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Pine FAQs
_________________________________________________________________
FAQ Topics
1. Getting Help With Pine
2. What is....?
3. Pine Bugs
4. Error Messages
5. General Usage Questions
6. Sending and Receiving Mail
7. Attachments
8. Usenet Newsreading
9. Customization and Configuration
10. Legal Issues
11. Information for System Administrators, Developers, and the
Technically Inclined
12. Account Conversion and Transfer
13. Security
14. Pine Development
15. Additional Pine FAQs
_________________________________________________________________
1. Getting Help with Pine
* 1.1 What documentation is available for Pine?
* 1.2 Whom should I ask for help with Pine?
2. What is ...?
* 2.1 What is PINE?
+ 2.1.1 What PINE Does...
+ 2.1.2 What PINE Does Not Do...
* 2.2 What is PICO?
* 2.3 What is PILOT?
* 2.4 What is MIME?
* 2.5 What is IMAP?
* 2.6 What is SMTP?
* 2.7 What is POP3?
3. Pine Bugs
* 3.1 Policy on Bugs
* 3.2 Why does Pine hang when I read a certain message? When I look
at the message, I see that it has a Content-Location header.
4. Error Messages
* 4.1 What does "Folder Format Invalidated..." mean?
* 4.2 What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox at
the same time?
* 4.3 What does the message "locked, override in _XXX_ sec" mean?
* 4.4 What are the messages with the subject DON'T DELETE THIS
MESSAGE--FOLDER INTERNAL DATA about?
+ 4.4.1 What does the quell-folder-internal-msg feature do?
* 4.5 Why do I get the message "Invalid base64 string" when I try to
authenticate to a Cyrus server?
5. General Usage Questions
* 5.1 Pine seems to ignore some of my command keystrokes - why?
* 5.2 Why are certain commands not available?
* 5.3 What are these .pine-debug files for?
+ 5.3.1 Can I delete the .pine-debug files?
+ 5.3.2 How do I change the number of .pine-debug files kept or
prevent the .pine-debug files from being created?
* 5.4 Why does Pine repeatedly ask for my password after my intitial
login?
* 5.5 Why is it that I have to exit and reopen Pine in order to
receive new mail?
* 5.6 How do I do operations on multiple messages? (or, How do I use
Pine's aggregate commands?)
* 5.7 Does Pine block messages?
* 5.8 Can I create directories to store Pine folders?
6. Sending and Receiving Mail
* 6.1 How do I send a message to multiple recipients without showing
all their names?
* 6.2 Can I get a "return-receipt" when sending a message with Pine?
* 6.3 Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses?
* 6.4 How can I tell immediately whether I have received new mail?
7. Attachments
* 7.1 How do I attach a file in Pine?
* 7.2 Why does Pine encode text attachments?
+ 7.2.1 How can I send a text file without it being encoded?
+ 7.2.2 Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUencode?
* 7.3 How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format?
* 7.4 How do I decode an attachment in a message I received that is
in BinHex or UUencoded format?
* 7.5 How can someone without Pine decipher an attachment to a
message I send?
* 7.6 How can I delete attachments?
* 7.7 Why doesn't "attached-to-ansi" printing work?
8. Usenet Newsreading
* 8.1 How can I use Pine for reading and posting Internet News?
* 8.2 How can I sort newsgroups by thread?
* 8.3 How do I mark all messages in a newsgroup as "read" or
"deleted"?
* 8.4 How do I bring back (undelete) news messages I have deleted?
9. Customization and Configuration
General
* 9.1 Where does Pine look for configuration information?
+ 9.1.1 How can I get a fresh copy of my Pine configuration
file?
Server Config
* 9.2 Can I customize Pine on a per folder basis?
* 9.3 Can Pine be used with a POP server?
User Settings
* 9.4 Why does my message index show From: instead of To:?
* 9.5 How do I change my 'From:' line?
* 9.6 How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization?
* 9.7 How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail
messages?
Program Behavior
* 9.8 Can I reduce the frequent prompting to confirm an operation?
* 9.9 How can I filter messages into different incoming folders?
* 9.10 How do I control what is displayed in the FOLDER INDEX
screen?
* 9.11 How can I control association of MIME-attachments with
applications and filenames?
* 9.12 How can I read a ROT13 encoded message?
* 9.13 How can I make Pine work with a Wyse 60 terminal?
* 9.14 Does Pine offer color support?
PC-Pine Specific
* 9.15 How can I perform spell checking with PC-Pine for Windows?
10. Legal Issues
* 10.1 Is Pine Open Source?
* 10.2 Weren't earlier Pine licenses less restrictive regarding
redisribution of modified versions?
* 10.3 Can patch files be distributed by Pine users?
* 10.4 Are UW's "C-Client" libraries released under the same license
as Pine?
11. Information for Systems Administrators, Developers, and the
Technically Inclined
* 11.1 Can we use Pine/Pico/Pilot source code in commercial
products?
* 11.2 What are the advantages of the various mailbox formats Pine
supports?
* 11.3 Can Kerberos authentication be used with Pine?
* 11.4 How does folder locking work?
* 11.5 Where does Pine create lockfiles, and what should that
directory's permissions be?
* 11.6 Why does Pine have problems with my filter's locking?
* 11.7 Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field?
* 11.8 How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail?
* 11.9 Why did my messages disappear after I ran Pine? I can still
see them in Pine, but not with any other program (e.g. my ISP's
POP server).
11.10 Why do I get the message "Unparsable Date" when I read
messages?
* 11.11 Why can't I compile Pine under SCO unix?
* 11.12 How can I set up Pine for rimap under Solaris 2.4 and NIS+?
* 11.13 What do I need to do when compiling Pine to let users change
their ``From:'' line?
* 11.14 Where is the .pine-debug setting set at compile-time?
* 11.15 What do I need to do to configure specific servers for use
with Pine?
* 11.16 What do I need to know about Pine file locking and what does
the "mailbox vulnerable" error mean?
* 11.17 How do I convert mh to mbx folders?
12. Account Conversion and Transfer
* 12.1 How do I transfer messages from Pine on a Unix host to my PC?
* 12.2 How can I have all future messages sent to me automatically
forwarded to another account?
* 12.3 "How can I forward messages I have already saved in Pine to
another account?
+ 12.3.1 While I'm transferring my messages ... how do I
transfer my email addressbook?
* 12.4 How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook?
* 12.5 How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook?
* 12.6 How do I convert from Pine Address Book to/from the
equivalents in Eudora, Netscape, Pegasus, ... ?
* 12.7 How do I convert my Pine addressbook file to Mutt alias
format?
13. Security
* 13.1 General Pine Security
* 13.2 How do I get a secure version of PC-Pine?
* 13.3 Is there a "remote exploit" bug in Pine's handling of mailcap
entries?
* 13.4 Can I get a virus through email?
* 13.5 What should I do if I receive email about a computer virus?
* 13.6 On Win2k, why do I get errors when trying to validate my host
name?
14. Pine Development
* 14.1 What is the latest version of Pine, and what's new in it?
* 14.2 When is the next release of Pine scheduled?
* 14.3 What are the results of the anonymous messages sent to the UW
for tallying?
15. Additional Pine FAQs
* 15.1 Are there other Pine FAQs available?
* 15.2 Can I contribute to these FAQs?
