mail(1)                                                            User Commands                                                           mail(1)

NAME

       mail, rmail - read mail or send mail to users

SYNOPSIS

   Sending Mail
       mail [-tw] [-m message_type] recipient...

       rmail [-tw] [-m message_type] recipient...

   Reading Mail
       mail [-ehpPqr] [-f file]

   Debugging
       mail [-x debug_level] [other_mail_options] recipient...

DESCRIPTION

       A  recipient  is  usually  a  domain  style address ("user@machine") or a user name recognized by login(1). When recipients are named, mail
       assumes a message is being sent. It reads from the standard input up to an end-of-file (Control-d) or, if reading from a  terminal  device,
       until  it  reads  a line consisting of just a period. When either of those indicators is received, mail adds the letter to the mailfile for
       each recipient.

       A letter is composed of some header lines followed by a blank line followed by the message content. The header lines section of the  letter
       consists of one or more UNIX postmarks:

       From sender date_and_time [remote from remote_system_name]

       followed by one or more standardized message header lines of the form:

       keyword-name: [printable text]

       where  keyword-name  is comprised of any printable, non-whitespace characters other than colon (`:'). A MIME-version: header line indicates
       that the message is formatted as described in RFC 2045. A Content-Length: header line, indicating the number of bytes in the  message  con-
       tent, is always present unless the letter consists of only header lines with no message content. A Content-Type: header line that describes
       the type of the message content (such as text/plain, application/octet-stream, and so on) is also present, unless the  letter  consists  of
       only header lines with no message content. Header lines may be continued on the following line if that line starts with white space.

OPTIONS

   Sending Mail
       The following command-line arguments affect sending mail:

       -m message_type A Message-Type: line is added to the message header with the value of message_type.

       -t              A To: line is added to the message header for each of the intended recipients.

       -w              A letter is sent to a remote recipient without waiting for the completion of the remote transfer program.

       If  a letter is found to be undeliverable, it is returned to the sender with diagnostics that indicate the location and nature of the fail-
       ure. If mail is interrupted during input, the message is saved in the file dead.letter to  allow  editing  and  resending.  dead.letter  is
       always  appended  to,  thus  preserving  any  previous contents. The initial attempt to append to (or create) dead.letter is in the current
       directory. If this fails, dead.letter is appended to (or created in) the user's login directory. If  the  second  attempt  also  fails,  no
       dead.letter processing is done.

       rmail  only permits the sending of mail; uucp(1C) uses rmail as a security precaution. Any application programs that generate mail messages
       should be sure to invoke rmail rather than mail for message transport and/or delivery.

       If the local system has the Basic Networking Utilities installed, mail can be sent to a recipient on a remote system.  There  are  numerous
       ways  to  address  mail  to  recipients on remote systems depending on the transport mechanisms available to the local system. The two most
       prevalent addressing schemes are Domain-style and UUCP-style.

       Domain-style addressing

           Remote recipients are specified by appending an `@' and domain (and possibly sub-domain) information to the  recipient  name  (such  as
           user@sf.att.com).  (The local system administrator should be consulted for details on which addressing conventions are available on the
           local system.)

       UUCP-style addressing

           Remote recipients are specified by prefixing the recipient name with  the  remote  system  name  and  an  exclamation  point,  such  as
           sysa!user.  If  csh(1) is the default shell, sysa!user should be used. A series of system names separated by exclamation points can be
           used to direct a letter through an extended network (such as sysa!sysb!sysc!user or sysa!sysb!sysc!user).

   Reading Mail
       The following command-line arguments affect reading mail:

       -e              Test for the presence of mail. mail prints nothing.

                       An exit status of 0 is returned if the user has mail. Otherwise, an exit status of 1 is returned.

       -E              Similar to -e, but tests only for the presence of new mail.

                        An  exit  status  of 0 is returned if the user has new            mail  to read,  an exit status of 1 is returned  if  the
                       user  has no mail,  or an exit status of 2 is returned            if the user has mail which has already been read.

       -h              A window of headers are initially displayed rather than the latest message. The display is followed by the ? prompt.

       -p              All messages are printed without prompting for disposition.

       -P              All messages are printed with all header lines displayed, rather than the default selective header line display.

       -q              mail terminates after interrupts. Normally an interrupt causes only the termination of the message being printed.

       -r              Messages are printed in first-in, first-out order.

       -f file         mail uses file (such as mbox) instead of the default mailfile.

       mail,  unless  otherwise  influenced by command-line arguments, prints a user's mail messages in last-in, first-out order. The default mode
       for printing messages is to display only those header lines of immediate interest. These include, but are not limited to, the UNIX From and
       >From  postmarks,  From:,  Date:, Subject:, and Content-Length: header lines, and any recipient header lines such as To:, Cc:, Bcc:, and so
       forth. After the header lines have been displayed, mail displays the contents (body) of the message only  if  it  contains  no  unprintable
       characters.  Otherwise,  mail  issues  a warning statement about the message having binary content and not display the content. This can be
       overridden by means of the p command.

