was written using the CCMD package developed at Columbia. Thus, it has copious internal help, completion of partially typed commands on use of the TAB key, and help on partial commands when ? is typed. mm can read several mail-file formats. Its default is mbox, the same format used by unix mail. It also can read babyl, used by emacs rmail, and mtxt and MH. It can copy messages from one file type to another. MM is a Freeware MUA copyright by Columbia University (as is this description). MM is available by anonymous ftp from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu, directory mm. The file mm-intro.txt there is a longer description of how it was developed. [Ed: MM also appears to be a good UA for novices. From the examples in the manual page, it handholds extensively and is not screen oriented.] MH: Maintainer John Romine The big difference between MH and most other "mail user agents" is that you can use MH from a UNIX shell prompt. In MH, each command is a separate program, and the shell is used as an interpreter. So, all the power of UNIX shells (pipes, redirection, history, aliases, and so on) works with MH--you don't have to learn a new interface. other mail agents have their own command interpreter for their individual mail commands (although the mush mail agent simulates a UNIX shell). Mail messages are stored in individual files. The current version of MH is 6.8.3 and supports MIME. MH comes standard with Ultrix 4.0 and later, and AIX 3.1 and later. via anonymous ftp: ftp.ics.uci.edu [128.195.1.1] pub/mh/mh-6.8.tar.Z 1.6MB louie.udel.edu [128.175.1.3] portal/mh-6.8.tar.Z 1.6MB comp.mail.mh discusses MH, and contains a FAQ article. Jerry Peek wrote a book about MH called "MH & xmh: E-mail for Users & Programmers", ISBN 1-56592-027-9, published by O'Reilly and Associates, second edition, September 1992. XMH: The xmh program provides a graphical user interface to the MH Message Handling System. To actually do things with your mail, it makes calls to the MH package. Electronic mail messages may be composed, sent, received, replied to, for- warded, sorted, and stored in folders. xmh provides exten- sive mechanism for customization of the user interface. xmh is part of the standard X distribution from the X Consortium. EXMH: Author Brent Welch* | exmh is an X interface to the MH mail system. It is written in John | Ousterhout's Tcl/Tk language system and requires that you have both | Tcl/Tk and MH installed. If you have metamail installed, exmh | supports MIME. As well as providing the usual layer on top of MH commands, exmh has a number of other features: MIME support! Displays richtext and enriched directly. Parses multipart messages. Displays hot buttons that invoke external viewers (metamail) for things not directly supported. Built-in editor allows simple composition of text/enriched format. Color feedback in the scan listing so you can easily identify unseen messages (blue), the current message (red), deleted messages (gray background), and moved messages (yellow background). Xresources control these color choices. A folder display with one label per folder. Color highlights indicate the current folder (red), folders with unseen messages in them (blue), and the target folder for moves (yellow background). Nested folders are highlighted by a shadow box. A cache of recently visted folder buttons is also maintained. Monochrome highlights are reverse video for the current folder, bold box for folders with unseen messages, and stippled box for the target of move operations. Clever scan caching. MH users know that scan is slow, so exmh tries hard to cache the current state of the folder to avoid scanning. Moves and deletes within exmh do not invalidate the cache, and background incs that add new messages are handled by merging them into the scan listing. The scan cache is compatible with xmh. Numerous other features, such as "facesaver" display, backgrounds, dialog-box interface to MH "pick", folder searching and listing, designed for inclusion of user "hooks" and interfaces etc. | Ftp'able from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu:/pub/tcl/code/exmh-1.3beta.tar.gz GNU Emacs Rmail: Rmail is an Emacs subsystem for reading and disposing of mail. Rmail stores mail messages in Rmail files in BABYL format (originally used under the ITS operating system), although it can incorporate new mail from MMDF and Unix format files, or mixed-format files. Reading the messages in an Rmail file is done in a special major mode, Rmail mode, which redefines most letters to run commands for managing mail. Rmail can do the standard things such as displaying, deleting, filing, or replying to messages. Replying uses another Emacs subsystem, Mail mode. Messages can be saved in either BABYL or Unix format. Rmail maintains per-message attributes and user-defined labels. Rmail can burst message digests. VM: Author Kyle Jones* VM (View Mail) is a GNU Emacs subsystem that allows UNIX mail to be read and disposed of within Emacs. Commands exist to do the normal things expected of a mail user agent, such as generating replies, saving messages to folders, deleting messages and so on. There are other more advanced commands that do tasks like bursting and creating digests, message forwarding, and organizing message presentation according to various criteria. The current version of VM is VM 4.41. FTPable from: | ftp.uu.net networking/mail/vm-5.72beta.tar.gz archive.cis.ohio-state.edu pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/packages/vm-4.41.tar.Z VM is discussed in gnu.emacs.vm.info, or by mailing list by sending an e-mail request to info-vm-request@uunet.uu.net. MH-E: Maintainer: Stephen Gildea MH-E is an interface to MH from within GNU Emacs. It helps if MH was compiled with the MHE compiler flag. MH-E is distributed with both GNU Emacs and MH. Choose the later version. C-Client: Author Mark Crispin Software writers only: C-client is a general library useful for creating MUA's. It provides a high level logical interface for retrieving and manipulating mail messages. It supports the latest draft of MIME (proposed Internet standard for multipart, multimedia, typed electronic mail). It is driver based, and easily ported to new platforms and MTA's, already supports BSD, SysV, DOS, Macintosh and TOPS-20(!), and supports present mail and mailbox formats. Just the thing if you want to write a new MUA. Contact the author for more details. Metamail: Author N. Borenstein [Described by Paul Eggert, eggert@bi.twinsun.com] Metamail is a software implementation of Mime, designed for easy integration with traditional mail-reading interfaces -- typically, users do not invoke metamail directly. Ideally, extending the local email or news system to handle a new media format is a simple matter of adding a line to a mailcap file. Mailcap files are described in RFC 1343: N Borenstein, ``A user agent configuration mechanism for multimedia mail format information'' (June 1992). The source code for metamail can be found in ftp.uu.net:mail/metamail/mm.tar.Z. To join its mailing list, write info-metamail-request@thumper.bellcore.com. MailManager: Author Mark Crispin A MUA implemented using C-Client for NeXT computers. Pine: Authors Lundblade, Seibel, and Crispin Pine is a mailer developed by the University of Washington Office of Computing and Communications. It has been designed for ease-of-use and with the novice computer user in mind. It is based on Internet mail protocols (e.g. RFC-822, SMTP, IMAP, and MIME) and currently runs on a variety of UNIX platforms, and a version is apparently available for MSDOS. The guiding principles for achieving ease-of-use in Pine were: careful limitation of features, one-character mnemonic commands, always-present command menus, immediate user feedback, and high tolerance for user mistakes. It is intended that Pine can be learned by exploration rather than reading manuals. A stand-alone version of Pico, Pine's message composition editor, is also included. It is a very simple and easy to use text editor with text justification and a spelling checker. Features: - Mail index showing a message summary which includes the status, sender, size, date and subject of messages. - View and process mail with the following commands: forward, reply, save, export, print, delete, capture address and search. - Address book for saving long complex addresses and personal distribution lists under a nickname. - Multiple folders and folder management screen for filing messages. - Message composer with easy-to-use editor and spelling checker. The message composer also assists entering and formatting addresses and provides direct access to the address book. - Online help specific to each screen and context. - Supports access to remote mail repositories via the IMAP2 protocol defined in RFC-1176. - Soon to support multi-part mail conforming to proposed MIME Internet standard, allowing sending of sounds, graphics such as GIF and TIFF files, and binary files such as spreadsheets. Pine, including source code, is freely available via anonymous FTP from ftp.cac.washington.edu on the Internet. Other provisions for distribution have not been made. From the Internet, you may try out Pine and leave comments by telneting to "demo.cac.washington.edu" and logging in as "pinedemo". To join the Pine mailing list for announcements send a | email request to "majordomo@cac.washington.edu" with body | "subscribe pine-info". Pine is very portable and runs on a variety of UNIX machines including DECstations, NeXTs, VAX's and Suns. Pine was originally based on Elm, but it has evolved much since, ("Pine Is No-longer Elm"). For further information send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine is the work of Mike Siebel, Mark Crispin, and Laurence Lundblade at the University of Washington. Ream: Author: Paul Dourish* Ream is a curses-based mail user agent for a variety of UNIX flavours; at one time or another, it's run on everything from a PC running Linux to a Cray Y/MP running UNICOS. It was originally written at the University of Edinburgh, and has spread not least through the subsequent geographical distribution of alumni. It remains minimally supported by its author (Paul Dourish ). Ream is similar to elm in a number of ways, but considerably smaller and with a stronger separation between MUA and MTA behaviours. It runs over sendmail, mmdf and PP. It is available by anonymous ftp from parcftp.xerox.com, in pub/europarc/reamXXX.tar.Z, where XXX is a slowly incrementing version number. XLView: Author: Several. Mike Macgirvin* Current version 1.1 (Developer Release). XLView (previously known as "Ximap") is an X based mail reader using the IMAP (IMAP2bis) protocol, for managing complex mail tasks. It utilizes the X window system to allow independant processing of multiple mailboxes (even on multiple servers) simultaneously. Each "read" and "compose" process is handled in an independant window as well. It handles many complex MIME messages with the help of external multi-media handlers based partially on "metamail", and include facilities for file attachments of several common types. It includes an address book with insert completion abilities and for maintaining addresses. Of course it has the normal move/copy/save/reply/forward/print etc., functions one would expect and text may be cut and pasted from other open X sessions. The most powerful feature of the latest release is the "Logical Viewer" which allows one to create rule based sorting of their mailbox based on addresses, dates, contents, message flags and other criteria. Each existing message (and each new message) is evaluated and stored in the appropriate logical view, which may be opened as if it were a separate mailbox (but all the while it only represents a different ``view'' of your system mailbox). Each mailbox or saved folder may have independant rulesets. Status changes also are evaluated as they occur and the rules applied accordingly. The rule language is powerful, yet easy to grasp; i.e. FROM clyde@podunk.edu OR jim SINCE YESTERDAY AND UNSEEN Currently tested with SunOS4.1.x and Ultrix running X11R5. | Several alternate system ports including SVR4 are available. | FTP: camis.stanford.edu/pub/xlview-2.0.tar.Z Information: xlview@CAMIS.Stanford.EDU Principal Authors: Kevin Brock, Bill Yeager and Mike Macgirvin at the Center for advanced Medical Informatics at Stanford. | Z-Mail: Z-code Software Corp, Barbara Tallent* Z-Mail, a UNIX World Magazine "Product of the Year" winner for | 1991, is a complete electronic mail system for workstations, PCs, | ASCII terminals and Macs. Z-Mail provides Motif and Open Look graphical user interfaces, as well as two character modes. The software has been ported to nearly every system that runs UNIX, and it works with all standard UNIX mail transport agents including sendmail, binmail, smail, MMDF and X.400 gateways. Z-Mail can replace or coexist with standard mail user agents on the system, including BSD Mail, AT&T mailx, Sun Mail Tool, Elm or Mush. Most anyone can use Z-Mail "off the shelf" and immediately benefit from its simple interface and advanced features. | The 'fullscreen' character mode has become its own product, Z-Mail Lite. | It's available immediately. Z-Mail also includes Z-Script, a powerful scripting language that enables users to customize and extend Z-Mail's capabilities. Z-Mail's multi-media capabilities allow easy integration with best-of-class products including spreadsheets, desk-top publishing, graphics, fax, voice, and video. For example, when users receive a spreadsheet file, Z-Mail can be configured to automatically launch the associated application and load the the attachment automatically and transparently to the user. Z-Mail understands MIME-format documents and is also compatible with Sun's multimedia Mailtool. For more information on Z-Mail, contact: | Z-Code Software Division | Network Computing Devices, Inc. | 101 Rowland Way, Suite 300 | Novato, CA 94945 | tel: (415) 898-8649 | fax: (415) 898-8299 | E-mail: info@z-code.com | URL: http://www.ncd.com/ | You can obtain a demo copy of Z-Mail from ftp.z-code.ncd.com in the | directory pub/z-code/zmail/3.2 for assorted UNIX versions. The file | is named zm32.XXX.tar.Z where XXX is your type of machine. Windows | and Macintosh versions are also available for FTP in the directories | pub/z-code/zmail/zm-win and pub/z-code/zmail/zm-mac. | | URLs: | | ftp://ftp.z-code.ncd.com/pub/z-code/zmail/3.2/ | ftp://ftp.z-code.ncd.com/pub/z-code/zmail/zm-mac/ | ftp://ftp.z-code.ncd.com/pub/z-code/zmail/zm-win/win321/ | | Contact for an activation key after downloading your | demo copy. [As mentioned previously, Z-Mail is the commercial variant of mush. Ed] -- Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_ Phone: Canada 613 832-0541 Latest psroff: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/psroff3.0pl17/* Latest hp2pbm: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/hp2pbm/* From csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis Thu Mar 30 13:51:06 1995 Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,comp.mail.misc,news.answers,comp.answers Path: csus.