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Getting Help with Pine
1.1 What documentation is available for Pine?
The Pine program itself includes extensive internal, context-sensitive
help, accessible by pressing _?_ or _^G_ in most screens. Pressing _R_
while at Pine's MAIN MENU displays the Release Notes. Additional
information, including a User's Guide, Technical Notes, Questions &
Answers, where to obtain the Pine software, what tools are available
to perform tasks that Pine itself does not, and more, can be accessed:
* In the _Pine Information Center_ on the World Wide Web at the URL:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/
* A list of _Unofficial Documentation for Pine_ is at the URL:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/non-UW.html#Documentation
_________________________________________________________________
1.2 Whom should I ask for help with Pine?
If you need assistance with Pine, contact the technical support staff
or computer help desk of your Internet Service Provider, school,
university, employer, ... -- whichever organization provided you with
the email account on which you are using Pine. (Due to the large
number of Pine installations worldwide, the University of Washington
_cannot_ provide individual support services to Pine users at other
organizations.)
Pine end-user questions are also discussed in the newsgroup
comp.mail.pine. Be sure to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
before posting to the newsgroup.
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What is...?
2.1 What is PINE?
This general information on the Pine message system is also available
from the main menu by pressing _?_:
Pine® is the University of Washington's "_P_rogram for _I_nternet
_N_ews and _E_mail." It is intended to be an easy-to-use program for
sending, receiving, and filing Internet electronic mail messages and
Internet News (Usenet) messages. Pine supports the following Internet
protocols and specifications:
* SMTP Simple Mail Transport Protocol
* MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
* IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol
* NNTP Network News Transport Protocol
MIME allows you to attach any kind of file to your message, provided
that your recipient also has MIME-capable mail software (which is
readily available for most types of computers, although some
proprietary mail systems do not yet support MIME). IMAP allows access
to mailboxes on remote mailservers as if they were local.
Although originally designed for inexperienced email users, Pine has
evolved to support many advanced features. There are an ever-growing
number of configuration and personal-preference options, though which
of them are available to you is determined by your local system
managers.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.1 What PINE Does...
Pine is a "mail user agent" (MUA), which is a program that allows you
to compose and read messages using Internet mail standards. (Whether
you can correspond with others on the Internet depends on whether or
not your computer is connected to the Internet.) Pine also allows
reading and posting messages on the Internet Usenet News system,
provided that your site operates a suitable news server.
2.1.2 What PINE Does Not Do...
A "mail user agent" such as Pine is just one part of a messaging
system. Here are some things that are not done by Pine, but require
other programs:
* Actual relaying of email... which is done by "message transfer
agents."
* Vacation messages... automatically responding to incoming messages
* Anything to do with "talk"... which has nothing to do with email.
* Anything to do with "irc"... which has nothing to do with email.
* List processing... resending one message to a list of recipients.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2 What is PICO?
_Pi_ne's message _co_mposition editor is also available as a separate
stand-alone program, called PICO. PICO is a very simple and
easy-to-use text editor offering paragraph justification, cut/paste,
and a spelling checker.
[Pico ScreenShot]
_________________________________________________________________
2.3 What is PILOT?
New in version 3.92, Pine's built-in file manager - used, for example,
to select a file for retrieval into the body of a message being
composed - is available as a stand-alone program for Unix hosts,
called PILOT (for "_Pi_ne's _L_ister _o_f _T_hings").
[Pilot ScreenShot]
_________________________________________________________________
2.4 What is MIME?
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is an Internet standard
which allows transfer of binary files (word-processing documents,
spreadsheets, images, sounds, etc.) between any compliant mailers,
such as Pine. You can get technical information about MIME from the
section Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) in the Pine
Technical Notes.
Ongoing discussion on MIME takes place in the newsgroup
comp.mail.mime. There is also a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list
about MIME that is posted regularly to the newsgroups comp.mail.mime,
comp.answers and news.answers, and also accessible at the URLs:
* ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/mail/mime-faq/
* ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/mail/mime-faq/
* http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/mail/mime-faq/.html
The MIME FAQ contains an appendix with useful information about MIME
types.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5 What is IMAP?
IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a method of accessing
electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a
(possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client"
email program to access remote message stores as if they were local;
Pine is such a client. For more details on IMAP, please visit the
World Wide Web site _The IMAP Connection_ at the URL:
http://www.imap.org/
_________________________________________________________________
2.6 What is SMTP?
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard protocol used for
sending email. SMTP was defined in 1982 in RFC-821. The definition has
been modified by many later RFCs, such as RFC-1869 and RFC-1891.
_________________________________________________________________
2.7 What is POP3?
POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is an older protocol for downloading
electronic mail from a mail server, and is described in RFC-1939. POP3
is gradually being replaced by IMAP.
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Pine Bugs
3.1 Bug Policy
When a bug is identified in an old release of Pine, there is a very
strong possibility that the associated code has been re-written to the
point that a fix will not apply to the current release. Hence, if we
can't reproduce the problem in the current version, our standard
response will be to ask you to upgrade.
Documentation of past Bugs and when they were fixed can be found on
the Pine Release Chronology & Version Changes Web page.
3.2 Why does Pine hang when I read a certain message? When I look at the
message, I see that it has a Content-Location header.
It has recently been discovered that c-client's IMAP client parser
does not properly handle BODYSTRUCTURE extension data that is in the
form of a literal. Unfortunately, this creates a compatibility problem
with some newer IMAP servers which generate this extension data
(including the latest UW imapd in imap-2002!).
The fix is to change file c-client/imap4r1.c, line:
net_getbuffer (LOCAL->netstream,j = max (i,(long) IMAPTMPLEN - 1),
to become:
net_getbuffer (LOCAL->netstream,j = min (i,(long) IMAPTMPLEN - 1),
That is, change the "max" to a "min". After making this change,
rebuild c-client and/or Pine. Make sure that imap4r1.c is recompiled.
The bug is that instead of reading the desired extension data, it
reads IMAPTMPLEN-1 bytes (generally a much larger number) beyond the
extension data, thus losing synchronization with subsequent data. The
user either sees a proliferation of error messages, or the IMAP
session seems to get stuck in a read timeout.
This fix is for all versions of c-client up to and including the one
in imap-2002 RC2; this also means *ALL* versions of Pine up to and
including Pine 4.44. The fix is in imap-2002 RC3 and is in Pine
beginning with version 4.50
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Usage Problems and Error Messages
4.1 What does "Folder Format Invalidated..." mean?
The message "Folder Format Invalidated (consult an expert), aborted"
means that Pine was reading your mail folder, and at the point in
which it expected a start-of-message header line, it found something
else.
The "format invalidated" condition can happen in one of three ways:
* bad data exists at the beginning of the folder.
* data was appended to the folder after Pine initially read it, and
the new data did not begin with a start-of-message-header.
* the folder was modified without Pine being aware of it.
All three problems are generally caused by software external to Pine.
Condition (1) can be determined by whether or not the problem repeats
itself after restarting Pine. If restarting Pine does not make the
problem go away, then you need to look at the actual file for the
folder and see what is wrong with the very first line. In particular,
make sure that there are no blank lines at the beginning of the file
and that the first character of the folder file is a capital "F" , the
second an "r", the third an "o", etc. In the case of an INBOX, you may
want to rename the folder so that new mail can be delivered while
repairs on the corrupt folder are being done.
Condition (2) may be caused by a mail delivery process (e.g.
/bin/mail) which writes some characters other than "From" at the
beginning of the new data.
