Pine --- My First Unix Mail Client

Pine is so-called a screen-oriented program. What I mean here is that the keys to perform a particular task will depend on where your menu of your pine is. For example in the main menu of pine, we press "i" to go to the Inbox menu. But if we press "i" in the Inbox menu, we will get a command undefined error.

I've "drawn" the various menu for easy reference below.

Main Menu

PINE 4.21   MAIN MENU                          Folder: INBOX  25 Messages


       ?     HELP               -  Get help using Pine

       C     COMPOSE MESSAGE    -  Compose and send/post a message

       I     MESSAGE INDEX      -  View messages in current folder

       L     FOLDER LIST        -  Select a folder OR news group to view

       A     ADDRESS BOOK       -  Update address book

       S     SETUP              -  Configure Pine Options

       Q     QUIT               -  Leave the Pine program




   Copyright 1989-1999.  PINE is a trademark of the University of Washington.
                    [Folder "INBOX" opened with 25 messages]
? Help                     P PrevCmd                 R RelNotes
O OTHER CMDS > [ListFldrs] N NextCmd                 K KBLock                

Inbox

PINE 4.21   MESSAGE INDEX                  Folder: INBOX  Message 25 of 25

20 Apr 25 Nazrina Bte Selama  (1,181) Vacancies in HR FUSION.com
21 Apr 25 Goh Chyan Yee       (2,267) Re: Amigos
22 Apr 25 Sim Hua Soon         (281K) Fwd: So cool and sweet ~ friendship
23 Apr 25 Ng Yew Kwong        (6,242)
24 Apr 26 X Cookie ^_^        (2,631) Re: Amigos
25 Apr 26 Ang Su-Yin Grace    (6,918) Re: your mail

? Help        <FldrList   P PrevMsg  - PrevPage   D Delete   R Reply
O OTHER CMDS  > [ViewMsg] N NextMsg  Spc NextPage U Undelete F Forward

Compose menu

PINE 4.21            COMPOSE MESSAGE                Folder: INBOX  25 Messages

To      :
Cc      :
Attchmnt:
Subject :
----- Message Text -----





^G Get Help  ^X Send      ^R Rich Hdr  ^Y PrvPg/Top ^K Cut Line  ^O Postpone
^C Cancel    ^D Del Char  ^J Attach    ^V NxtPg/End ^U UnDel Line^T To AddrBk 

Message Text

PINE 4.21   MESSAGE TEXT             Folder: INBOX  Message 1 of 25 55%

Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 06:10:12 +0800 (SST)
From: system PRIVILEGED account <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: ** YOUR OLD MAIL HAS BEEN MOVED **

Because your system mailbox exceeded the 5000000-byte limit, it has been
moved to your home directory and renamed to "mail/OLD-MAIL-17-Apr-2001".

To read mails from mail/OLD-MAIL-17-Apr-2001:

In Pine, choose "L" from the menu and select the appropriate folder.
If you use other mail readers, eg elm, mailx or Mail, do the
following:

{your favourite mail reader} -f mail/OLD-MAIL-17-Apr-2001
eg elm -f mail/OLD-MAIL-17-Apr-2001

PLEASE read your old mail and DELETE IT SOON. You will reach your
home directory disk quota if your old mail continues to pile up.

? Help       < MsgIndex   P PrevMsg     - PrevPage   D Delete     R Reply
O OTHER CMDS > ViewAttch  N NextMsg     Spc NextPage U Undelete   F Forward


Topics covered:


Reading mails in pine
Reading http files in pine
Viewing a picture in pine
Saving an attachment in pine
Composing a mail in pine
Adding a signature to a mail in pine
Adding a reply-leadin in pine
Adding a reply-indent string in pine
Bcc-ing a mail in pine
Sending an attachment in pine
Keeping a copy of what you have sent in pine
Enabling suspension in pine
Enabling talk in pine
Enabling ansi-color in pine
Bypassing password in pine
Filtering mails in pine


Reading mails in pine

There are actually a number of ways to read mails in pine. Mails are being stored in the "Inbox" in pine unless your mail quota are exceeded and is being shifted away or the mails are being filtered off by the rules in pine.

The intuitive way to read mails is to look at the help keys provided at the bottom and arrow-keys to navigate to the "Inbox". However, there are faster ways to do reading of mails which are described below.

To directly access the "Inbox" in pine, supply the argument "i" in the command line. This is the fastest way that I know of.

ie:
lukmengs@sununx ~$ pine -i

To access the "Inbox" inside pine, press i. Do make sure that you are in the main menu when you are doing the above. If you are not inside the main menu, press m then followed by i.

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Reading http files in pine

When you gets a mail that is in a html format, you can actually view it in pine with the help of lynx or netscape. You need to edit the pinerc either by editing it directly or through the configuration in pine.

ie: "M"->"S"->"C"->url-viewers
Key in "lynx" or "netscape" and save the setup.
After saving the setup, you are ready to press "v" to view your html files in the message text.

Note:
Lynx is a text-based browser. If your html contains pictures, scripts or other sophiscated things, lynx will ignore them. If you want to view pictures and stuffs like that, use netscape on a X-windows.