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!hookup!noc.tor.hookup.net!romulus.ott.hookup.net!nic.ott.hookup.net!ecicrl!clewis From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) Subject: UNIX Email Software Survey FAQ [Part 3 of 3] Summary: How to set up Email on UNIX systems. Message-ID: Supersedes: Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 14:20:17 GMT Expires: Thu, 4 May 1995 14:20:03 GMT Reply-To: mailfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Mail FAQ commentary reception) References: Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada Keywords: mail software survey UNIX FAQ Followup-To: poster Lines: 517 Xref: csus.edu news.admin.misc:38320 comp.mail.misc:18705 news.answers:40900 comp.answers:10914 Archive-name: mail/setup/unix/part3 Last-modified: Thu Jan 26 01:29:12 EST 1995 UNIX EMail Software - a Survey Chris Lewis clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca [and a host of others - thanks] Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, Chris Lewis Redistribution for profit or altered content/format prohibited without permission of the author. Other redistribution must contain this copyright notice and attribution. uumail: Uumail is a very old and obsolete precursor to smail 2.5. Included here only because I know that uumail sites still exist. You should not install uumail in new configurations, and existing uumail sites should convert to something more modern. smail 2.5: author The UUCP Mapping Project Smail 2.5 is a small, simple and hard-coded rule MTA for use on UUCP networks. It understands RFC compliant headers, will generate RFC compliant Internet-style headers, can use domains, aliases, a pathalias UUCP routing database, and is very simple to install. For full functionality, you will also want pathalias and a map unpacker. The one thing it cannot do by itself is mail-to-pipe and mail-to-file aliasing. For that, you need Zeeff's lmail, deliver or procmail. Smail 2.5 has the capability of coalescing addresses into single UUCP transfers, and knows how to query UUCP for the names of UUCP neighbors, and autoroute if necessary. Smail 2.5 has a few bugs that are (usually) pretty rarely seen in operation. There have been a number of patches posted for it, but it is recommended that you do not apply them - some were ill-conceived, buggy in their own right, or conflicting with others. The only patches that I feel safe in recommending is Chip Salzenberg's patches for use with Xenix MICNET - which are unnecessary unless you are in the unfortunate position of having to actually *use* MICNET. Chip Salzenberg's "deliver" package (see below) combined with "smail-deliver.pch" from comp.sources.unix, volume 25 issue 107, makes the MICNET modifications to smail itself unnecessary. In particular, do not apply the "mail-to-pipe/file" patches that float around for smail 2.5. These are a major security hole. Smail 2.5 can also be used with sendmail as a UUCP router. Smail 2.5 was posted in comp.sources.unix in 1987, volume 11 with archive name "smail3" (but it isn't the same thing as smail 3 below). lmail: Author Jon Zeeff When you install smail 2.5, you link the original /bin/mail (binmail above) to /bin/lmail to perform the task of actually delivering the mail to the user's mailbox (LDA). Since smail 2.5 was not capable of doing mail-to-pipe and mail-to-file aliasing, Jon Zeeff wrote a replacement lmail that implemented these (along with user mailbox delivery). Jon's program is okay for casual use, but has some pretty serious bugs. Fixed versions are available, but you're probably better off installing deliver or procmail. smail 3: Author Ronald S. Karr* and Landon Curt Noll. Smail3.1 is a domain-capable mail router and delivery program that works in the UUCP zone and on the Internet and that is capable of gatewaying between the two. It was written primarily by me (Ronald S. Karr) and Landon Curt Noll, with the blessings of the original Smail1 and Smail2 authors. Smail3 supports SMTP, UUCP mail, alias files, .forward files, mailing list directories, pathalias files, /etc/hosts files, the domain name system, and can also query uucp for neighboring sites, automatically. It also supports use of encapsulated SMTP commands for delivery over UUCP connections, which allows batching of multiple messages into a single UUCP transaction, and allows many addresses to be passed with a single message transfer, which can greatly decrease the traffic generated for large mailing lists. It is also very simple to configure with a reasonable certainty of correctness. Smail3 includes pathalias and a reliable map unpacker. Rather than using configuration files to resolve addresses based on their syntax, ala sendmail, Smail3 uses a database metaphore for resolving addresses based on their contents. The set of methods that Smail3 uses for resolving local addresses and hosts is configurable and extensible. Smail3's methods for parsing addresses are not configurable. It is the opinion of the authors that addressing on the Internet and in the UUCP zone has become sufficiently standardized that attempts to allow configurability in this area are now a hindrance to the correct working of the network. Questions related to Smail3 are usually discussed in comp.mail.misc. There are also two discussion mailing lists. To join the mailing lists, send mail to: smail3-users-request@cs.athabascau.ca The current release of Smail3 can be found on uunet, in the file /archive/networking/mail/smail/smail-3.1.29.1.tar.Z. New versions are released on a haphazard basis. Official releases are always made available in the /archive/networking/mail/smail directory on uunet. Smail 3 is covered under the GPL (if it matters) sendmail: Original author Eric Allman Sendmail is the granddaddy of all intelligent MTA's. It can do just about anything. It's main problem is that it can do just about anything. Modification of sendmail's configuration tables (which is necessary with most vendor-supplied versions) is NOT for novices. The language of the sendmail.cf is cryptic, but that isn't really the problem (and this problem can be solved by using "EASE", a sendmail.cf writing language, or the UIUC IDA kit's configuration file building tools). The problem is that it's extremely difficult to know when the rules you are implementing are the right thing-- many sendmail configurations do slightly buggy, or even extremely buggy, or illegal things. The default configurations generated by the UIUC IDA kit are, however, very good at Doing the Right Thing under most, if not all, circumstances. I hear similar things about the Sendmail 8.6 package. Worse, every vendor's version of sendmail is different, and many of their sendmail.cf's don't work at all. HPUX is one example of where the sendmail.cf is actually pretty sane. HP is to be congratulated. On the other hand, some vendors, who shall remain nameless, can't even get their sendmail to deliver to local users, let alone get their sendmail to speak SMTP on a LAN. The major problem with sendmail is that it tries to do too many things. Rather than confining itself to handling local mail, and simply routing external mail and leaving transport-specific format/standards conversions to transport software, it attempts (nay virually *insists*) that you have to do all of the format/standards conversions for different transports all at once. Which results in configuration files that are veritable nightmares to maintain. And that many sendmail.cf files depend on out-of-date standards for different transports, rather than trying to unify them (as in RFC976). Indeed, while common wisdom and practice mandates that MTAs don't rewrite headers, sendmail makes it extremely difficult to *not* rewrite headers. Which results in many major systems attempting to "be nice", yet, totally scramble return addresses and the like. There are several different sendmail lineages in the world but they seem to be coming together now with Eric Allman's work creating sendmail V8.x. Sendmail V8.1 was shipped with BSD 4.4 UNIX. V8.2 and above (available from ftp.cs.berkeley.edu) is the latest. V8.6.9 is now current. Another solid "modern" version is UIUC IDA version 5.65c (5.65d in alpha test), from ftp.uu.net or uxc.cso.uiuc.edu. This version has been pretty stable since 1991. Paul Pomes, , is controlling the IDA Sendmail releases. If you want to use sendmail, it is strongly recommended that you obtain the UIUC IDA or sendmail 8.6+ versions. They are much more likely to do the right things with mail coming from, or ultimately going to, UUCP sites and is much easier to maintain. IDA sendmail can handle pathalias-style UUCP routing quite well. Another point to remember is that sendmail, historically, has been where a large number of severe security holes have been found. From the infamous RTM Internet Worm, to the two latest ones "CERT"d in the past 6 months. Indeed, if your application is security-critical, you should *not* use sendmail on your security-critical systems, such as your firewalls. Theoretically, all of these problems have been removed from sendmail 8.6.5 or later, but, there's bound to be more found. While some of this can be due to the much larger installed base of sendmail, other mailers with improved function partitioning (such as the channel-oriented MMDF or PP) will usually be inherently more secure. I am being harsh on sendmail - sendmail programming is, after all, a good source of revenue for consultants ;-) But, if you obtain a good configuration (like the aforementioned HPUX version), or are willing to spend the time to learn it, sendmail will do what you want. Well. IDA or 8.x sendmail is STRONGLY recommended. Don't, however, even think of playing with the configuration files without a copy of the Sendmail book by Costales, Allman and Rickert mentioned in the book list above. It is *absolutely* essential. Sendmail is discussed in comp.mail.sendmail. EASE version 3.5 was posted in volume 25 of comp.sources.unix and is available from wuarchive.wustl.edu [128.252.135.4] (directory /usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume25/ease) and many other c.s.u archives. | ZMailer: Original author Rayan Zachariassen* | Current author Matti Aarnio ZMailer is intended for gateways or mail servers or other large site environments that have extreme demands on the abilities of the mailer. Code and Design features: + Strong limits on host impact. + Secure design (and hopefully implementation). + Natural fit for client/server environments. + Extremely customizable configuration mechanism. + Flexible database interface with support for: sorted files, unsorted files, dbm, ndbm, gdbm, nis (yellow pages), dns (BIND resolver), /etc/hosts file, and in-core data. + Efficient message queue management. + Fast binary-transparent SMTP server and client. | + MIME-facilities for message transport. | + Low-technology implementation, with high-tech options for performance. Default configuration file features: + Default configuration will work for most sites. + Network protocol support for: smtp, uucp, bitnet, mail to news. + An easy way of overriding any external routing information. + Automatic handling of mailing lists. | It is available by anonymous FTP from: | ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/mail/zmailer/ (Mr. Aarnio's versions) | Alternate (some of them old) versions: | ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/edwin/zmailer2.2.e4.tar.Z | ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/zmailer.tar.Z MMDF: [reviewed by I.Sparry@gdt.bath.ac.uk] MMDF is a MTA. It works on the principle that you have communications channels, both incoming and outgoing, and it arranges for messages to pass between them. Strong points include: * Ability to turn up and down debugging level on the fly * Very strong on authentication, and permission checking. * Can block mail based on who it came from, how it got there, who it is going to. It is older than sendmail, simpler than sendmail, and it is a great pity that it was not shipped as standard instead of sendmail. [MMDF is standard on some systems - primarily SCO UNIX.] It has one major advantage to people in the UK, in that it knows how to handle mail addresses in our 'correct' format (Most significant part first, e.g. net.uu.uunet), as well as the thing the rest of the world uses :-) :-) A mailing list for MMDF discussion is at mmdf2@a.cs.okstate.edu requests for addition to the list to mmdf2-request@a.cs.okstate.edu. The most recent release of MMDF is available for anonymous FTP from a.cs.okstate.edu:/pub/mmdf-2.43.tar.Z. PP: Author University College London PP is a Message Transfer Agent, intended for high volume message switching, protocol conversion, and format conversion. It is targeted for use in an operational environment, but may also be useful for investigating Message related applications. Good management features are a major aspect of this system. PP supports the 1984 and 1988 versions of the CCITT X.400 / ISO 10021 services and protocols. Many existing RFC 822 based protocols are supported, along with RFC 1148 conversion to X.400. PP is an appropriate replacement for MMDF or Sendmail, and also supports SMTP and UUCP mail. For more information contact: support@xtel.co.uk or xtel@cs.nott.ac.uk The latest version is PP-6.0, which was posted in comp.sources.misc, volume 27. [Ed note:] PP is usually used in combination with the ISODE package, which also provides copious documentation for PP. PP itself is "freeware", but ISODE and the PP documentation is not - site licenses are rather pricy. PP is *very* large, and has quite a number of more esoteric functions, such as FAX transmission using the appropriate modems. PP is ideal for large organizations with demanding email requirements (eg: 100s of machines and 1000s of users), where PP would be used as "backbone mail servers", and something simpler on the "client" computers. It does have _substantial_ learning and support requirements, and is *not* suitable for smaller installations. It does, however, shine in large production environments, where policy-based routing, high levels of security, or extensive gatewaying to different transports is required. SVR4 mail: Author AT&T (description written by Tony Hansen, hansen@pegasus.att.com) The System V Release 4 mail system is a domain-capable mail router and delivery program that works in the UUCP zone and on the Internet and that is capable of gatewaying between the two. SVR4 mail supports SMTP, UUCP mail, alias files, forwarding files, mailing list directories, /etc/hosts files, the