Condition (3) is caused by another program manipulating the mail
folder without following the normal folder locking protocols. This is
a general problem on UNIX.
Conditions (2) and (3) have also been known to occur when accessing
folders via NFS, if the information returned by the stat() and read()
system calls do not correspond with each other as a result of NFS
attribute caching.
Restarting Pine on that folder always clears conditions (2) and (3).
If the problem is chronic, it may be worth an investigation to
determine its cause. Usually, it is due to the misbehavior of some
external software. The reason why Pine gives up with conditions (2)
and (3) is that it does not want to risk damaging user data by
guessing what is right. Pine never writes to the folder unless it is
absolutely sure it knows what it is doing.
There are some steps which can be taken to reduce the risk of these
conditions coming up. Some of these steps may require the assistance
of your system administrator (or whomever it was that built and
installed Pine on your system):
* Use IMAP instead of NFS to access remote folders. Problems with
locking over NFS are perhaps the single most important cause of
user difficulties. Using IMAP eliminates this class of problem.
* Consider enabling the mbox driver in Pine. If the mbox driver is
enabled, mail is transferred from the /usr/spool/mail mail into a
file called mbox in your home directory, if mbox exists. The home
directory mbox file is then your INBOX. This has the advantage
that Pine and the mail delivery system are less often in
contention for the INBOX, and never both trying to update it. Pine
only empties the /usr/spool/mail file, it never tries updating it.
* Be careful not to run other programs that modify your folders
while you are running Pine. Such programs may change the folder
out from under Pine, and lead Pine to conclude that there is a
problem with its view of the file.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2 What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox at the same
time?
This varies depending on what format your folders are stored in. With
the default Berkeley format, the last session to open a folder will
get full access to the folder and the previous session(s) will be
changed to read-only access. When a folder is read-only, you will not
see any further updates to that folder until it is reopened with full
access. Currently the INBOX cannot be reopened without exiting and
restarting Pine. With other mailbox formats, such as the generally
recommended mbx format, any number of sessions can simultaneously have
full access to a folder, with the exception that expunging is
disabled.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3 What does the message "locked, override in _XXX_ sec" mean?
The message ""locked, will override in _xxx_ seconds"" occurs when
Pine has discovered that some other mail program claims to be
accessing your mail folder (i.e. _folder_.lock exists). This is a very
low-level lock used by programs such as the system mailer in
delivering mail, and by certain programs such as mail, elm, babyl, mm,
etc. Supposedly, this lock is only to be acquired and held for a very
short period of time (less than a second).
Pine starts with 285 seconds, retries every second, and issues that
message every 15 seconds. The total period of time, 5 minutes, is the
time that it will keep on trying before it concludes that the lock is
false -- that is, that whatever program locked the folder forgot to
unlock it (perhaps it crashed) -- and Pine will go ahead and claim the
lock for itself.
This is not due to a conflict between two copies of Pine, since Pine
interlocks against itself in a higher-level fashion.
_NOTE:_ On some systems with 14 character filename limits, attempting
to open a folder with a 14 character name (e.g. saved-messages) will
trigger this sequence. Folder names should be limited to 9 characters
or less on those systems.
_________________________________________________________________
4.4 What are the messages with the subject DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE--FOLDER
INTERNAL DATA about?
_From the Pine 4.01 Release Notes:_
Beginning with version _4.00,_ Pine supports enhanced functionality
for sites using the standard Unix mailbox format or the MMDF mailbox
format. It does this by creating a "pseudo-message" at the beginning
of the folder which holds the following values:
* unique identifier validity stamp
* last assigned unique identifer
* any keyword flags assigned to the mailbox
These values are essential for the correct operation of modern IMAP
and POP servers (which use persistent unique identifiers, or UIDs),
but Pine also needs them to support capabilities such as being able to
mark messages as Answered when the Reply has been postponed, and (on
systems where Unix or MMDF folder formats are not standard), the
ability to create a folder in one of these formats. (Without the
pseudo message to identify the mailbox format type, the folder would
be empty and Pine would not know the desired format type for
subsequent use.)
One disadvantage of this scheme is that mailers that are not built on
top of the University of Washington's message access subroutine
libraries will not "hide" the pseudo message from users. Another
disadvantage of having these pseudo messages is that, when found in
folders used to receive new messages, some mail notification tools may
be confused and behave incorrectly. There are several solutions to
this problem. For example, some sites have modified the notification
tools to ignore mailboxes whose length corresponds to the pseudo
message. However, these pseudo messages may be deemed undesirable at
sites where IMAP or POP are not used, and where it is more important
to support other unmodified mail tools than to permit Pine to be able
to mark messages as Answered when the Reply is postponed. Accordingly,
Pine _4.01_ offered a new feature to quell-folder-internal-msg.
Note that this feature _only_ relates to mailboxes in standard Unix or
MMDF format.
4.4.1 What does the quell-folder-internal-msg feature do?
This feature, introduced in Pine 4.01, determines whether or not Pine
will create "pseudo messages" in folders that are in standard Unix or
MMDF format.
Pine will normally create these pseudo messages when they are not
already present in a standard Unix or MMDF folder. Their purpose is to
record certain mailbox state data needed for correct IMAP and POP
server operation, and also for Pine to be able to mark messages as
Answered when the Reply has been postponed.
Sites which do not use IMAP/POP for remote mail access, and which need
to support mail tools that are adversely affected by the presence of
the pseudo-messages (e.g. some mail notification tools) may enable
this feature to tell Pine not to create them. Note that Pine's
"Answered" flag capability will be adversely affected if this is done.
Note too that, even if this feature is enabled, Pine will not remove
pseudo-messages when it encounters them (e.g. those created by UW's
imapd or ipopd servers.) This feature has no effect on folders that
are not in standard Unix or MMDF format, as pseudo-messages are not
needed in the other formats to record mailbox state information.
4.5 Why do I get the message "Invalid base64 string" when I try to
authenticate to a Cyrus server?
This slightly misleading message is the way that a Cyrus server
indicates that an authentication exchange was cancelled. It is not
indicative of a bug or protocol violation.
The most common reason that this happens is if the Cyrus server offers
Kerberos authentication, Pine is built with Kerberos support, but your
client system is not within the Kerberos realm. In this case, the
client code will try to authenticate via Kerberos, fail to get the
Kerberos credentials, cancel the authentication attempt, and try the
next available authentication technology.
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General Usage Questions
5.1 Pine seems to ignore some of my command keystrokes - why?
If some control characters don't work in Pine (or Pico), it is
probably because the communication or operating system software you
are using is intercepting those characters before they get to Pine.
Some that are more likely to be intercepted include _^C_, _^J_, _^O_,
_^^_, and _^__. If you are unable to reconfigure your communication
software to correct this, a work-around is to press the ESCAPE key
twice followed by the desired control key. For example, _^C_ would be
simulated by pressing "_ESC ESC C_" and "_^^_" would be "_ESC ESC ^_".
_________________________________________________________________
5.2 Why are certain commands not available?
Some of the Pine commands you may read or hear about have to be
explicitly enabled in the [S]ETUP CONFIGURATION screen, which is
accessed from Pine's [M]AIN MENU, to be functional. For example, to be
able to use the "_B_ Bounce" command, the following feature has to be
checked:
[X] enable-bounce-cmd
and to be able to use the "Select"/"Apply" operations, you must first
check:
[X] enable-aggregate-command-set
Also note: The key menu at the bottom of the message composer does not
show _all_ of the available commands. Use "_^G_ Get Help" for a
complete list.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3 What are these .pine-debug files for?