       For each message, the user is prompted with a ? and a line is read from the standard input. The following commands are available to  deter-
       mine the disposition of the message:

       #                       Print the number of the current message.

       -                       Print previous message.

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

       !command                Escape to the shell to do command.

       a                       Print message that arrived during the mail session.

       d, or dp                Delete the current message and print the next message.

       d n                     Delete message number n. Do not go on to next message.

       dq                      Delete message and quit mail.

       h                       Display a window of headers around current message.

       h n                     Display a window of headers around message number n.

       h a                     Display headers of all messages in the user's mailfile.

       h d                     Display headers of messages scheduled for deletion.

       m [ persons ]           Mail (and delete) the current message to the named persons.

       n                       Print message number n.

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

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

       q, or Control-d         Put undeleted mail back in the mailfile and quit mail.

       r [ users ]             Reply to the sender, and other users, then delete the message.

       s [ files ]             Save message in the named files (mbox is default) and delete the message.

       u [ n ]                 Undelete message number n (default is last read).

       w [ files ]             Save message contents, without any header lines, in the named files (mbox is default) and delete the message.

       x                       Put all mail back in the mailfile unchanged and exit mail.

       y [ files ]             Same as -w option.

       ?                       Print a command summary.

       When a user logs in, the presence of mail, if any, is usually indicated. Also, notification is made if new mail arrives while using mail.

       The  permissions of mailfile can be manipulated using chmod(1) in two ways to alter the function of mail. The other permissions of the file
       can be read-write(0666), read-only(0664), or neither read nor write(0660) to allow different levels of privacy. If changed to other than
       the  default (mode 0660), the file is preserved even when empty to perpetuate the desired permissions. (The administrator can override this
       file preservation using the DEL_EMPTY_MAILFILE option of mailcnfg.)

       The group ID of the mailfile must be mail to allow new messages to be delivered, and the mailfile must be writable by group mail.

   Debugging
       The following command-line arguments cause mail to provide debugging information:

       -x debug_level          mail creates a trace file containing debugging information.

       The -x option causes mail to create a file named /tmp/MLDBGprocess_id that contains debugging information relating to  how  mail  processed
       the  current  message.  The  absolute  value  of  debug_level controls the verboseness of the debug information. 0 implies no debugging. If
       debug_level is greater than 0, the debug file is retained  only  if  mail  encountered  some  problem  while  processing  the  message.  If
       debug_level  is less than 0, the debug file is always be retained. The debug_level specified via -x overrides any specification of DEBUG in
       /etc/mail/mailcnfg. The information provided by the -x option is esoteric and is probably only useful to system administrators.

   Delivery Notification
       Several forms of notification are available for mail by including one of the following lines in the message header.

       Transport-Options: [ /options ]

       Default-Options: [ /options ]

       >To: recipient [ /options ]

       Where the "/options" can be one or more of the following:

       /delivery       Inform the sender that the message was successfully delivered to the recipient's mailbox.

       /nodelivery     Do not inform the sender of successful deliveries.

       /ignore         Do not inform the sender of failed deliveries.

       /return         Inform the sender if mail delivery fails. Return the failed message to the sender.

       /report         Same as /return except that the original message is not returned.

       The default is /nodelivery/return. If contradictory options are used, the first is recognized and later, conflicting, terms are ignored.

OPERANDS

       The following operand is supported for sending mail:

       recipient       A domain style address ("user@machine") or user login name recognized by login(1).

USAGE

       See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of mail and rmail when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte  (  2 **31
       bytes).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       See  environ(5)  for  descriptions  of  the  following  environment variables that affect the execution of mail: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and
       NLSPATH.

       TZ       Determine the timezone used with date and time strings.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned:

       0        Successful completion when the user had mail.

       1        The user had no mail or an initialization error occurred.

       >1       An error occurred after initialization.

FILES

       dead.letter             unmailable text

       /etc/passwd             to identify sender and locate recipients

       $HOME/mbox              saved mail

       $MAIL                   variable containing path name of mailfile

       /tmp/ma*                temporary file

       /tmp/MLDBG*             debug trace file

       /var/mail/*.lock        lock for mail directory

       /var/mail/:saved        directory for holding temp files to prevent loss of data in the event of a system crash

       /var/mail/user          incoming mail for user; that is, the mailfile

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWcsu                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       chmod(1), csh(1), login(1), mailx(1), uucp(1C), uuencode(1C), vacation(1), write(1), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5)

       Solaris Advanced User's Guide

NOTES

       The interpretation and resulting action taken because of the header lines described in the Delivery Notifications  section  only  occur  if
       this  version  of  mail  is installed on the system where the delivery (or failure) happens. Earlier versions of mail might not support any
       types of delivery notification.

       Conditions sometimes result in a failure to remove a lock file.

       After an interrupt, the next message might not be printed. Printing can be forced by typing a p.

SunOS 5.10                                                          4 Jun 2004                                                             mail(1)