domain name system, and can also query uucp for neighboring sites, automatically. (System V Release 4.1 also allows batching of multiple messages into a single UUCP transaction, and allows many addresses to be passed with a single message transfer, which can greatly decrease the traffic generated for large mailing lists.) It is also very simple to configure with a reasonable certainty of correctness. It also supports mail-to-pipe and mail-to-file. SVR4 mail uses configuration files to resolve addresses based on their syntax, somewhat similar to sendmail, but using regular expressions and a more easily understood syntax. The set of methods that SVR4 mail uses for resolving local and remote addresses and hosts is configurable and extensible. Questions related to SVR4 mail are usually discussed in comp.mail.misc. SVR4 mail is a standard part of System V Release 4; unfortunately, some vendors have not realized that SVR4 mail is not the same mailer as the SVR3 mail system, and have replaced it with other inferior mail systems. | deliver: Author Chip Salzenberg* Deliver allows any user to write a shell script that processes all incoming mail messages for that user. The system administrator may also install scripts that process all messages by installing it as the Local Delivery Agent (lmail replacement). The output of a script is a list of mail addresses, files and programs that should receive the message. It has access to each message as it is processed, so the action can be content dependent. The script may also generate automatic replies, like the "vacation" program, or pass along a modified version of the original message. Deliver can be used to construct mail-based services (e.g. automatic mailing list maintenance). It can also be used to filter mail automatically in prearranged ways (e.g. encryption and decryption, tossing junk mail, or vacation notices). Deliver was last posted in comp.sources.reviewed, volume 1. The | current version is 2.1.12. | It can be retrieved from procmail: Author Stephen R. van den Berg* Can be used to create mail-servers, mailing lists, sort your incoming mail into separate folders/files (real convenient when subscribing to one or more mailing lists or for prioritising your mail), preprocess your mail, start any programs upon mail arrival (e.g. to generate different chimes on your workstation for different types of mail) or selectively forward certain incoming mail automatically to someone. Procmail can be used: - and installed by an unprivileged user (for himself only). - as a drop in replacement for the local delivery agent /bin/mail (with biff/comsat support). - as a general mailfilter for whole groups of messages (e.g. when called from within sendmail.cf rules). The accompanying formail program enables you to generate autoreplies, split up digests/mailboxes into the original messages, do some very simple header-munging/extraction, or force mail into mail-format (with leading From line). Also included is a comprehensive mailinglist/archive management system. Since procmail is written entirely in C, it poses a very low impact on your system's resources (under normal conditions, when you don't start other programs/scripts from within it). Procmail was designed to deliver the mail under the worst conditions (file system full, out of swap space, process table full, file table full, missing support files, unavailable executables; it all doesn't matter). Should (in the unlikely event) procmail be unable to deliver your mail somewhere, the mail will bounce back to the sender or reenter the mailqueue (your choice). A recent version can be picked up at various comp.sources.misc archives. The latest version (3.03) can be obtained directly from the ftp-archive at: ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (137.226.225.3) (g)zipped: pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz <160KB compressed: pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.Z <224KB [Ed note: I had noted reported difficulties in integrating procmail with System V and/or smail 2.5. The 2.70 version of Procmail eliminated these difficulties.] mailagent: Author Raphael Manfredi* The mailagent is yet another mail filter, written in perl, which will let you do anything with your mail. It has all the features you may expect from a filter: mailing lists sorting, forwarding to MTA or to inews, pre-processing of message before saving into folder, vacation mode, etc... It was initially written as an ELM-filter replacement, but has now enough power to also supplant MMDF's .maildelivery. There is also a support for @SH mail hooks, which allows you to automatically distribute patches or software via command mails. The mailagent was designed to make mail filtering as easy as it can be. It is highly configurable and fairly complete. Rules are specified in a lex-like style, with the full power of perl's regular expressions. The automaton supports the notion of mode, and header selection has many magic features built-in, to ease the rule writing process. To give a simple example, the two following rules: Subject: /cron output/ { SAVE cron }; To Cc: dist-users { FORWARD friend@acri.fr; LEAVE }; would save in a folder 'cron' all cron-related mail, and forward mail from the dist-users mailing list to a friend, leaving a copy in the system mailbox for immediate processing... It supports delivery to plain UNIX folder, to MMDF-style folders or to MH folders with built-in unseen sequence updates, as specified in your ~/.mh_profile. It may therefore replace MH's slocal program as well. Mailagent can be dynamically extended (that's the advantage of having it written in perl) with new filtering commands that will behave exactly like built-in ones; this operation being done without changing a single source line in the program itself, of course. It also provides a generic mail server layer, where user-defined commands can be easily plugged in, mailagent taking care of the lower-level stuff. The distribution comes with a set of examples, an exhaustive test suite, and naturally a detailed manual page. It should be noted that the mailagent will work even if your system administrator forbids "| programs" hooks in the ~/.forward, provided you have access to some sort of cron daemon. The mailagent program is available from any comp.source.misc archive and thanks to Christophe Wolfhugel , from ftp.univ-lyon1.fr (134.214.100.6) under /pub/unix/mail/tools, file mailagent-3.0.tar.gz pathalias: Author Peter Honeyman Pathalias reads the UUCP Map Project maps (they need to be extracted from the postings first) and constructs a database containing the minimum cost route to any machine in the maps. This database can then be used with any mailer that knows how to search the database (eg: smail 2.5, Zmailer?, and some versions of sendmail. Smail 3 comes bundled with pathalias). There were previous versions of this program. You must use pathalias version 10 (latest version), because some map format changes have been made and only pathalias 10 can parse them. If your pathalias doesn't give a syntax error on: echo "file {foo}" | pathalias It's the new one. There were other route-generating programs, but all (as far as I know) are very obsolete, and none run as fast as pathalias (still, which can be rather hard on machines with smallish virtual memory or RAM capacities). pathalias 10 is available from comp.sources.unix archives, volume 22. A patch was just released in comp.sources.unix (vol 25) that addresses an oddity when used with smail (not that I've ever noticed it). uuhosts: Author John Quarterman The "defacto" standard UUCP Map Project map unpacker. Includes a program to arbitrarily view individual map entries. Uuhosts implements trojan horse/virus security by running under a "chroot()" system call. Uuhosts does not appear to be actively maintained, and the last versions that I have inspected were unable to easily compress the maps (a full set of maps is >6000 blocks), had no provision for automatically running pathalias, and will not work with the newest version of cnews. Further, uuhost's header checking is so picky that the slightest change in the map format will cause uuhosts to reject map updates. Use of uuhosts now will require some minor hacking - and this hacking will stretch your knowledge of Bourne shell programming. The last edition, "uuhost4" (version 1.69) appears to have been posted in comp.sources.unix in volume 3, 1986. Do not be confused by Jan-Piet Mons "uuhost 2.0" program posted in alt.sources. This is not a map unpacker. It is just a map viewer, and is a subset of the real uuhosts. unpackmaps: Author Chris Lewis* Unpackmaps is a superset of the functionality of uuhosts. It obtains its security by doing the map unpacking with a specialized parser that knows the map article format rather than invoking a shar/shell. Compression and pathalias invocation is automatic, correctly takes into account the change date of local configuration files, and will work with the latest Cnews. The newest version of unpackmaps, version 4.1, has been released to comp.sources.misc, and appeared in volume 34. This version is entirely written in C, is considerably faster than unpackmaps 3 or uuhosts, has considerably more features, and will work with Brian Reids PostScript net maps too. unshar: Author Lee Ward, modified by Mark Moraes* | unshar is evolved from getmaps by Lee Ward. It is has a specialized | and limited parser that understands most simple shar formats. It is | capable of automatically unpacking new files from a newsgroup spool | directory, and requires no interaction whatsoever with the news | system. Apart from UUCP maps, it can be used to automatically and | safely unpack shar files from the sources newsgroups. It does not | handle some of the newer, esoteric shar formats that do automatic | uudecodes, etc. Ftp'able from | ftp.cs.toronto.edu:/pub/moraes/unshar.tar.gz. -- Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_ Phone: Canada 613 832-0541 Latest psroff: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/psroff3.0pl17/* Latest hp2pbm: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/hp2pbm/* From csus.edu!csulb.edu!library.ucla.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv Sun Apr 9 13:10:57 1995 Path: csus.edu!csulb.edu!library.ucla.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: Nancy McGough Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.elm,comp.mail.pine,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Filtering Mail FAQ Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.mail.misc Date: 9 Apr 1995 18:33:53 GMT Organization: Infinite Ink, Seattle, Washington, USA Lines: 858 Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Expires: 21 May 1995 18:32:50 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: Nancy McGough NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu X-Last-Updated: 1994/11/18 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: csus.edu comp.mail.misc:18890 comp.mail.elm:15488 comp.mail.pine:7724 comp.answers:11109 news.answers:41521 Archive-name: mail/filtering-faq Posting-frequency: approximately monthly Last-modified: 17 November 1994 _____________________________________________________ _________| |_________ \ | | / \ | FILTERING MAIL FAQ | / \ | | / \ | | / / | Copyright (c) 1994 Nancy McGough | \ / | | \ / |_____________________________________________________| \ /____________) (___________\ TABLE OF CONTENTS 0.0 About this Article ... 0.1 Copyright Notice ... 0.2 Acknowledgements ... 0.3 Terminology and Notation ... 0.4 Getting the Latest Version of This Article ... 0.5 Reading the Hypertext Version of This Article ... 0.6 Reading the Plain Text Version of This Article 1.0 Naming Your Incoming Mail Folders 2.0 Procmail ... 2.1 Setting Up Procmail ... 2.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail ... 2.3 Explanation of Test Recipe ... 2.4 Troubleshooting: Alternate .forward Files for Procmail ... 2.5 Procmail References 3.0 Filter ... 3.1 Setting up Filter ... 3.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail ... 3.3 Filter References 4.0 Reading Incoming Mail Folders 5.0 Contributing to this FAQ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 0.0 About this Article Q: How can I have my incoming mail messages automatically put into an appropriate folder? This is one of the most frequently asked questions about email. This article is the first release of an FAQ that addresses this question. This version gives basic instructions for how to set up either procmail or Elm's filter to filter incoming mailing list messages. Future versions of this FAQ will include instructions for doing other things like automatically replying to certain messages. If your system has both procmail and filter installed then you should use procmail which is *much* more robust and powerful than filter. This recommendation is almost universal; even the Elm and filter developers recommend procmail over filter. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:10 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.1 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 1994 by Nancy McGough. No portion of this work may be sold or put to commercial use without express written consent of the author. This restriction covers publication in any form, or distribution by any method, which permits this work to be visually perceived, either directly or with the aid of any machine or device. Permission is granted to republish or redistribute this article in its entirety for noncommercial use if this copyright notice is not removed or altered. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:20 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.2 Acknowledgements Thanks to these people who sent suggestions: David L. Miller Cookie Monster Jim Showalter David W. Tamkin Rick Troxel Stephen R. van den Berg Syd Weinstein Special thanks to: Thomas A. Fine for setting up and maintaining the hypertext archive of FAQs. Congratulations to him for winning O'Reilly and Associates' "The Best of the Net" award! Please let me know if I've left you, or anyone else, out of this list. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:30 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.3 Terminology and Notation Term Meaning ==== ======= FTP File Transfer Protocol HTML HyperText Markup Language HTTP HyperText Transport Protocol mailer Mail user agent (MUA) such as Pine or Elm pico PIne COmposer - friendly editor that's part of the Pine package RFC Internet "Request For Comments" document URL Uniform Resource Locator (specified in RFC1630) ^x Press the Ctrl key and then, while holding down the Ctrl key, press the x key ~ Your home directory $HOME (see * below) * In this article I use ~ (tilde) to mean your home directory. Note that some shells, such as the Bourne shell (sh), do not understand the tilde notation so you will need to use $HOME instead. You can always get to your home directory by typing ``cd''. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:40 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.4 Getting the Latest Version of This Article If this article is over two months old then there is probably an updated version of it in all the usual archives. Please get the latest version from one of these places: World Wide Web (the nicest format for online reading!): http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/filtering-faq/faq.html Anonymous FTP: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/filtering-faq Email: Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu containing the following: send usenet/news.answers/mail/filtering-faq UUCP: uunet!/archive/usenet/news.answers/mail/filtering-faq ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:50 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.5 Reading the Hypertext Version of This Article The best way to read this FAQ (and most other FAQs too) is to view the hypertext version using a Web browser such as Lynx, Mosaic, Netscape, WinWeb, or Cello. This will allow you to easily jump: * between subjects in this article * to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) * to an Internet Request For Comments document (RFC) * to some manual pages This, and all FAQs that are crossposted to news.answers, can be accessed through: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/top.html This particular FAQ is at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/filtering-faq/faq.html ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:00:60 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 0.6 Reading the Plain Text Version of This Article If you are reading the plain text version (i.e., not the hypertext version) of this FAQ it is in RFC1153 digest format which means each subject is formatted as a mini mail message with its own Date, From, and Subject (and sometimes Followup-To) headers. Some newsreaders and mailers make it really easy to jump to a subject in an article that is in digest format. Here are instruction for some newsreaders: * NN's default is to split a digest and present each digest item on the menu. If you have changed the default by putting ``set split off'' in your ~/.nn/init file then you can split an article that is in digest format by typing G% while viewing it. This will present each digest item on a submenu. You can then read, followup-to, save, print, etc. individual digest items. * In trn (and its relatives like rn and strn) you can type ^g (Ctrl key and g key pressed together) to skip to the next line that begins with "Subject: " * In emacs GNUS, C-c C-n will skip to the next digest article (C-C C-p will go back to the previous digest article). If your newsreader or mailer does not have a built-in command that allows you to easily read a digest you can pipe the article to ``formail -ds'' which will split the article into separate mail messages, and then you can use your mailer or newsreader (if it can read mail folders) to read the folder. For example, here's what you would do in Tin while viewing the article: Type... In order to... ------- -------------- | Pipe a Specify the article is to be piped formail -ds >> ~/mail/faq.split Split the digest into individual messages and put them in a file named ~/mail/faq.split. (Replace ~/mail with your folder directory.) pine -if faq.split Use Pine to read the newly created folder. For more information see the formail(1) man pages. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:01:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 1.0 Naming Your Incoming Mail Folders For my incoming mail folders I use names that start with ``IN''. For example, I put mail sent to the procmail mailing list into a folder named IN.procmail. I do this so that when all my folders are listed alphabetically the incoming folders are together and near the top. They are near the top because Unix is case sensitive and upper case letters come before lower case letters in an ascii sort. Of course, you can use any names you like for your mail folders. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 2.0 Procmail Procmail is a powerful mail processor that can be used to process your mail messages either as they arrive or after they are in a mail folder. This version of the FAQ describes the basics of setting up procmail to filter incoming mailing list messages. To find out how to process existing mail folders see the NOTES section of the procmail(1) man page. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:10 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 2.1 Setting Up Procmail 1] Find out if procmail is on your system and what the full path to it is. If you are using csh type: which procmail Or if you are using sh or ksh type: type procmail If neither ``which'' nor ``type'' are on your system try ``whereis'' and ``where''. If your system doesn't have procmail ask your system administrator to install it. If your sys admin isn't able to do this, use a different mail processor like deliver, mailagent, or filter (described in part 2 of this FAQ). 2a] Create ~/.procmailrc. (Note that throughout this article I use pico for editing files. Replace ``pico'' with your editor.) cd pico .procmailrc 2b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.procmailrc. Note that lines that begin with # are comments and are ignored by procmail. #Set on when debugging VERBOSE=off #Replace ``mail'' with your mail directory (Pine uses mail, Elm uses Mail) MAILDIR=$HOME/mail #Directory for storing procmail log and rc files PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail LOGFILE=$PMDIR/log INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.test INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.folders 3] Create the directory where you will store your procmail log and rc files (this is $PMDIR that you set above). cd mkdir .procmail 4a] Create an rc (run commands) file for testing: cd cd .procmail pico rc.test 4b] Enter the following in ~/.procmail/rc.test: :0: * ^Subject: .*test IN.testing Note that the first line contains a zero (0), not the letter "oh". For now, don't worry about the meaning of this recipe. It is explained in the subject "Explanation of Test Recipe" below. 5a] Create a ~/.forward file by typing the following. (Pico's -w flag tells pico not to auto wrap lines.) cd pico -w .forward 5b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.forward: "|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #nancym" == IMPORTANT NOTES == * Make sure you include all the quotes, both double (") and single ('). * The vertical bar (|) is a pipe. * Replace /usr/local/bin with the correct path for procmail (see step 1). * Replace ``nancym'' with your userid. You need to put your userid in your .forward so that it will be different than any other .forward file on your system. * Do NOT use environment variables, like $HOME, in your .forward file. * Do NOT expect ~ to mean your home directory in the .forward file: If procmail resides below your home directory write out the *full* path. 5c] Note that on many systems you need to make your .forward world readable and your home directory world searchable in order for the mail transport agent to "see" it. To do this type: cd chmod 644 .forward chmod a+x . 6] Send yourself two test messages: one with ``test'' in the subject and one without ``test'' in the subject. 7a] Start your mailer (pine, elm, etc.) and check that the messages were delivered correctly. The one with ``test'' in the subject should be in the folder $MAILDIR/IN.testing and the one without ``test'' in the subject should be in your inbox. If these were delivered correctly go on to step 8. 7b] TROUBLESHOOTING * If the two messages were not delivered correctly look at your $LOGFILE (~/.procmail/log) to see if you can determine what the problem is. * Check these three files for typos: ~/.forward ~/.procmailrc ~/.procmail/rc.test * Check the file and directory permissions of your .forward (set in 5c above). Type... In order to... ------- -------------- cd Go to your home directory. ls -l .forward Check the permission: it should say -rw-r--r-- ls -ld . Check permission of home dir: it should say drwx?-x?-x The ?'s may be r's or hyphens or one of each (i.e., drwx--x--x, drwxr-xr-x, drwxr-x--x, drwx--xr-x). * If none of these turn up the problem edit your ~/.procmailrc so that it contains: VERBOSE=on And repeat steps 6 and 7. If you are still having problems see the subject "Troubleshooting: Alternate .forward Files for Procmail" below. 8a] Once you have successfully tested procmail in steps 6 and 7, create rc.folders for filtering incoming messages into mail folders. cd cd .procmail pico rc.folders 8b] Enter a modified version of the following in ~/.procmail/rc.folders :0: * ^TOwww-talk IN.www-talk :0: * ^TOprocmail IN.procmail The first recipe filters the www-talk mailing list and the second recipe filters the procmail mailing lists The meaning of the first recipe is as follows: Notation Meaning ======== ======= :0 Begin a recipe : Use a lock file * Begin a condition ^TO Match ``To:'' ``Cc:'' or other synonyms for To at the beginning of a line, followed by any or no characters, followed by.... www-talk ``www-talk'' IN.www-talk If successful match, put in folder $MAILDIR/IN.www-talk Create a recipe for each of your mailing lists. Make sure that you use ``^TO'' with no space between the caret (^) and the word ``TO'', and that both letters are capitalized -- if you don't it won't work. Note that ^TO is not a normal regular expression. It is a special procmail expression that is designed to catch any destination specification. See the MISCELLANEOUS section of the procmailrc(5) man page for details. For examples, see procmailex(5) man page. 9] Repeat steps 6 and 7 to make sure that things are still working. 10] Comment out the rc.test line in you .procmailrc file so that it looks like this: VERBOSE=off MAILDIR=$HOME/mail PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail LOGFILE=$PMDIR/log # INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.test INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.folders Note that it's useful to leave the rc.test line there for future testing. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:20 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 2.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail There is a useful script, which is part of the procmail package, for checking your procmail log file called mailstat. Check to see if it is on your system by typing either ``which mailstat'' or ``type mailstat''. If it's on your system type: mailstat $HOME/.procmail/log This displays a concise version of your log file and moves your log file to log.old. You may want to put the above line in your .login so that each time you log in you will see a listing of how many messages you've received since the last time you ran mailstat, and what folders these messages were delivered to. You can get a mailstat listing of log.old by using the -o flag: mailstat -o $HOME/.procmail/log If mailstat is not on your system ask your system administrator to install it. It is located with all the other procmail tools at: ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:30 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 2.3 Explanation of Test Recipe The recipe we used for testing is: :0: * ^Subject: .*test IN.testing The meaning of this recipe is: Notation Meaning ======== ======= :0 Begin a recipe : Use a lock file * Begin a condition ^ Match the beginning of a line followed by.... Subject: ``Subject:'' followed by.... . a space followed by any character (.) followed by.... * 0 or more of preceding character (any character in this case) followed by.... test ``test'' IN.testing If successful match, put in folder $MAILDIR/IN.testing ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:40 GMT From: "Stephen R. van den Berg" Subject: ... 2.4 Troubleshooting: Alternate .forward Files for Procmail If the .forward template in 5b above doesn't work the following alternatives might be helpful: In a perfect world: "|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail #nancym" In an almost perfect world: "|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail USER=nancym" In another world: "|IFS=' ';exec /usr/local/bin/procmail #nancym" In a different world: "|IFS=' ';exec /usr/local/bin/procmail USER=nancym" In a smrsh world: "|/usr/local/bin/procmail #nancym" These formats can be tried in different combinations, the leading "| can be tried as |" instead, or vice versa. Some systems do not need a .forward file (i.e., having a .procmailrc file suffices if procmail already is the local delivery agent). ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:02:50 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 2.5 Procmail References Manuals: procmail(1) - autonomous mail processor procmailrc(5) - procmail rc file procmailex(5) - procmail rc file examples procmailsc(5) - procmail weighted scoring techique egrep(1) - search file for regular expression (procmail uses egrep-style regular exprssions along with some of its own expressions like ^TO) formail(1) - mail reformatter sendmail(8) - send mail over the internet Newsgroup: comp.mail.misc Mailing List: procmail@informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subscribe to the procmail mailing list by sending mail: To: procmail-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subject: subscribe Procmail Archives: Get a list of files available at the procmail mail server by sending mail: To: procmail-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subject: archive ls Get Best of the Procmail mailing list by sending mail (you'll need gzip and a MIME-decoder to unpack it): To: procmail-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de Subject: archive get best_of_procmail_list* ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:03:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 3.0 Filter Filter is part of the Elm package of tools. Note that you can use filter to filter your incoming mail even if you are not using Elm to read your mail. IMPORTANT NOTE ============== If your system has both procmail and filter installed then you should use procmail which is *much* more robust and powerful than filter. This recommendation is almost universal; even the developers of Elm and Filter recommend procmail over filter. IT IS POSSIBLE TO LOSE MAIL MESSAGES WHEN USING FILTER; this is rare but it has happened. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:03:10 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 3.1 Setting up Filter Followup-To: comp.mail.elm 1] Find out if filter is on your system and what the full path to it is. If you are using the C shell (csh) type: which filter Or, if you are using the Korn shell (ksh) or the Bourne shell (sh) type: type filter If neither ``which'' nor ``type'' are on your system try ``where'' and ``whereis''. If your system doesn't have filter ask your system administrator to install it; or even better ask her to install procmail. 2] Note the full path of your home directory by typing: cd pwd 3a] Create ~/.elm/filter-rules. (Note that throughout this article I use pico for editing files. Replace ``pico'' with your editor.) cd mkdir .elm cd .elm pico filter-rules 3b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.elm/filter-rules if (subject contains "test") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.testing" Replace /j/nancym with your home directory path (see step 2). Replace /Mail with the name of the directory where your mail folders are stored. Pine and Berkeley Mail use /mail (lower case m) and Elm uses /Mail (upper case M). 4] To see what the filter rule will do type the following at your Unix prompt: filter -r 5a] Create a ~/.forward file by typing the following. (Pico's -w flag tells pico not to auto wrap lines.) cd pico -w .forward 5b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.forward: "|/usr/local/bin/filter -o /j/nancym/.elm/filter-errors" == IMPORTANT NOTES == * Make sure you include the quotes ("). * The vertical bar (|) is a pipe. * Replace /usr/local/bin with the correct path for filter (see step 1). * Replace /j/nancym with your home directory (see step 2). * Do NOT expect environment variables, like $HOME, to work in your .forward file. * Do NOT expect ~ to mean your home directory in the .forward file. 5c] Note that on many systems you need to make your .forward is world readable and your home directory world searchable in order for the mail transport agent to "see" it. To do this type: cd chmod 644 .forward chmod a+x . 6] Send yourself two test messages: one with ``test'' in the subject and one without ``test'' in the subject. 7a] Start your mailer (pine, elm, etc.) and check that the messages were delivered correctly. The one with ``test'' in the subject should be in the folder IN.testing and the one without ``test'' in the subject should be in your inbox. If these were delivered correctly go on to step 8. 7b] TROUBLESHOOTING * If the two messages were not delivered correctly look at your ~/.elm/filter-errors to see if you can determine what the problem is. * Check these two files for typos: ~/.forward ~/.elm/filter-rules * Check the file and directory permissions of your .forward (set in 5c above). Type... In order to... ------- -------------- cd Go to your home directory. ls -l .forward Check the permission: it should say -rw-r--r-- ls -ld . Check permission of home dir: it should say drwx?-x?-x The ?'s may be r's or hyphens or one of each (i.e., drwx--x--x, drwxr-xr-x, drwxr-x--x, drwx--xr-x). * If none of these turn up the problem edit your ~/.forward so that filter will be verbose with it's output (use the -vo flag). "|/usr/local/bin/filter -vo /j/nancym/.elm/filter-errors" And repeat steps 6 and 7. After you get filter to work you will probably want to change the ``-vo'' flag back to ``-o''. 8] After you have successfully tested filter in steps 6 and 7, edit ~/.elm/filter-rules so that it contains a modified version of the following: # if (subject contains "test") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.testing" if (to contains "www-talk") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.www-talk" if (to contains "hopos-l") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.hopos" Replace /j/nancym with your home directory path and /Mail with the name of your mail directory. Replace the mailing list string (e.g., "www-talk") and the name of the mail folder (e.g., IN.www-talk) with text for your mailing lists. Note that ``to contains...'' means either the To or Cc header contains... Rather than deleting the test line, it's useful to just turn it into a comment (by preceding it with #) so that you can easily use it for future testing. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:03:20 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 3.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail Followup-To: comp.mail.elm You can get a short summary of filter's activity by typing: filter -s For a longer summary type: filter -S Or you can look at the log file itself, ~/.elm/filterlog. You should regularly look at ~/.elm/filter-errors to make sure things are working. You can automatically check filter-errors each time you log in by putting the following in your .login: tail ~/.elm/filter-errors Also you probably want to regularly delete filterlog and filter-errors so they don't fill up your disk space. To get a summary of the filter log and clear it type: filter -cs ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:03:30 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: ... 3.3 Filter References Followup-To: comp.mail.elm Web Page: http://www.myxa.com/elm.html FAQs: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/elm/top.html Manual: filter(1) Newsgroup: comp.mail.elm ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:04:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 4.0 Reading Incoming Mail Folders To read an incoming mail folder use your mailer or newsreader (if it can read mail folders). For more information see documentation for your mailer or newsreader. Here are some pointers. PINE ==== FAQ: http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine/faq/ ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/docs/faq Manual: pine(1) Newsgroup: comp.mail.pine (linked to Pine mailing list) Mailing List: pine-info@cac.washington.edu (linked to Pine newsgroup) Subscribe to the pine-info mailing list by sending mail to: majordomo@cac.washington.edu With... subscribe pine-info in the body of the message. ELM === Web Page: http://www.myxa.com/elm.html FAQs: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/elm/top.html Manual: elm(1) Newsgroup: comp.mail.elm Emacs Mail Mode =============== Newsgroups: gnus.emacs.help and comp.emacs http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part5/faq.html MH == FAQ: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mh-faq/top.html Manual: mh(1) Newsgroup: comp.mail.mh MAIL ==== Manual: mail(1) Newsgroup: comp.mail.misc NN == FAQ: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/nn-faq/top.html Manual: nn(1) Newsgroup: news.software.nn (Does anyone know if nn uses lock files? Is there any problem using nn to read a mail folder that is receiving mail? Please let me know!) (Also, please let me know what other newsreaders can read mail folders?) ------------------------------ Date: 17 Nov 1994 23:05:00 GMT From: Nancy McGough Subject: 5.0 Contributing to this FAQ If you have any corrections, suggestions, or new digest items to contribute to this FAQ please send them to me at nancym@ii.com. If you are reading this with a viewer that understands the following URL you can use it to send me mail: mailto:nancym@ii.com Between official releases of this FAQ the plain text (ascii) version of the most up to date version of it is at: ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii/Internet/filtering_mail_faq End of Filtering Mail Digest **************************** -- /\_/\ ( o.o ) Nancy McGough http://www.jazzie.com/ii/ > ^ < Infinite Ink ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii From csus.edu!decwrl!hookup!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv Wed Apr 19 18:52:59 1995 Path: csus.edu!decwrl!hookup!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: BobRankin@Delphi.Com (Doctor Bob) Newsgroups: alt.internet.services,alt.online-service,alt.bbs.internet,alt.answers,comp.mail.misc,comp.answers,news.newusers.questions,news.answers Subject: Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 17 Apr 1995 20:14:06 GMT Organization: none Lines: 1361 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 7 May 1995 20:07:58 GMT Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: This guide will show you how to retrieve files from FTP sites, explore the Internet via Gopher, search for information with Archie, Veronica, Netfind, or WAIS, tap into the World-Wide Web, and even access Usenet newsgroups using E-MAIL AS YOUR ONLY TOOL. X-Last-Updated: 1995/04/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: csus.edu alt.internet.services:49298 alt.online-service:13154 alt.bbs.internet:30467 alt.answers:8599 comp.mail.misc:19049 comp.answers:11245 news.newusers.questions:57126 news.answers:42023 Archive-name: internet-services/access-via-email Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 1995/04/07 Version: 4.1 +--------------------------------------------------+ | Accessing The Internet By E-Mail | | Doctor Bob's Guide to Offline Internet Access | | 4th Edition - March 1995 | +--------------------------------------------------+ Copyright (c) 1994-95, "Doctor Bob" Rankin All rights reserved. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Feel free to upload to your favorite BBS or Internet server! How to Access Internet Services by E-mail ----------------------------------------- If you don't have direct access to the Internet through your BBS or online service, you're not alone. About half of the 150 countries with Internet connections have only e-mail access to this world-wide network of networks. But if you think that sounds limiting, read on. You can access almost any Internet resource using e-mail. Maybe you've heard of FTP, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, Finger, Usenet, Whois, Netfind, WAIS, and the World-Wide Web but thought they were out of your reach because you don't have a direct connection. Not so! You can use simple e-mail commands to do all of this and much more on the Internet. And even if you do have full Internet access, using e-mail services can save you time and money. If you can send a note to an Internet address, you're in the game. I encourage you to read this entire document first and then go back and try out the techniques that are covered. This way, you will gain a broader perspective of the information resources that are available, an introduction to the tools you can work with, and the best methods for finding the information you want. Finding the Latest Version -------------------------- This document is now available from several automated mail servers. To get the latest edition, send e-mail to one of the addresses below. To: listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu (for US/Canada/etc.) Enter only this line in the BODY of the note: GET INTERNET BY-EMAIL NETTRAIN F=MAIL To: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu (for Eastern US) Enter only this line in the BODY of the note: send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email To: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk (for UK/Europe/etc.) Enter only this line in the BODY of the note: send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt You can also get the file by anonymous FTP at one of these sites: Site: ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu get NETTRAIN/INTERNET.BY-EMAIL Site: rtfm.mit.edu get pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email Site: mailbase.ac.uk get pub/lists/lis-iis/files/e-access-inet.txt Other Translations of This Document ----------------------------------- Several readers have graciously volunteered to translate this text into languages other than English. The list below shows the status of the translation work that has been done or is in progress. You can obtain any of these texts by sending e-mail with Subject: send accmail.xx (where "xx" is as shown below) to BobRankin@mhv.net - Danish (Complete - 4th Edition) Filename: accmail.dk - Dutch (Complete - 3rd Edition) Filename: accmail.nl - French (In progress) Filename: accmail.fr - German (In progress) Filename: accmail.de - Portuguese (Complete - 2nd Edition) Filename: accmail.pt - Russian (Complete - 3rd Edition) Filename: accmail.su - Spanish (In progress) Filename: accmail.sp - Swedish (In progress) Filename: accmail.se Please contact the author if you would like to assist in the translation of this document into another language. Acknowledgements ---------------- This document is continually expanding and improving as a result of the daily flood of comments and questions received by the author. The following individuals are hereby recognized for their contributions. (If I forgot anyone, let me know and I'll gladly add you to the list.) Roddy MacLeod - Engineering Faculty Librarian, Heriot Watt University George McMurdo - Queen Margaret College Jim Milles - NETTRAIN Moderator, Saint Louis University Glee Willis - Engineering Librarian, University of Nevada Sylvain Chamberland - Enthusiastic contributor Alberto Barengols - Spanish translation Vadim Fedorov - Russian translation Stefan Greundel - German translation Roland Ljungkvist - Swedish translation Isamar Maia - Portuguese translation Jeene van der Hoef - Dutch translation The DELRINA CORPORATION, makers of WinComm Pro, Internet Messenger and other fine software products is also proud to be a corporate sponsor of this effort. A Short Aside... "What is the Internet?" ---------------------------------------- Many introductory texts on the Internet go into excruciating detail on the history, composition and protocol of the Internet. If you were looking for that you won't find it here, because this is a "how to" lesson, not a history book. When you buy a new car, they don't make you read "The Life and Times of Henry Ford" before you can turn the top down and squeal off the lot. And when you get a new computer, nobody forces you to read a text on logic design before you fire up Leisure Suit Larry or WordPerfect. So if you're the type that wants to short-circuit the preliminaries and just dig in, you've come to the right place. I'm not going to bore you with the gory details. Instead, I'll just offer up my Reader's Digest condensed definition of the Internet, and encourage you to read more about the Internet in one of the many fine Internet books and guides listed in the "Suggested Reading" section. Some of them are even free and accessible directly from the Internet! Internet (noun) - A sprawling collection of computer networks that spans the globe, connecting government, military, educational and commercial institutions, as well as private citizens to a wide range of computer services, resources, and information. A set of network conventions and common tools are employed to give the appearance of a single large network, even though the computers that are linked together use many different hardware and software platforms. The Rules of The Game --------------------- This document is meant to be both tutorial and practical, so there are lots of actual