_Q&A submitted by: Timothy J. Luoma _<luomat+pine@luomat.peak.org>
_(From the PINE source code:)_
The files are useful for figuring out what a user did when he
complains that something went wrong. It's important to keep a bunch
around, usually 4, so that the debug file in question will still be
around when the problem gets investigated. Users tend to go in and out
of Pine a few times and there is one file for each pine invocation.
5.3.1 Can I delete the .pine-debug files?
Yes, but there's really no need to do so. PINE will only keep a
certain amount of them around, usually 4. The files are rather small
and do no harm.
5.3.2 How do I change the number of .pine-debug files kept or prevent the
.pine-debug files from being created?
You can prevent the files from being created by using the -d flag as
follows:
-d n
If n=0, no debug files will be created.
You can change the level of debugging done with numbers 1-9:
1 - logs only highest level events and errors
2 - logs events like file writes
3 -
4 - logs each command
5 -
6 -
7 - logs details of command execution (7 is highest to run any production)
8 -
9 - logs gross details of command execution
For systems administrators and advanced users, see also 11.13 Where is
the .pine-debug setting set at compile-time?.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4 Why does Pine repeatedly ask for my password after my initial login?
This occurs when Pine is configured to access remote folders or
mailboxes at remote or multiple servers. By default Pine uses the
login used when Pine first begins.
To clear up the confusion, edit your pinerc and add /user=yourusername
to every instance of your mail server address.
For example,
{mail.server.com}INBOX
would become,
{mail.server.com/user=yourusername}INBOX
_________________________________________________________________
5.5 Why is it that I have to exit and reopen Pine in order to receive new
mail?
Pine is capable of accessing mailboxes, but only in a quasi-online
mode, unable to preserve message flags (New, Read, Deleted).
Furthermore, due to the nature of the POP3 Protocol, Pine will not see
new messages arriving on the POP3 server unless the connection to the
server is closed and reopened. This occurs by quitting and restarting
Pine, or by opening another folder and and then returning to the POP3
inbox.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6 How do I do operations on multiple messages?
Or "_How do I use Pine's aggregate operations?_"
Aggregate operations were introduced in Pine 3.90. They give you the
ability to select all of the messages in the current folder that match
some specified criteria, and then to apply any of Pine's message
operations (i.e. Save, Export, Print, Forward, Reply, TakeAddr, Pipe,
Flag, Delete, Undelete) to the entire set of selected messages.
The following commands constitute the "aggregate-command-set":
"_;_ Select" - to select a set of messages
"_Z_ Zoom" - to change the Index to show only selected messages
"_A_ Apply" - to apply a command (e.g. Save) to all selected msgs
As is the case with most advanced Pine features, aggregate operations
are not enabled by default so that the basic "out of the box" Pine
configuration may remain as simple as possible. To use this particular
capability, set the enable-aggregate-command-set feature in the Setup
Configuration screen (from the [M]ain Menu choose [S]etup, then
[C]onfig).
Message selection can be based on message numbers (as shown in the
Folder Index), dates, status (e.g. New, Answered), or any part of the
message text (headers or body). Selected messages are denoted by an
"X" in the first column of their FOLDER INDEX entry, unless the
show-selected-in-boldface feature has been chosen via the Setup/Config
screen.
In addition, when aggregate operations are enabled, the WhereIs
command in the FOLDER INDEX screen will have a new "_^X_ Select
Matches" sub-command. When you enter a match string at the WhereIs
prompt and press _^X_ instead of RETURN, every message in the folder
whose Index listing includes the match string will be selected.
Pine has built-in help on all of the aggregate operations.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7 Does Pine block messages?
Although Pine does not actually prevent delivery of mail, beginning
with version 4.21 it can delete messages before you see them by using
filter rules. You will find the Filter option in the Main menu, under
[S]etup, [R]ules.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8 Can I create directories to store Pine folders?
Yes, this is possible beginning with Pine version 4.00. From Pine's
Folder List screen, select [A] to add a folder then _^X_ to create a
directory. You can also create a directory at the same time you save a
message. For example, at the "SAVE Msg" prompt, type:
newDir/misc
This will create a directory named "newDir" and a folder named "misc"
within it. Your message will be saved to the "misc" folder. If your
server uses "." or any other character to indicate a directory,
replace the "/" with that character.
_Note_: Due to system limitations, some servers do not support this
feature.
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Sending and Receiving Mail
6.1 How do I send a message to multiple recipients without showing all their
names?
In Pine's message composer, with the cursor in the message headers
area, press "_^R_ rich headers". Then read the context-sensitive help
screens for the _Bcc:_ and _Lcc:_ fields, by pressing "_^G_ Get Help".
_________________________________________________________________
6.2 Can I get a "return-receipt" when sending a message with Pine?
Many Pine users, who may have seen this feature in other email systems
(such as those on a Local Area Network, where it is common), have
asked if there is a way to confirm whether or not a message they send
over the Internet has been received, or even whether it has been read,
by the recipient. The answer is "perhaps"--reasons _against_
generation of return receipts include:
* There is no Internet standard for email return receipts, thus the
functionality of delivery acknowledgment is unpredictable.
* Since the request for a return receipt generates (at least) one
new outgoing message for each one received, the increased message
traffic could easily overload some email-processing hosts and
networks.
* On mailing lists (or any sort of one-to-many communication), one
sender requesting a return receipt, even inadvertently, _could_
generate a large number of delivery acknowledgment messages coming
into their host and mailbox in rapid succession.
* If an outgoing message with a return-receipt request bears an
invalid return email address, or one which becomes unreachable due
to connectivity problems, the acknowledgment message from the
recipient could not reach the sender and would probably bounce
back to the recipient's mailserver or INBOX.
* Some online services and gateway providers, especially outside the
USA, still charge users a per-message-fee for Internet email
(inbound, outbound, or both), so that sending them a
return-receipt-requested message would cause them to have to pay
for an extra outbound message that they had no control over.
* Privacy considerations--many recipients of Internet email may not
wish to divulge whether or not they have received or read a
message, especially in the case of unwelcome solicitation
messages.
However:
* _Some_ sites support delivery notifications for messages that have
a Return-Receipt-To: header. This header can be added to Pine
messages in the customized-hdrs field of Pine's SETUP
CONFIGURATION screen, which is accessed from Pine's Main Menu.
* However, even then the delivery acknowledgment will typically come
from the recipient's _Mailer Daemon_ (email server), thus merely
indicating that the message was received on the receiving site's
mailhost, not whether or not the recipient "picked up," let alone
read, the message.
If a message _cannot_ be delivered due a technical problem--such as
connectivity interrupted, or mailhost down or misconfigured--the
sender will almost always receive a diagnostic message to that effect,
which they can forward to their computing support staff for
interpretation and troubleshooting. The best solution to the "lack of
return-receipt" problem is therefore to include a line requesting
confirmation from the recipient that a message was received in that
message itself.
_________________________________________________________________
6.3 Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses?
This is not a new idea. It's a very old idea, in fact, and just about
everyone who has ever dealt with email has had it at one time or
another. Regrettably, it has come to be recognized as a bad idea.