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Viewing a picture in pine

When we received an attachment in jpg or gif format, we can directly view it in pine using X-windows. Please take note that this operation is extremely slow if you are connecting X-windows using 56K moderm to dial up from home.

The way to do it is exactly the same as viewing http files (see above) except that we must choose netscape this time. Lastly we press "v" to view the pictures.

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Saving an attachment in pine

This is one of the MUST-KNOW thing for me if I stay back late in school waiting for mails and if I didn't bring my laptop. Just press a "s" and pine will prompt you where you want to save it and that's all. =)

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Composing a mail in pine

You can go to the "Compose" menu by either command line or through the main menu of pine.

Passing in the email address of the recipient as an argument in command line is the fastest way that I've know of to get to the "Compose" menu.

ie: [email protected] is the email address of my recipient

lukmengs@sununx ~$ pine [email protected]

By doing the above, not only pine will bring you to the compose menu immediately, the recipient field will automatically filled up with the above email address.

The intuitive way to compose a mail is to go to the main menu of the pine, press "C" and pine will bring you there immediately.

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Adding a signature to a mail in pine

By default in our pinerc, pine will lookup a file named .signature in our home directory if there is any and will this file as a signature whenever we compose a mail. Ofcourse this configuration can be changed but that is not main concern here. We can hence our own signatures by creating a file named .signature in our home directory and pine will take it as a signature.

ie:
lukmengs@sununx ~$ pico ~/.signature

Type "Warmest Regards" and then save it.

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Adding a reply-leadin in pine

When I compose a mail, it is a habit of mine to type in "Hello" at the very beginning of my mail. With the help of this feature, the "Hello" will be automatically being loaded by pine whenever I compose a mail. This is done by going to the main menu of pine, then press "s"-->"c" and the lines which says "reply-leadin". Fill in what you put there and save it. Alternatively, you can always edit the pinerc file to achieve the same effect.

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Adding a reply-indent string in pine

"Reply indent-string" refers to the quote of the original mail.

ie: Ah-gao sends me a mail

Do you want to have lunch now?

After pressing 'r' to reply to the mail, we'll get
>Do you want to have lunch now?

The ">" is the reply indent-string here. Now I want to change it to "=>" for fun. The procedure is actually almost exactly the same as "Adding a reply-leadin" (see above) but we changed the reply indent- string field here instead.

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Bcc-ing a mail in pine

After pressing "r" to reply to the recipient, press Ctrl-R and you should be able to see the Bcc field and some other fields displaying out. Intuitivelty, you can use the arrow-keys to go to the Bcc field and type the email-address that you want to blind-carbon copy to.

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Sending an attachment in pine

Sending attachment in pine can be done in a command line level or inside the compose menu.

ie: You want to attach a file named helloworld.java

Command line method:

lukmengs@sununx ~$ pine -attach helloworld.java

Alternatively, you can choose to press Ctrl-J inside the compose menu and pine will lead you to browse through the files that you want to attach.

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Keeping a copy of what you have sent in pine

In the main menu of the pine, press "s"-->"c". Look for the default-fcc field and fill in the name of the folder you want to keep a copy of what you have sent in it.

ie: I want to save all sent-mails to a folder named "sentbox". I will type "sentbox" in the default-fcc and save it.

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Enabling suspension in pine

This can be done using the command line method or adjusting the configuration of pine.

Command line method:

lukmengs@sununx ~$ pine -z

Alternatively, in the main menu, press "s"-->"c"-->"Advance User Preferences" and crosses the "enable-suspend" by hitting the Enter key.

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Enabling talk in pine

To enable talk in pine means that people are able to chat with you even though you are still inside pine. In the main menu, press "s"-->"c"--> "Advance User Preferences" and cross the "allow-talk" field by hitting the Enter key.

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Enabling ansi-color in pine

Before you do the below, make sure that your telnet/ssh client supports ansi color first. Do take note the X-windows that SoC provides doesn't support ansi color. Neither does the telnet.exe in win98 and below support ansi color.

In the main menu of pine, press "s"-->"k", then go to "force ansi 8 bit" and cross it by hitting the Enter button. You can now freely choose the color you want and save the configuration.

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Bypassing password in pine

1. ssh-keygen
2. press enter when prompted for "file in which to save the key"
3. press enter for "Enter the same passphrase: "
4. press enter for "Enter the same passphrase again:"
5. cat ~/.ssh/identity.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

$ ssh -l cheongko decunx uptime

you should get output similar to the following:
limwc@sunA:~ $ ssh -l limwc decunx uptime
01:50 up 35 days, 11:29, 31 users, load average: 0.15, 0.40, 0.43

if you get prompted for password, that means you have either set your passphrase to a string instead of null or did not setup ssh properly.

The above was copied and pasted from the old migration folder in the bbs.
From my own experience, if it still doesn't work, you can remove everything in the .ssh again and repeat the above steps. Try again until it works. It works at least for me.

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Filtering mails in pine

In the main menu, press "s"-->"r"-->"f"-->"Add". Now you are ready to key the email address or the name of the sender in the Sender pattern's field. You can also filter the mails which subject you don't want to see.

Next, you can choose "Specific" in the "Current Folder Type" section and can either choose move or delete in the "Filter Action" section.

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