commands and internet addresses listed herein. You'll notice that when these are included in the text they are indented by several spaces for clarity. Don't include the leading spaces when you try these commands on your own! You'll also see things like "" or "" appearing in this document. Think of these as place holders or variables which must be replaced with an appropriate value. Do NOT include the quotes or brackets in your value unless specifically directed to do so. Most e-mail servers understand only a small set of commands and are not very forgiving if you deviate from what they expect. So include ONLY the specified commands in the Subject or body of your note, leaving off any extraneous lines such as your signature, etc. You should also ensure that you have one blank line between the note headers and the body of your note. And do pay attention to upper/lower case in directory and file names when using e-mail servers. It's almost always important! FTP BY E-MAIL ------------- FTP stands for "file transfer protocol", and is a means of accessing files that are stored on remote computer systems. In Internet lingo, these remote computers are called "sites". Files at FTP sites are typically stored in a tree-like set of directories (or nested folders for Mac fans), each of which pertains to a different subject. When visiting an FTP site using a "live" internet connection, one would specify the name of the site, login with a userid & password, navigate to the desired directory and select one or more files to be transferred back to their local system. Using FTP by e-mail is very similar, except that the desired site is reached through a special "ftpmail server" which logs in to the remote site and returns the requested files to you in response to a set of commands in an e-mail message. Using FTP by e-mail can be nice even for those with full Internet access, because some popular FTP sites are heavily loaded and interactive response can be very sluggish. So it makes sense not to waste time and connect charges in these cases. To use FTP by e-mail, you first need a list of FTP "sites" which are the addresses of the remote computer systems that allow you to retrieve files anonymously (without having a userid and password on that system). There are some popular sites listed later in this guide, but you can get a comprehensive list of hundreds of anonymous FTP sites by sending an e-mail message to the internet address: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu and include these lines in the BODY of the note. send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/sitelist/part1 send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/sitelist/part2 ... (lines omitted for brevity) ... send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/sitelist/part18 You will then receive (by e-mail) 18 files which comprise the "FTP Site List". Note that these files are each about 60K, so the whole lot will total around a megabyte! This could place a strain on your system, so first check around to see if the list is already available locally, or consider requesting just the first few as a sampler before getting the rest. Another file you might want to get is "FTP Frequently Asked Questions" which contains lots more info on using FTP services, so add this line to your note as well: send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq After you receive the site list you'll see dozens of entries like this, which tell you the site name, location and the kind of files that are stored there. Site : oak.oakland.edu Country: USA Organ : Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan System : Unix Comment: Primary Simtel Software Repository mirror Files : BBS lists; ham radio; TCP/IP; Mac; modem protocol info; MS-DOS; MS-Windows; PC Blue; PostScript; Simtel-20; Unix If you find an interesting FTP site in the list, send e-mail to one of these ftpmail servers: ftpmail@census.gov (USA) ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu (USA) bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu (USA) bitftp@vm.gmd.de (Germany) ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de (Germany) ftpmail@ftp.luth.se (Sweden) ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk (UK) ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au (Australia) It doesn't really matter which one you choose, but a server that is close may respond quicker. In the body of the note, include these lines: open dir quit This will return to you a list of the files stored in the root directory at that site. See the figure below for an example of the output when using "oak.oakland.edu" for the site name. +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | -r--r--r-- 1 w8sdz OAK 1255 Nov 9 16:32 README | | drwxr-xr-x 3 w8sdz OAK 8192 Feb 25 05:17 SimTel | | d--x--x--x 3 root system 8192 Jan 19 20:26 bin | | d--x--x--x 5 root system 8192 Dec 30 05:15 etc | | drwxrwx--- 2 incoming OAK 8192 Feb 25 11:05 incoming | | drwxr-xr-x 3 w8sdz OAK 8192 Jan 30 17:37 pub | | drwxr-xr-x 2 jeff OAK 8192 Apr 17 1994 siteinfo | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ In your next e-mail message you can navigate to other directories by inserting (for example) chdir pub before the "dir" command. (The "chdir" means "change directory" and "pub" is a common directory name, usually a good place to start.) Once you determine the name of a file you want to retrieve, use: get in the following note instead of the "dir" command. If the file you want to retrieve is plain text, this will suffice. If it's a binary file (an executable program, compressed file, etc.) you'll need to insert the command: binary in your note before the "get" command. Tip: Many directories at FTP sites contain a file called 00-index.txt, README, or something similarly named which gives a description of the files found there. If you're just exploring and your "dir" reveals one of these filenames, do a "get" on the file and save yourself some time. OK, let's grab the text of The Magna Carta. Here's the message you send to ftpmail@census.gov (or another ftpmail server): open ftp.spies.com (The name of the FTP site) chdir Gov/World (The directory where the file lives) get magna.txt (Sign here please, John) quit (Bring it on home) Here are the commands you would send to to get a file from the Simtel Software Repository that was mentioned earlier. open oak.oakland.edu (The name of the FTP site) chdir SimTel/msdos/disasm (The directory where the file lives) binary (Because we're getting a ZIP file) get bubble.zip (Sounds interesting, anyway...) quit (We're outta here!) Some other interesting FTP sites you may want to "visit" are listed below. (Use these site names on the "open" command and the suggested directory name on your "chdir" command, as in the previous examples.) ocf.berkeley.edu Try: pub/Library for documents, Bible, lyrics, etc. rtfm.mit.edu Try: pub/usenet/news.answers for USENET info oak.oakland.edu Try: SimTel/msdos for a huge DOS software library ftp.sura.net Try: pub/nic for Internet how-to documents quartz.rutgers.edu Try: pub/humor for lots of humor files gatekeeper.dec.com Try: pub/recipes for a cooking & recipe archive Remember that you can't just send e-mail to ftpmail@, rather you send the "open " command to one of the known ftpmail servers. You should note that ftpmail servers tend to be quite busy so your reply may not arrive for several minutes, hours, or days, depending on when and where you send your request. Also, some large files may be split into smaller pieces and returned to you as multiple messages. If the file that is returned to you ends up looking something like what you see below, (the word "begin" with a number and the filename on one line, followed by a bunch of 61-character lines) it most likely is a binary file that has been "uuencoded" by the sender. (This is required in order to reliably transmit binary files on the Internet.) begin 666 answer2.zip M4$L#!`H`!@`.`/6H?18.$-Z$F@P```@?```,````5$5,25@S,34N5%A480I[ M!P8;!KL,2P,)!PL).PD'%@.(!@4.!P8%-@.6%PL*!@@*.P4.%00.%P4*.`4. You'll need to scrounge up a version of the "uudecode" program for your operating system (DOS, OS/2, Unix, Mac, etc.) in order to reconstruct the file. Most likely you'll find a copy already at your site or in your service provider's download library, but if not you can use the instructions in the next section to find out how to search FTP sites for a copy. One final point to consider... If your online service charges you to store e-mail files that are sent to you and you plan to receive some large files via FTP, it would be wise to handle your "inbasket" expeditiously to avoid storage costs. ARCHIE BY E-MAIL ---------------- Let's say you know the name of a file, but you have no idea at which FTP site it might be lurking. Or maybe you're curious to know if files matching a certain naming criteria are available via FTP. Archie is the tool you can use to find out. Archie servers can be thought of as a database of all the anonymous FTP sites in the world, allowing you to find the site and/or name of a file to be retrieved. And using Archie by e-mail can be convenient because some Archie searches take a LONG time to complete, leaving you to tap your toes in the meantime. To use Archie by e-mail, simply send an e-mail message to one of the following addresses: archie@archie.rutgers.edu (USA) archie@archie.sura.net (USA) archie@archie.unl.edu (USA) archie@archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (UK) archie@archie.luth.se (Sweden) archie@archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp (Japan) To obtain detailed help for using Archie by mail, put the word help in the subject of the note and just send it off. You'll receive e-mail explaining how to use archie services. If you're the "just do it" type, then enter the command: find where "" is the name of the file to search for, in the BODY (not the subject) of the note. This will search for files that match your criteria exactly. If you want to find files that contain your search criteria anywhere in their name, insert the line set search sub before the "find" command. Some other useful archie commands you might want to use are: set maxhits 20 (limit output, default is 100 files) set match_domain usa (restrict output to FTP sites in USA) set output_format terse (return output in condensed form) When you get the results from your Archie query, it will contain the names of various sites at which the desired file is located. Use one of these site names and the directory/filename listed for your next FTP file retrieval request. Now you've learned enough to locate that uudecode utility mentioned in the last section. Let's send e-mail to archie@archie.rutgers.edu, and include the following lines in the message: set match_domain usa (restrict output to FTP sites in USA) set search sub (looking for a substring match...) find uudecode (must contain this string...) Note: You'll be looking for the uudecode source code, not the executable version, which would of course be a binary file and would arrive uuencoded - a Catch 22! The output of your archie query will contain lots of information like this: Host ftp.clarkson.edu (128.153.4.2) Last updated 06:31 9 Oct 1994 Location: /pub/simtel20-cdrom/msdos/starter FILE -r-xr-xr-x 5572 bytes 21:00 11 Mar 1991 uudecode.bas Location: /pub/simtel20-cdrom/msdos/starter FILE -r-xr-xr-x 5349 bytes 20:00 17 Apr 1991 uudecode.c Now you can use an ftpmail server to request "uudecode.bas" (if you have BASIC available) or "uudecode.c" (if you have a C compiler) from the ftp.clarkson.edu site. It should be noted that the latest version of uudecode can be found at the SimTel repository. Send e-mail to listserv@SimTel.coast.net, including any or all of these commands in the BODY of the note, and the requested files will be returned to you by e-mail. get uudecode.bas get uudecode.c get uudecode.doc GOPHER BY E-MAIL ---------------- Gopher is an excellent tool for exploring the Internet and is the best way to find a resource if you know what you want, but not where to find it. Gopher systems are menu-based, and provide a user-friendly front end to Internet resources, searches and information retrieval. Gopher knows where things are, thanks to the many volunteers who spend time creating pointers to useful collections of 'Net resources. And Gopher takes the rough edges off of the Internet by automating remote logins, hiding the sometimes-cryptic command sequences, and offers powerful search capabilities as well. When visiting a Gopher site using a "live" Internet connection, one would specify the name of the site, navigate through a series of hierarchical menus to a desired resource, and then either read or transfer the information back to their home system. Using Gopher by e-mail is very similar, except that the desired site is reached through a special "gophermail server" which gophers to the remote site on your behalf and and returns the requested menu, submenu or file to you in response to a set of commands in an e-mail message. Although not every item on every menu will be accessible by "gophermail", you'll still find plenty of interesting things using this technique. Down to brass tacks... let's send e-mail to one of these addresses: gophermail@calvin.edu (USA) gopher@earn.net (France) gopher@dsv.su.se (Sweden) gomail@ncc.go.jp (Japan) You can optionally specify the address of a known gopher site on the Subject line to get the main menu for that site instead. Here are some interesting gopher sites you may like to explore at your leisure. cwis.usc.edu gopher.micro.umn.edu english-server.hss.cmu.edu Let's be bold and skip the HELP stuff for now. Fire off a note to one of the gophermail servers and specify Subject: cwis.usc.edu You'll get a message back from the server that looks something like the text in the figure below. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Mail this file back to gopher with an X before the items you want. | | | | 1. About USCgopher/ | | 2. How To Find Things on Gopher/ | | 3. University Information/ | | 4. Campus Life/ | | 5. Computing Information/ | | 6. Library and Research Information/ | | 7. Health Sciences/ | | 8. Research and Technology Centers/ | | 9. Other Gophers & Info Resources/ | | | | You may edit the following numbers to set the maximum sizes after | | which GopherMail should send output as multiple email messages: | | | | Split=27K bytes/message <- For text, bin, HQX messages | | Menu=100 items/message <- For menus and query responses | | # | | Name=About USCgopher | | Numb=1 | | Type=1 | | Port=70 | | Path=1/About_USCgopher | | Host=cwis.usc.edu | | # ... (some lines deleted) ... | | Name=Other Gophers and Information Resources | | Numb=9 | | Type=1 | | Port=70 | | Path=1/Other_Gophers_and_Information_Resources | | Host=cwis.usc.edu | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ To proceed to a selection on the returned menu just e-mail the whole text of the note (from the menu downwards) back to the gopher server, placing an "x" next to the items(s) you want to explore. You'll then receive the next level of the gopher menu by e-mail. Some menu choices lead to other menus, some lead to text files, and some lead to searches. In the example above, let's select x 9. Other Gophers & Info Resources and mail the whole shebang right back at the gophermail server. You should then get a menu with a number of interesting selections including "Gopher Jewels". You'll find a LOT of good stuff along that path. The Gopher Jewels project is probably the best organized collection of Internet resources around. If a menu item is labelled "Search" you can select that item with an "x" and supply your search words in the Subject: of your reply. Note that your search criteria can be a single word or a boolean expression such as: document and (historic or government) Each of the results (the "hits") of your search will be displayed as an entry on yet another gopher menu! Note: You needn't actually return the entire gopher menu and all the routing info that follows it each time you reply to the gophermail server. If you want to minimize the size of your query, you can strip out the "menu" portion at the top and include only the portion below that pertains to the menu selection you want. Just remember that if you use this approach, you must specify "get all" on the Subject line. (Exception: for searching, specify only the search terms on the Subject line.) The example below is equivalent to selecting "option 9" as we did earlier. Split=0K bytes/message Menu=0 items/message # Name=Other Gophers Numb=9 Type=1 Port=70 Path=1/Other_Gophers_and_Information_Resources Host=cwis.usc.edu If this looks like nonsense to you, here's a human translation: Connect to PORT 70 of the HOST (computer) at "cwis.usc.edu", retrieve the sub-menu "Other Gophers", and send it to me in ONE PIECE, regardless of its size. Note: Sometimes gophermail requests return a blank menu or message. This is most likely because the server failed to connect to the host from which you were trying to get your information. Send your request again later and it'll probably work. VERONICA BY E-MAIL ------------------ Speaking of searches, this is a good time to mention Veronica. Just as Archie provides a searchable index of FTP sites, Veronica provides this function for "gopherspace". Veronica will ask you what you want to look for (your search words) and then display another menu listing all the gopher menu items that match your search. In typical gopher fashion, you can then select one of these items and "go-pher it"! To try Veronica by e-mail, retrieve the main menu from a gophermail server using the method just described. Then try the choice labelled "Other Gopher and Information Servers". This menu will have an entry for Veronica. You'll have to select one (or more) Veronica servers to handle your query, specifying the search words in the Subject of your reply. Here's another example of where using e-mail servers can save time and money. Often the Veronica servers are very busy and tell you to "try again later". So select 2 or 3 servers, and chances are one of them will be able to handle your request the first time around. A Gophermail Shortcut: ---------------------- The path to some resources, files or databases can be a bit tedious, requiring several e-mail messages to the gophermail server. But here's the good news... If you've done it once, you can re-use any of the e-mail messages previously sent in, changing it to suit your current needs. As an example, here's a clipping from the Veronica menu you would get by following the previous instructions. You can send these lines to any gophermail server to run a Veronica search. Split=64K bytes/message <- For text, bin, HQX messages (0 = No split) Menu=100 items/message <- For menus and query responses (0 = No split) # Name=Search GopherSpace by Title word(s) (via NYSERNet) Type=7 Port=2347 Path= Host=empire.nysernet.org Specify the search words in the Subject line and see what turns up! You can use boolean expressions in Veronica searches. For a guide to composing Veronica searches, send these lines to a gophermail server: Name=How to Compose Veronica Queries Path=0/veronica/how-to-query-veronica Host=veronica.scs.unr.edu USENET BY E-MAIL ---------------- Usenet is a collection of over 5000 discussion groups on every topic imaginable. In order to get a proper start and avoid embarrasing yourself needlessly, you must read the Usenet new users intro document, which can be obtained by sending e-mail to: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu and include this line in the BODY of the note: send usenet/news.answers/news-newusers-intro To get a listing of Usenet newsgroups, add these commands to your note: send usenet/news.answers/active-newsgroups/part1 send usenet/news.answers/active-newsgroups/part2 send usenet/news.answers/alt-hierarchies/part1 send usenet/news.answers/alt-hierarchies/part2 To get the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file(s) for a given newsgroup, try a command like this: index usenet/ (Substitute dots for dashes if they appear in the newsgroup name.) If any FAQ files are available, they will be listed in the returned info, and you can request them with a command like: send usenet// Once you've handled the preliminaries, you'll need to know how to read and contribute to Usenet newsgroups by e-mail. To read a newsgroup, you can use the gophermail service discussed earlier in this guide. To obtain a list of recent postings to a particular newsgroup, send the following lines to one of the gophermail servers mentioned previously. Specify "Subject: get all" and include only these lines in the message body. (You must replace "" below with the name of the Usenet newsgroup you wish to access. eg: alt.answers, biz.comp.services, news.newusers.questions, etc.) ------- begin gophermail message (do not include this line) Name= Type=1 Port=4324 Path=nntp ls Host=pinchy.micro.umn.EDU ------- end gophermail message (do not include this line) If this doesn't work, you can try another Host by specifying Port=4320 (instead of Port=4324) and substituting one of the lines below. Host=phantom.bsu.edu Host=teetot.acusd.edu Host=infopub.uqam.ca Host=gopher.ic.ac.uk Host=info.mcc.ac.uk Note that many of these sites carry only a limited range of newsgroups, so you may have to try several before finding one which carries the newsgroup you're looking for. When the newsgroup does not exist, gophermail sends something like "'nntp ls ': path does not exist". When a site does not accept outside requests, gophermail sends something like "Sorry, we don't accept requests outside campus". If successful, the gophermail server will send you a typical gopher menu on which you may select the individual postings you wish to read. Note: The gophermail query in this example is the greatly edited result of many previous queries. I've pared it down to the bare essentials so it can be tailored and reused. If you decide to make a post of your own, mail the text of your post to: group-name@cs.utexas.edu group.name@news.demon.co.uk group.name@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu group.name@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca group.name@nic.funet.fi (For an updated list send e-mail to mg5n+remailers@andrew.cmu.edu) For example, to post to news.newusers.questions, you might send your message to either of: news-newusers-questions@cs.utexas.edu news.newusers.questions@news.demon.co.uk Be sure to include an appropriate Subject: line, and include your real name and e-mail address at the close of your note. An Alternate Usenet to E-mail Method ------------------------------------ Another way to get Usenet postings by e-mail is via a special server in Belgium. It's a bit easier than the gophermail approach, but it carries only a subset (about 1000) of the Usenet groups. Send e-mail to: listserv@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be with this command in the body of the note: /NNHELP and you'll get complete details. If you can't wait, send the command /NEWSGROUPS to get a list of the newsgroups available on the server. If you're even more impatient, try something like: /GROUP comp.unix.aix SINCE 19950317000000 and you should get a list of postings made from 17 Mar 1995 onward. Yet Another Usenet->E-mail Method! ---------------------------------- See the section "World-Wide Web By E-Mail" for an even easier method of retrieving Usenet posts by e-mail! This method is limited to the set of newsgroups carried at the CERN server, but the selection seems to be quite comprehensive. WAIS SEARCHES BY E-MAIL ----------------------- WAIS stands for Wide Area Information Service, and is a means of searching a set of over 500 indexed databases. The range of topics is too broad to mention, and besides, you'll soon learn how to get the topic list for yourself. I recommend that you send e-mail to "waismail@sunsite.unc.edu" with HELP in the body of the note to get the full WAISmail user guide. But if you can't wait, use the info below as a quickstart. A list of WAIS databases (or "resources" as they like to be called) can be obtained by sending e-mail to the waismail server with the line search xxx xxx in the body of the note. Look through the returned list for topics that are of interest to you and use one of them in the next example. OK, let's do an actual search. Send e-mail to: waismail@sunsite.unc.edu with the following commands in the note body: maxres 10 search bush-speeches lips This will tell WAISmail to search through the text of the "bush-speeches" database and return a list of at most 10 documents containing "lips". A successful search will return one or more "DOCid:" lines, which identify the location of the matching documents. To retrieve the full text of a matching document, send one of the returned "DOCid:" lines (exactly as is) in the body of your next message to WAISmail. (Note: The WAISmail server at "quake.think.com" is defunct. The server listed above still had a few bugs as of this writing, so if it doesn't work, try the WAIS via gophermail method described next.) A list of WAIS databases can also be obtained by sending e-mail to gophermail@calvin.edu with "Subject: get all" and these lines in the message body: Type=1 Name=WAIS Databases Path=1/WAISes/Everything Host=gopher-gw.micro.umn.edu Port=70 Look through the returned list for topics that are of interest to you and select one to search. Specify your search term(s) on the Subject line, and clip out just the section of the returned gopher menu that corresponds to your target database. For example: Type=7+ Name=bush-speeches.src Path=waissrc:/WAISes/Everything/bush-speeches Host=gopher-gw.micro.umn.edu Port=70 You will (hopefully) receive a gophermail menu in response listing the matching "documents". To retrieve the full text of a matching document, just make a selection from the returned gopher menu, and the referenced file will be sent to you. In my testing, WAIS by gophermail was not reliable. Often a blank menu was returned but repeated attempts did eventually meet with success. WORLD-WIDE WEB BY E-MAIL ------------------------ The World-Wide Web is touted as the future of Internet navigational tools. It's a hypertext and multimedia system that lets you hop around the Net, read documents, and access images & sounds linked to a source. Have you ever heard someone say, "Wow, check out the cool stuff at http://www.somewhere.com/blah.html" and wondered what the heck they were talking about? Now you can retrieve WWW documents by e-mail using the Agora WWW-mail server server in Switzerland. All you need to know is the Uniform Resource Locator (or URL, that long ugly string starting with "http:", "gopher:", or "ftp:") which defines the address of the document, and you can retrieve it by sending e-mail to: agora@mail.w3.org In the body of your note include one of these lines, replacing "" with the actual URL specification. send This will send you back the document you requested, with a list of all the documents referenced within, so that you may make further requests. deep Same as above, but it will also send you the documents referenced in the URL you specified. (May result in a LOT of data coming your way!) To try WWW by e-mail send the following commands to agora@mail.w3.org : www send http://info.cern.ch You'll receive in due course the Agora help file and the "WWW Welcome Page" from Cern which will include references to other Web documents you'll want to explore. Note: The URL you specify may contain only the following characters: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and these special characters /:._-+@%*()?~ As mentioned earlier, you can also get Usenet postings from the WWW mail server. Here are some examples: send news:comp.unix.aix (returns a list of recent postings) deep news:comp.unix.aix (returns the list AND the postings, this can be a LOT of data!) There is another WWW-mail server whose address is: webmail@curia.ucc.ie This server requires commands in the form: go WWW SEARCH BY E-MAIL -------------------- There's a lot of great stuff out on the Web, but how do you find it? Well, just like Archie and Veronica help you search FTP and gopher sites, there are several search engines that have been developed to search for information on the Web. But until now, you had to have direct Internet access to use them. After a bit of research, I have found that it is possible to use several WWW search mechanisms by e-mail. Here are some sample queries that you can use to search via Lycos, WebCrawler and the CUI W3 Catalog. Any of these lines can be sent to the agora@mail.w3.org address to perform a search. If you're not interested in spam or frogs, then by all means feel free to use your own search keywords. For Lycos, append a dot to your keywords to force an exact match, or you will get a substring search by default. Separate words with a "+" sign. http://query1.lycos.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/pursuit?spam http://query1.lycos.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/pursuit?spam. http://query1.lycos.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/pursuit?frog.