Here's why:
An email address without a host name is not syntactically valid
according to RFC-822. Now, it is true that RFC-822 only specifies what
must be done in messages which are transmitted over the network, and
that strictly local messages are not under RFC-822's dictates.
This means that there are two formats of email, one that conforms to
RFC-822 and one that does not. Careful efforts must be made to ensure
that the non-conforming mail format never escapes the local system
onto the network. Twenty years of experience has shown that it is
impossible to guarantee that the non-conforming format does not escape
into the network, even in the face of traps to catch such messages on
their way out and convert them to RFC-822 conforming format. Indeed,
such traps have often contributed additional problems on their own.
The non-conforming format is ambiguous as to what host is intended.
Although the off-the-cuff solution (and the one that everyone
implements) is "use the local host", numerous examples have occurred
in which this leads to wrong behavior. For example, it may be the
"local mail center" instead of the "local machine which is a
single-user workstation". Or, if a one of the non-conforming messages
escaped on to the network, it's some remote system and we have no idea
at all what system that may be! There's no way for the mail reader to
tell; a human may infer from context but often does so by using
information that is not available to the program.
The Pine team has spent long (and at times heated) meetings reviewing
this issue, before coming to the conclusion (as other email groups
have independently done) that it's a no-win situation. The policy of
the email development community for years (since the RFC-733
discussions) has been to exterminate the non-conforming format by not
implementing it in modern mail tools.
It may be feasible to implement a feature in a future version of Pine
that would suppress the display of the local host name in email
addresses. That is, the host name would still be in the file on disk,
but would not show up on the screen.
_________________________________________________________________
6.4 How can I tell immediately whether I have received new mail?
By default, Pine automatically checks for new mail every 2.5 minutes.
(You can change this time interval with the mail-check-interval option
in the SETUP CONFIGURATION screen.) Some system administrators may
have globally modified this interval.
When viewing the FOLDER INDEX, you can force Pine to check for new
mail by pressing ^L, or if on the last item in the Index, by pressing
"N". The eXpunge command will also force a new-mail check. If you
would like to have some visual indication of when Pine is checking for
new mail, set the enable-mail-check-cue feature and watch for an
asterisk to flash in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. (Two
asterisks mean that Pine is check-pointing --saving state changes in--
your INBOX.)
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Attachments to Email Messages
Sending
7.1 How do I attach a file in Pine?
When composing a message, move your cursor to the "Attchmnt:" line.
Using Pine's "To Files" key (_^T_), go to the files on your computer;
select the one you would like to attach. The file must be on the
computer running Pine. You also have the option of typing in the full
path name at the "Attchmnt:" line.
_________________________________________________________________
7.2 Why does Pine encode text attachments?
Pine uses MIME's Base64 encoding for _all_ attachments, including
text, in order to assure that they are not modified in transit. The
goal is make sure that sending file attachments in Pine is as
dependable as using FTP.
Although it may seem like encoding is unnecessary for files that are
plain text, certain email gateway, trasport, and delivery agents pose
a threat to the integrity of even text files (much less binary files).
For example, long lines may be wrapped, trailing spaces deleted, tabs
turned into spaces, lines beginning with "From" modified, etc.
7.2.1 How can I send a text file without it being encoded?
This is easily done by using Pine's "file inclusion" key (_^R_).
Instead of entering the file name on the Attchmnt: header line, move
the cursor to the bottom of your message, and press "_^R_ Read File",
then enter the name of the text file. It will be included at the end
of your message without any encoding (unless the file contains 8 bit
or binary characters, in which case the entire message becomes subject
to MIME encoding rules.)
7.2.2 Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUencode?
Pine uses the Internet MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
standard for all attachments. MIME uses "Base64" encoding rather than
uuencode, because uuencode uses characters that are transformed by
some email gateways, and there are also several incompatible versions
of uuencode. However, if needed, you can certainly uuencode a file
outside of Pine, then use the Composer's "file inclusion" (_^R_)
command to insert the uuencoded file into the message.
_________________________________________________________________
Receiving
7.3 How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format?
Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu> has written a Perl conversion script to
convert Mailtool to MIME. The Perl script and C conversion are
available in
ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/MIME/sun-to-mime.perl.Z
ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/MIME/sun-to-mime.c.Z
and a description of the program can be found in
ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/MIME/sun-to-mime.README
_________________________________________________________________
7.4 How do I decode an attachment in a message I received that is in BinHex
or UUencoded format?
Save the attachment to a file and use a decoding program running on
the operating system you are using and capable of handling the
encoding format; for example:
* Stuffit Expander (free) from Aladdin Systems
For Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, and DOS
http://www.stuffit.com/expander/index.html
handles BinHex or UUencoded files
* WinZip (shareware), available for Microsoft Windows, at:
http://www.winzip.com/
handles BinHex or UUencoded files
* the uudecode command on Unix hosts (for UUencoded files)
Please note: Successfully _decoding_ an attachment alone does not
assure that you can _use_ the resulting file(s) on your computer. For
example, you may be able to decode a BinHex-encoded file on your MS
Windows/DOS PC, but end up with a Macintosh application that you
cannot run; or you may not have the application program needed to open
a data file. Ask the sender of the message with the attachment what it
is/how do handle it, if in doubt.
_________________________________________________________________
7.5 How can someone without Pine decipher an attachment to a message I send?
Pine uses the MIME Internet standard for attaching files to email
messages. Any MIME-capable mailer should be able to "understand"
Pine's attachments. If the recipient of your message with attachment
does not have MIME-capable email software, they should be able to save
the attachment to a file and then decode that. One freely-available
program which can decipher a MIME attachment is _munpack_ from
Carnegie Mellon. It is available at:
ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack
Another one is UUDeview, available at:
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/
_________________________________________________________________
7.6 How can I delete attachments?
In Pine, message attachments can be deleted without removing the
entire message. This is accomplished by marking the undesired
attachment for deletion and saving the message to a folder.
Attachments marked for deletion are excluded from the message when it
is saved. In addition, the delete mark only applies for the current
Pine Session, and is of course gone when the message is saved, and the
attachment excluded.
The associated attachments of a message are viewed by pressing ">" or
_V_, opening the ATTACHMENT INDEX. The undesired attachments can be
marked for deletion by pressing _D_. To exit out of the ATTACHMENT
INDEX press "<". To actually remove the attachment the message must be
saved. Pressing _S_ in the MESSAGE INDEX will display the following
warning message:
Saved copy will NOT include entire message! Continue?
Y [Yes]
N No
If you are sure you want to save the message and exclude the marked
attachments, press _Y_ for yes.
_________________________________________________________________
Printing
7.7 Why doesn't "attached-to-ansi" printing work?
So-called "attached-to-ansi" printing relies on the communication
software you are using to interpret certain special character
sequences that tell it to divert the incoming stream of characters to
your printer, and then back to your screen. Perhaps 99% of "pine
printing problems" are either due to PC or Mac communications software
that doesn't understand ANSI escape sequences for printing, _or_ (in
the dialin case) software flow-control problems.
We didn't understand how big a problem software flow control was until
3.90 came out... we changed pine to intercept flow control characters
so that users would not see Pine "wedge" mysteriously if a mis-type or
noise generated a Control-S, but that did bad things when printers,
modems, or comm software was depending on s/w flow control.
In 3.91 we added the preserve-start-stop-characters feature, so that
Pine could be configured to respect s/w flow control characters (if
the operating system did) for those folks who needed them. Enabling
this feature should make Pine 3.91 behave the same way as earlier
versions.
