Freebsd - Mail configuration and syntax

[Carla Neves]

Thanks to those o answered me!

I have now some good tips, specialy from Matthew email. I forgot to 
tell you what would be the use of my email, it would be more easy for 
you to help me. I have a server, without xwindows configured, the only 
thing I want from the server about email is to create some scripts to 
send emails with some files attached. That's why I spoke the mailx 
(mail)... So I think your tips are enough.

Thanks once again

> 
> 
> On Mon, May 31, 2004 at 09:32:21AM +0100, Carla Neves wrote:
> 
> > I would like someone to give me some good tips to configure my 
email 
> > on Freebsd v4.9, to send/receive messages. I would like to use 
what I 
> > have already installed: sendmail, mailx. I went through the 
Freebsd 
> > manual but I coulnd't find any tips for the syntax of 
> > sending/receiving emails, just the sendmail configuration. So I 
would 
> > apreciate your help to give me the good steps for:
> 
> Hmmm... the mailx command always used to be a SysV thing -- in fact, 
a
> port of the BSD mail(1) command, which they had to rename because 
they
> already had a mail(1) command which did something completely
> different.
> 
> Looking at the pkg-descr for the mail/mailx command it actually looks
> almost identical to the mail(1) command in the base system.  
>  
> > 1- Configuring sendmail (although is already in the manual)
> 
> Could you be more specific about what you want to do with your e-mail
> system?  In general, all things are possible (e-mail wise) using
> sendmail, but not necessarily easy or obvious.
> 
> > 2- Syntax used to send email (with examples would be great).
> 
> Well, to use mail(1) to send an e-mail from the command line it's
> pretty much:
> 
>     % mail -s "Message Subject here" addressee at example.com
> 
> Then type in your message ending with a ^D or a '.' on a line by
> itself.  There are a number of ~-escapes you can use to do things 
like
> invoke an editor or edit the message headers.
> 
> For use in scripting, mail(1) is quite handy -- you can do something
> like this:
> 
>      mail -s "Automatic Message" recipient at example.com <<E_O_M
>      The contents of the message goes here.
> 
>      As much as you like, really.
> 
>      E_O_M
> 
> but it's more efficient to pipe stuff directly into sendmail:
> 
>      /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -oi -oem <<E_O_M
>      To: recipient at example.com
>      Subject: Automatic Message
> 
>      The contents of the message goes here.
> 
>      As much as you like, really.
> 
>      E_O_M
> 
> > 3- Syntax to see the received emails.
> 
> Just type mail to get a listing of your inbox, then type the message
> number to read that message, or 'n' for the next message.
>  
> > I went through the man pages of mailx and sendmail, but they seem 
not 
> > to be very userfriendly for someone who is quite knew configuring 
> > email on Freebsd. So could you please help me?
> 
> sendmail is quite hard to deal with.  A very good resource is the 
file
> /usr/share/sendmail/cf/README which summarises all of the options you
> can put into a .mc file.  The Sendmail Operations manual in
> /usr/share/doc/smm/08.sendmailop/paper.ascii.gz also contains a great
> deal of useful stuff.  However, if you really want to get to grips
> with it, you should look at the bat book -- Sendmail, 3rd Ed. 
Costales
> and Allman, O'Reilly (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sendmail3/)
> 
> Personally, I'm not a big fan on the mail(1) command for interactive
> use -- mutt(1) is much better.  Lots of people like pine(1) and it's
> certainly a lot more friendly towards beginning users.  Then there 
are
> e-mail clients available for emacs, plus a whole range of GUI mail
> clients such as Mozilla mail, Thunderbird, Evolution etc.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Matthew
> 
> -- 
> Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
>                                                       Savill Way
> PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
> Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 
1TH UK
> 
>