+dissection. For WebCrawler searches you must separate words with a "+" sign. All searches are exact, no trailing dot required. http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/cgi-bin/WebQuery?spam http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/cgi-bin/WebQuery?frog+dissection For CUI W3 Catalog searches you must separate words with "%20" as below. All searches are exact, no trailing dot required. http://cuiwww.unige.ch/w3catalog?spam http://cuiwww.unige.ch/w3catalog?frog%20dissection MAILING LISTS ------------- There are literally thousands of discussion groups that stay in touch using e-mail based systems known as "mailing lists". People interested in a topic "subscribe" to a "list" and then send and receive postings by e-mail. For a good introduction to this topic, send e-mail to: LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu In the body of your note include only this command: GET NEW-LIST WOUTERS Finding a Mailing List ---------------------- To find out about mailing lists that are relevant to your interests, send the following command to the same address given above. LIST GLOBAL /keyword (Of course you must replace "keyword" with an appropriate search word such as Marketing, Education, etc.) Another helpful document which details the commands used to subscribe, unsubscribe and search mailing list archives can be had by sending to: LISTSERV@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu In the body of your note include only this command: get mailser cmd nettrain f=mail New in These Parts? ------------------- If you're new to the Internet, I suggest you subscribe to the HELP-NET list where you're likely to find answers to your questions. Send the command: SUBSCRIBE HELP-NET in the BODY of a note to LISTSERV@VM.TEMPLE.EDU, then e-mail your questions to the list address: HELP-NET@VM.TEMPLE.EDU FINGER BY E-MAIL ---------------- "Finger" is a utility that returns information about another user. Usually it's just boring stuff like last logon, etc., but sometimes people put fun or useful information in their finger replies. To try out finger, send e-mail with Subject: FINGER jtchern@headcrash.berkeley.edu. To: infobot@infomania.com You'll receive some current sports standings! (The general form is FINGER user@site.) Just for kicks, try finger using a combination of gopher and WWW. Send the command: send gopher://:79/0 to the WWWmail server mentioned earlier. "DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE" BY E-MAIL -------------------------------- "WHOIS" is a service that queries a database of Internet names and addresses. If you're looking for someone or you want to know where a particular Internet site is located, send e-mail with Subject: whois To: mailserv@internic.net Try substituting "mit.edu" or the last name of someone you know in place of "" and see what comes back! Another alternative name looker-upper is a database at MIT which keeps tabs on everyone who has posted a message on Usenet. Send e-mail to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu" and include this command ONLY in the BODY: send usenet-addresses/ Specify as much information as you can about the person (lastname, firstname, userid, site, etc.) to limit the amount of information that is returned to you. Here's a sample query to find the address of someone you think may be at Harvard University: send usenet-addresses/Jane Doe Harvard NETFIND is another more powerful search engine that uses a person's name and keywords describing a physical location to return a bunch of info about the person (or persons) who fit the bill. Let's say we want to find someone named Hardy at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Our Netfind query will be addressed to agora@mail.w3.org and will contain the only line: gopher://ds.internic.net:4320/7netfind%20dblookup?hardy+boulder+colorado Netfind works in two phases. First it displays a list of internet domains that match your keywords, then it looks for the person in the domain you select. Netfind by e-mail is very similar, in that you'll receive a listing of matching domains from which you must make one or more selections. Each selection is numbered and there are corresponding "gopher://" commands at the bottom of the listing. Let's pick the selection for cs.colorado.edu computer science dept, university of colorado, boulder which means that our next command to agora@mail.w3.org will be: gopher://ds.internic.net:4320/0netfind%20netfind%20hardy%20cs.colorado.edu If all goes well, you'll receive a list something like this: full_name: HARDY, JOE (not a real person) email: CrazyJoe@Colorado.EDU phone: (303) 492-1234 address: Campus Box 777 department: COMPUTER SCIENCE Note that if you know the person's domain name already, you can jump right in with a query like the latter one above. You can also try the "Four11 Online User Directory", a free directory of users and their e-mail addresses. Send e-mail to info@four11.com for details on how to search the Four11 directory. ADDRESS/NAME SERVER INFO BY E-MAIL ---------------------------------- This is a little on the technical side, but anyway the Mail Name Server (dns@grasp.insa-lyon.fr) offers some useful services by e-mail. Some of the commands you can send in the BODY of your note are: help (full details) ip host.foo.bar (get host's addresses) name ip# (get host name from address) ns host.foo.bar (get host's name servers) TELNET BY E-MAIL ----------------- Sorry, it can't be done. Actually it CAN be done, but apparently nobody has done it. I'd love to be proven wrong on this! A FEW NET-GOODIES ----------------- Here are some other interesting things you can do by e-mail. (Some of them are accessible only by e-mail!) * WEBSTER BY E-MAIL Don't have your dictionary handy? Send e-mail to infobot@infomania.com again, but this time make the subject WEBSTER TEST and you'll get a definition of the word "test" in reply. * ALMANAC, WEATHER & THE SWEDISH CHEF Infomania offers a bunch of other services by e-mail! Almanac (daily updates), Weather, CD Music Catalog, etc. Send e-mail to infobot@infomania.com with subject HELP for full details. * THE USENET ORACLE A cooperative, anonymous and humorous exchange of questions and answers. Send e-mail to oracle@cs.indiana.edu for more information. * SENDING A FAX BY E-MAIL Free faxing via the Internet? You bet. For details, send the line below to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu (in BODY of note) send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/fax-faq * THE ELECTRONIC NEWSSTAND The Electronic Newsstand collects articles, editorials, and tables of contents from over 165 magazines and provides them to the Internet. To get instructions on e-mail access, send a message to gophermail@enews.com * U.S. CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE Find out if your congressman has an electronic address! Just send mail to the address congress@hr.house.gov and you'll get a listing of congressional e-mail addresses. You can also contact the President (president@whitehouse.gov) or Vice President (vice.president@whitehouse.gov), but don't expect a reply by e-mail. Messages sent to these addresses get printed out and handled just like regular paper correspondence! * OTHER SOURCES OF US GOV'T INFO: Send the lines below to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu (in BODY of note) send usenet/news.answers/us-govt-net-pointers/part1 send usenet/news.answers/us-govt-net-pointers/part2 * INTERNET PATENT NEWS SERVICE Send e-mail to patents@world.std.com for more information on this service. *THE INTERNET MALL To get a copy of this long list of net-connected businesses, send e-mail to taylor@netcom.com with Subject: send mall *FINDING E-MAIL ADDRESSES For a guide to finding someone's e-mail addresses, send the line below to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu (in the BODY of the note) send usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses *SENDING MAIL TO VARIOUS NETWORKS For a guide to communicating with people on the various networks that make up the Internet, send the line below to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu (in the BODY of the note) send usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide *SENDING MAIL TO FAMILY MEMBERS Family Internet MailCall is a fee-based service that helps you keep in touch via a private mailing list. Details: family-info@mailcall.com * USENET SEARCHES A new service at Stanford University makes it possible to search USENET newsgroups for postings that contain keywords of interest to you. You can even "subscribe" and receive a daily list of newsgroup postings that match your search criteria. Send mail to netnews@db.stanford.edu with HELP in the body of note for full details. * MOVIE INFO To learn how to get tons of info on movies, actors, & directors, send mailto movie@ibmpcug.co.uk with HELP in the body of note for details. * STOCK MARKET REPORT Send e-mail with subject STOCK MARKET QUOTES to martin.wong@eng.sun.com and you'll receive a rather lengthy stock market report (every day until you ask Martin to stop sending them)! Please note that this is not an automated server, so be sure to include a word of appreciation for this useful service. * STOCK MARKET QUOTES If you want to get a current quote for just 1 or 2 stocks, you can use the QuoteCom service. They offer this free service along with other fee based services. For details, send e-mail to "services@quote.com" with a subject of HELP. * THE CONTRARIAN ADVISOR A stock newsletter focusing on out-of-favor stocks. To subscribe, send e-mail to choyt@Interactive.net with Subject: Subscribe Contrarian * ANONYMOUS E-MAIL The "anon server" provides a front for sending mail messages and posting to Usenet newsgroups anonymously, should the need ever arise. To get complete instructions, send e-mail to help@anon.penet.fi * NET JOURNALS LISTING I highly recommend "The Internet Press - A guide to electronic journals about the Internet". To get it, send e-mail with Subject: subscribe to ipress-request@northcoast.com * MUSI-CAL Send e-mail to concerts@calendar.com to retrieve a help message that tells how to use the Musi-Cal online concert calendar service. * ASK DR. MATH Have a math question? No problem's too big or too small for The Swat Team. Write to dr.math@forum.swarthmore.edu * SCOUT REPORT: Scout Report is a weekly featuring announcements of new and interesting resources on the Internet. To subscribe, send e-mail to majordomo@is.internic.net with "Subscribe scout-report" in the body. SUGGESTED READING ----------------- There are lots of good books and guides to help you get started on the Internet, and here are some that I recommend. The first few are free (FTPmail commands listed below), and the others can be found in most bookstores that carry computer-related books. "Zen and the Art of the Internet", by Brendan Kehoe open ftp.std.com chdir obi/Internet/zen-1.0 get zen10.txt "There's Gold in them thar Networks", by Jerry Martin open nic.ddn.mil chdir rfc get rfc1402.txt "Unofficial Internet Book List", by Kevin Savetz open rtfm.mit.edu chdir pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services get book-list "The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog", by Ed Krol Publisher: O'Reilly and Associates ISBN: 1-56592-063-5 Price: $24.95 "The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet", by Adam Gaffin Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0-262-57105-6 Price: $14.95 "The Internet Guide For New Users", by Daniel P. Dern Publisher: McGraw-Hill ISBN: 0-07-016511-4 Price: $27.95 CONTACTING THE AUTHOR --------------------- "Doctor Bob", also known as Bob Rankin, welcomes your feedback on this guide and can be reached at the following addresses. Send corrections, ideas, suggestions and comments by e-mail. I'll try to include any new e-mail services in future editions of this guide. Internet: BobRankin@Delphi.com US Mail : Doctor Bob / P.O. Box 39 / Tillson, NY / 12486 MORE PUBLICATIONS FROM DOCTOR BOB! ---------------------------------- Announcing ... +------------------------------------------------+ | "100 COOL THINGS TO DO ON THE INTERNET!" | | Doctor Bob's Internet Tour Guide | | Over 100 places you *must* visit in cyberspace | +------------------------------------------------+ This is the guide I wanted when the Internet was new to me. Just a quick overview of the "tools of the trade" and a list of "cool things to do". Not 300 pages... And not $39! This information could save you money, hours of valuable time, or lead you to a new career. There's a goldmine of information, software and services out there just waiting to be discovered! It can be yours, but it's not easy... That's why you must have this informative report which gives you the lowdown on: * Online databases * Electronic Library Catalogs * Shopping in Cyberspace * Job Postings Online * Vast software libraries * ALL FREE! You'll learn the basics of TELNETing, FTPing and GOPHERing to the information you want, with specific instructions and the "secret keys" you need to unlock all the doors on the way! +------------------------------------------------+ | Doctor Bob's Internet Business Guide | | An Introduction to Good | | Old-Fashioned Capitalism In Cyberspace | +------------------------------------------------+ There are those who say that the Internet should be free of capitalism, commerce, advertising and anything that smells like "business". But there ARE ways to conduct business on the 'Net without raising the ire of the inhabitants of the electronic domain. You can lower costs, make money and even get thanked for providing your service if you know how to do it right! I can't promise that you'll make lots of money selling your product or service, but I'm certain that after you've read this guide, you will have a better understanding of: * Internet Tools & Techniques * Business Resources on the Net * Setting Up Shop on the Net * Avoiding Net Marketing Pitfalls * What business are on the Net * Getting paid for your product To get your copy of: "100 COOL THINGS TO DO ON THE INTERNET!" - or - "DOCTOR BOB'S INTERNET BUSINESS GUIDE" Send just $5 each (cash, check or money order) plus a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: --> DOCTOR BOB --> PO BOX 39, DEPT U4 --> TILLSON, NY 12486 USA Note: For e-mail delivery (preferred) you can skip the envelope but make sure to send your e-mail address along with your order. Outside the USA: Skip the stamp, but please add $1 for postage. If it's too difficult to get US funds, send 12 International Postal Coupons in lieu of cash. And if all else fails, send your own (paper) currency, estimating the conversion factor. I cannot accept checks or money orders drawn on non-US institutions. I also accept electronic payment via NetCash and First Virtual! For details send e-mail to catalog@agents.com with DOCTOR BOB on the first line of your note. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1994-95, "Doctor Bob" Rankin All rights reserved. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Feel free to upload to your favorite BBS or Internet server! Persons wishing to summarize this document in other publications may do so, but please include the instructions herein for obtaining the full document. I also request that you kindly supply me with a copy of the article when published. # # #