Then we discovered that some operating systems don't enable software
flow control by default. So starting in 3.92, the
preserve-start-stop-characters feature does more than "not ignoring"
them, it will try to force the OS to pay attention to them.
So here's the sequence of things to try if you have pine printing
problems:
1. Check For Software Flow-Control Problems
1. Try enabling preserve-start-stop-characters (requires 3.91 or
later)
2. If that doesn't help, verify that the OS is enabling s/w flow
control; if it isn't, you can either change that in a global
.login script, or as a worst case, wrap pine in a script that
does it. By the way, on our AIX systems, we had to execute
"stty -ixon" followed by "stty ixon" --no one here knows why
the first stty is needed. (Note that explicitly enabling s/w
flow control in the OS will not be needed in 3.92 or later).
3. If neither of the above apply, double-check that you actually
have _some_ kind of flow control enabled on your system,
either hardware or software.
2. Check Your Comm Software For Ansi Printing Capability
1. After ruling out s/w flow control problems, if printing still
doesn't work, the odds are that the PC or Mac comm s/w is at
fault. I don't know how to determine this other than via
trial-and-error and word-of-mouth.
2. The "ansiprt" utility included in the pine distribution can
also be used for testing. It simply sends the specified text
file to user's terminal device, bracketed with the ANSI
escape sequences for print diversion. This is just what Pine
does as well (although some versions of ansiprt offer a few
options not available via Pine.)
3. Possible Other Printing Problems
1. Printing via Pine's "attached-to-ansi" facility to a
postscript-only printer. Pine does not yet have the ability
to encapsulate text into postscript, ala "enscript", so the
custom print option using enscript and ansiprt will be needed
in that case.
2. Other printer-specific configuration problems. For example,
whether or not the printer needs a trailing formfeed to eject
the last page, or a control-D, or non-Unix newline
conventions, etc. Many of these problem will also require
using the custom print command option and "ansiprt".
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Usenet News - Pine is a Newsreader
8.1 How can I use Pine for reading and posting Internet News?
This section was formerly part of the document _Secrets of Pine_.
Versions before Pine 3.9 were capable of reading Internet newsgroups
(Usenet), but the ability to post messages to these newsgroups, or
subscribe to them, was added in Pine 3.90.
It is possible that your system manager has configured Pine so that
everyone on the system automatically has access to news. You can check
this by looking for a news folder collection at the end of your FOLDER
LIST for versions up to and including 3.96 (in version 4, COLLECTION
LIST) - if it's _not_ there, you will need to tell Pine the name of
your local news server. Here are the steps:
1. Choose the "_S_ Setup" command from the [M]AIN MENU.
2. Select "_C_ Config".
3. Use the down-arrow-key to select the option nntp-server.
4. Press "_A_ Add Value" to this option. Type in the name of the news
server for your site, then press Return. You will need to get this
information from your local computing/network support staff. A
typical news server name would be: "news.nowhere.edu" (this one is
fictional).
5. Press "_E_ Exit Setup, save your modifications; you are returned
to the MAIN MENU.
6. Press "_Q_" to Quit Pine; then restart Pine. This is necessary to
have the above configuration change take effect.
7. After restarting Pine, choose the FOLDER LIST screen by pressing
"_L_ LstFldrs" from the [M]AIN MENU.
8. Select "News-collection" (you can press the spacebar to move to
the news-collection, which will be the last item in the FOLDER
LIST (COLLECTION LIST in Pine 4) screen.)
9. Press Return if you see: [ Select Here to See Expanded List ]. If
you have used a different newsreader previously, you probably
already have a news subscription file with your favorite
newsgroups listed. If not, you need to add some...
10. Press "_A_ Add" to add more news groups to your news subscription
file. If you know the name of the group you wish to subscribe to,
enter it at the prompt and press Return; otherwise, use the "_^T_
To All Grps" command. Select the desired group and press Return.
Repeat to add more groups.
11. Once you have newsgroups displayed in the FOLDER LIST, you may
select them just like mail folders.
In order to remain compatible with other news readers, Pine uses the
same news subscription file (".newsrc" in the Unix version). However,
this file can record very little message state information. The
"Deleted" flag is the only message status flag that is preserved
between sessions.
* PC-Pine users, take note! PC-Pine will normally look for your news
configuration file (NEWSRC) first in your PC home directory
(typically C:\NEWSRC) and if it doesn't find it there will look in
the same directory where your PINERC file is. You may set the
newsrc-path variable (PC-Pine only) to specify a different path if
you prefer. This may be helpful for compatibility with other PC
news readers.
When you reply to a news message, Pine will ask if you want to post
the reply to the listed Newsgroups. When the current folder is a
newsgroup and you enter the Composer, Pine will ask if you want to
post to the current newsgroup. Even if you say "no", you may manually
enter a newsgroup name, after exposing that header in the Composer by
pressing _^R_. (There is also an optional feature,
compose-sets-newsgroup-without-confirm you can set in SETUP
CONFIGURATION to suppress this prompt if you'd like Pine to assume
that you want to Post whenever invoking the composer while reading a
newsgroup folder.)
Here are some additional hints about using Pine for newsreading:
* In most cases, the only thing you will need to do to enable news
reading/posting is to set the nntp-server variable, as described
above. For some configurations, such as reading news from the same
machine Pine is running on, you will also need to set the
"News-collections" variable (in Pine versions before 4.00); use
the context-sensitive help in the SETUP CONFIGURATION screen to
see an example of this case.
* You may specify a list of hosts for the nntp-server variable. In
the absence of an explicit news-collection setting, the first
nntp-server listed will be used for reading news. Any other hosts
listed will be used for posting messages if the first host is
unavailable.
* If posting to news groups seems slow, especially if you are using
PC-Pine over a slow dialup link, set the
news-post-without-validation feature via the SETUP CONFIGURATION
screen. This will suppress immediate validation of each newsgroup
name appearing in a message you are about to post.
* If you don't want your subscribed newsgroups to be displayed in
alphabetical order, you may set the news-read-in-newsrc-order
feature and then manually edit your newsrc file to the order you
prefer.
* Remember that when you get "Empty List" for news folders in your
FOLDER LIST, you need to use the "_A_ Add" command to subscribe to
the news groups of interest to you. Unfortunately, you need to do
this one-at-a-time right now.
* New feature in version 3.91: For those who miss having messages
marked with an "N" in the Folder Index, try the
"news-approximates-new-status" feature. Read the help text that
goes with it, though, so you don't get surprised when some
messages you've seen before show an N again...
If you are searching for newsgroups in subject areas of your interest,
check the directories of USENET newsgroups.
_________________________________________________________________
8.2 How can I sort newsgroups by thread?
Beginning in Pine 4.30, the _tHread_ sort option is available. In
Pine's message index, press _$_ SortIndex" followed by "_H_ tHread".
In previous versions, a sort by _Ordered Subject_ provides "pseudo"
threading of messages by grouping messages with the same subject name
together and putting them into date order. Pine ignores leading "Re:"
and "re:" and trailing "(fwd)" when determining the order of subject
lines. In Pine's message index, press "_$_ SortIndex" followed by "_O_
OrderedSubj".
_________________________________________________________________
8.3 How do I mark all messages in a newsgroup as "read" or "deleted"?
First, you need to make sure that you have access to all the commands
necessary.
From the [M]AIN MENU, choose [S]etup and then [C]onfig, then make sure
that there are 'X' marks next to these two options:
[X] enable-aggregate-command-set
[X] enable-flag-cmd
To mark all messages as "read" or "deleted" press and release each of
the following:
_;_ = Select
_a_ = All
_a_ = Apply
_*_ = Flag
which will bring you to the FLAG MAINTENANCE screen (if you do not
have enable-flag-screen-implicitly set in SETUP CONFIGURATION, select
"_^T_ To Flag Details" to reach it now):
Set desired flags for current message below. An 'X' means set it, and
a ' ' means to unset it. Choose "_E_ Exit Flags" when finished.
=============================================================================
Set Flag Name
--- ----------------------
[ ] Important
[X] New
[ ] Answered
[ ] Deleted
? Help E Exit Flags P Prev - PrevPage Y prYnt
X [Set/Unset] N Next Spc NextPage W WhereIs
=============================================================================
Using the arrow keys, move down to "New" and press "_X_" until it
looks like this:
=============================================================================
Set Flag Name
--- ----------------------
[ ] Important
[ ] New
[ ] Answered
[ ] Deleted
=============================================================================
_Note_: if you want to _delete_ all the messages, the process is the
same _except_ at this point you should use the arrow keys to move down
to "Deleted" and press "_X_" until it looks like this:
=============================================================================
Set Flag Name
--- ----------------------
[ ] Important
[ ] New
[ ] Answered
[X] Deleted
=============================================================================
_To Exit_: Press "_E_ Exit Flags" as seen at the bottom menu.
_Power Tip_: To select and delete all the messages in a mailbox or
newsgroup press and release each of the following:
_;_ = Select
_a_ = All
_a_ = Apply
_d_ = Delete
_________________________________________________________________
8.4 How do I bring back (undelete) news messages I have deleted?
The unexclude command will view all available messages in a newsgroup.
This includes messages that have been previously Deleted and
Expunged/Excluded. The unexclude command is activated by pressing
Ampersand (_&_).
One difference between news and (personal) mail folders, while you can
mark News messages Deleted, unlike mail folders you may not actually
eXpunge them from the newsgroup folder, since the messages reside on a
shared server. Instead, you may remove them from your own view, using
the "_X_ eXclude" command.
_More Info_: If unexcluding messages does not reveal the desired
messages, it is likely they were removed from the news server, since
old posts are periodically removed. Many newsgroups are archived and
available via the World Wide Web.
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Customization and Configuration
9.1 Where does Pine look for configuration information?
In Unix and PC-Pine 3.90 and higher, the PINE RELEASE NOTES (Press
"_R_" when on the [M]AIN MENU) contain a section on Configuration,
including default file names and environment variables. Almost all
personal configuration can be accomplished through the SETUP
CONFIGURATION SCREEN (Press "_S_ Setup" then "_C_ Config" when on the
[M]AIN MENU.
Unix Pine uses three configuration files: a system-wide defaults file,
a system-wide non-overridable settings file and a personal
coniguration file (.pinerc in the user's home directory).
If, for some reason, you need to generate a blank personal
configuration file, run
"pine -pinerc pinerc.blank".
If you need to generate a "blank" copy of the system wide
configuration files (can usually only be done by systems
administrator), run
"pine -conf > /usr/local/lib/pine.conf".
9.1.1 How can I get a fresh copy of my Pine configuration file?
If you run "pine -pinerc new_pinerc_file_name" you will get a fresh
copy of your .pinerc configuration information placed into the file
new_pinerc_file_name" with the options you are using set. It will also
have fresh comments, and then everything in the config screen and the
pinerc file should match. Old variables that are no longer being used
will disappear. If you ever plan on editing your .pinerc file in the
future (and don't want to be confused by obsolete comments), it would
be a good idea to run the command: "pine -pinerc .pinerc", or in the
case of PC-Pine: "pine -pinerc \pine\pinerc" (assuming your pinerc
file is in the \pine directory on your PC.)
_________________________________________________________________
9.2 Can I customize Pine on a per folder basis?
Pine doesn't have that capability. You can only set configuration
options which apply to the whole pine session; not to particular
situations.
One way to get part part of the effect of per-folder customization is
to have several custom .pinerc files and shell aliases which use them.
For example if you want pine to behave a certain way when you are
reading newsgroups, you might copy your .pinerc to a new one which you
will customize for newsreading:
_cp .pinerc .pinerc-news_
Then you can start pine using the separate configuration file with the
command:
_pine -p .pinerc-news_
After doing that, you can make all the changes you want to settings to
make life easier when reading news, and save the configuration. If it
is a problem to enter that pine command every time, add this line to
your .cshrc file:
alias pinen 'pine -p .pinerc-news'
to create a "pinen" command. You could add to that and have the
configuration file use the "initial-keystroke-list" variable to go to
the newsgroups list. E.g.,
initial-keystroke-list=l,n,cr
You can also do a lot with the pine command line options and a shell
alias for that.
For more information on Pine Command Line Options use "pine -h" or
view the Pine Technical Notes concerning Pine Command Line Options.
_________________________________________________________________
9.3 Can Pine be used with a POP server?
Versions of PC-Pine _prior to 4.00 cannot_ be used with a POP (Post
Office Protocol) server. With Unix Pine, and with PC-Pine _4.00 and
after,_ you can access a POP server in "online" mode. That is, Pine
will start a POP3 session and keep it open until the mailbox is
closed. Due to the nature of the POP3 protocol, Pine will not see any
new mail which arrives during the POP3 session. Thus new mail only
arrives upon starting a session.
To access the message INBOX on a POP3 server, use the folder
definition syntax:
{pop3server/pop3}INBOX
or, especially useful if your POP account user-id is different from
the one in your Pine configuration:
{pop3server/pop3/user=popuserid}INBOX
where pop3server is the hostname of the POP3 server, and popuserid is
your user-id for your POP account. However, this method accesses the
POP server in quasi-online mode, not in offline mode, which POP was
designed for. Accessing the inbox on a POP3 server with Pine does not
preserve changes to message flags (New, Answered, Deleted, etc.)
between sessions.
As an alternative, a program such as fetchmail (which supercedes
popclient) can be used to download email from a POP server to a local
Unix account, where it can then be accessed with Pine. fetchmail can
be obtained from:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/
For a more detailed comparison of the POP and IMAP protocols, and
discussion of the various message access modes (online, offline,
disconnected), see:
Message Access Paradigms and Protocols
RFC-1733: Distributed Electronic Mail Models in IMAP4
_Pine does not support the old POP2 protocol, and there are no plans
to do so._
_________________________________________________________________
9.4 Why does my message index show _From:_ instead of _To:_?
If the user has manually changed their _From:_ header, or can receive
mail with other addresses, Pine must be aware of these _alternate
addresses_, by having them entered in in the alt-addresses option in
SETUP CONFIGURATION.
_Applies to Pine for Unix only_
See also the FAQ: "9.5 How do I change my 'From:' line?."
The following is concerned with Pine displaying the user's own name,
rather than the name of the recipient, in folder index listings of
messages they have sent. This occurs when Pine detects the specific
hostname of the computer on which it is running in the _From:_ header.
To avoid this from happening, set use-only-domain-name in Pine's SETUP
CONFIGURATION menu to _Yes_; this strips the name of the specific host
from your _From:_ address. Alternatively, specify your domain name in
user-domain (be _sure_ you enter it correctly, otherwise all your
outgoing messages will have an invalid return address! Ask your local
computing support people if in doubt). When setting either of these
options, also read the help screen for
quell-user-lookup-in-passwd-file to see whether you should enable that
feature too.
Administrators of systems where Pine exhibits this behavior should
also check the /etc/hosts file for invalid entries; as an example, it
should read:
123.456.78.90 hostname.domain hostname
not just
123.456.78.90 hostname
-- otherwise, users' setting of use-only-domain-name to _Yes_ will not
have the intended effect.
_________________________________________________________________
9.5 How do I change my 'From:' line?
From Pine's [M]AIN MENU, choose [S]etup, then [C]onfig. Move down to
the customized-hdrs option. Press "_A_ Add Value". Use the format:
From: "My Real Name" <myusername@domain.edu>
_Note_: You may wish to configure default-composer-hdrs so you can
easily change the From: line when composing new messages. The process
is the same as adding to the customized-hdrs entry. If you use this
setting, remember that you must specify all the headers you want to
see; simply changing the value to From: will make From: your only
visible header.
Press Return to accept the change, and "_E_ Exit Setup".
Beginning with Pine 4.30, changing of the From: value is allowed by
default.
For Pine releases pre-4.30: If you go to COMPOSE MESSAGE and get the
error:
[Not allowed to change header "From"]
then you, if you are installing Pine yourself, or your systems
administrator (if users changing their From lines does not violate
your site's policy) will have to recompile Pine.
_Note_: Changing the "From:" line may not give you the anonymity you
desire, since the "Sender:" or "X-Sender:" line may still include your
entire email address.
In Pine 4.00 through Pine 4.21, users can add allow-changing-from to
the feature-list in their pinerc file (by editing the file, not via
SETUP CONFIGURATION); recompiling is not necessary.
See also 11.12 What do I need to do when compiling PINE to let users
change their "From:" line?
A thorough guide concerning this subject is available at infinite ink
by Nancy Mcough at the URL:
http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/changing_from/
_________________________________________________________________
9.6 How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization?
From Pine's [M]AIN MENU, choose [S]etup, then [C]onfig. Move down to
the customized-hdrs option and read the context-sensitive help screen.
_________________________________________________________________
9.7 How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages?
From Pine's MAIN MENU, choose Setup, then Signature. The text you
enter in the SIGNATURE EDITOR (new in Pine 3.92) will be appended to
all messages you compose. With the signature-at-bottom feature in
SETUP CONFIGURATION, you can alter the placement of the text in
replies (but not forwards).
You can create multiple signature files outside of Pine (using, for
example, the Pico editor) and then include whichever one you wish,
wherever you wish, in a message you are composing in Pine via the Read
File command in the composer. If the file names you choose are very
short (e.g. s1, s2) this is relatively painless.
_________________________________________________________________
9.8 Can I reduce the frequent prompting to confirm an operation?
If you find Pine's tendency to ask you for confirmation on certain
operations annoying, you may suppress several of the prompts. In the
SETUP CONFIGURATION screen, reached from the MAIN MENU, look for the
features ending in -without-confirm, beginning with auto-, and for
include-text-in-reply. Read their help screens to be sure to
understand what enabling these features will do.
_________________________________________________________________
9.9 How can I filter messages into different incoming folders?
Pine now supports mail filtering, see the Pine Technical Notes for
more information
However, the function of other programs, such as (on Unix hosts)
"procmail" or "mailagent" are better suited for this task. For details
on procmail, see ii Procmail Qstart (by Nancy McGough):
http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/
Once you have successfully set up your delivery filtering, you will
have new mail arriving in several different folders, in addition to
your Inbox. You can then access these folders just like any other mail
folder. You can also define a collection of incoming message folders
in Pine, through which you can then TAB to read new messages. For more
information, see Pine's internal help on the enable-incoming-folders
feature in Pine's SETUP CONFIGURATION menu.
If you are looking for a way to move multiple messages that you have
already received, see FAQ 5.6: How do I use Pine's aggregate
operations?
_________________________________________________________________
9.10 How do I control what is displayed in the FOLDER INDEX screen?
The display of fields in the FOLDER INDEX screen can be customized.
For example, you can choose to have both the From and the To field (by
default, the FOLDER INDEX will list the From address unless it is you,
then it will list the To address) of each message shown; to suppress
the message number display in each line; or to have the Subject field
take up 60% of the line width. From Pine's MAIN MENU, choose Setup,
then Config. Then go to the index-format option and read the
context-sensitive help screen.
_________________________________________________________________
9.11 How can I control association of MIME-attachments with applications and
filenames?
This requires one, and possibly two, configuration changes, which may
already have been performed by your system administrator:
1. Create a _mailcap file_ that associates the MIME-type of the
attachment with the application you wish to use to open files of
that MIME-type; see the section MIME: Reading a Message in the
Pine Technical Notes for the name and location of mailcap file(s)
on different platforms. (For further information on MIME, see What
is MIME?.)
2. _(New in Pine 3.92)_
You can control which filename extension (which is shown in the
message MIME-attachment) is associated with which MIME-type by
creating a _mimetype file_; see the section MIME.Types file in the
Pine Technical Notes for the name and location of mimetype file(s)
on different platforms. You may need to do this to preserve the
filename extension in the temporary file that PC-Pine creates to
pass attachment data to the associated DOS/Windows-application, if
that application requires a certain (temporary) filename extension
to open that file; or to make sure that a MIME-attachment with a
certain filename extension is opened in the application you
desire, even if the MIME-type as identified in the incoming
message is not exactly the one which you specified in your mailcap
file, which may be the case if the application you have is not of
the same version as the application the sender used to create the
attachment file that s/he sent to you. This also controls the
MIME-typing for messages you send; for example, to assure that
files with the extension .PDF are sent as a MIME attachment of
type _application/acrobat_.
Note: many files attached to email messages (though not email messages
themselves) can contain viruses -- unless from a trustworthy source,
don't open them without checking them for viruses first, as far as
possible! If in doubt about the nature of an attachment, ask the
sender what application was used to create it; and/or ask the sender
to resend the message with the attachment, this time disabling any
special encoding techniques that his/her email software may be
employing.
Here are a sample MAILCAP file for PC-Pine:
# PC MAILCAP SAMPLE FILE
# All lines beginning with the # symbol are comments.
# As some long directory and/or filenames suggest,
# the examples here are for a PC running the Windows95 operating system.
# These examples using certain third-party software programs do not
# constitute any recommendation thereof by the University of Washington.
# Open image files with Paintshop Pro for viewing/editing:
image/*;"C:\Program Files\Paint Shop Pro\Psp.exe" %s
# Play audio and video files via Internet Explorer WWW browser:
audio/*;"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Iexplore.exe" %s
video/*;"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Iexplore.exe" %s
# View HTML files with Netscape WWW browser:
text/html;"C:\Program Files\netscape\Navigator\program\netscape.exe" %s
# Unpack ZIPed archives with WinZip:
application/zip;"C:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe" %s
# View PDF files with Acrobat Reader:
application/pdf;"C:\Acrobat3\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" %s
#You can add other entries below for other MIME types...
and a sample MIMETYPE file for PC-Pine:
# PC SAMPLE MIMETYPE FILE
# All lines beginning with the # symbol are comments.
# Line format: MIME Type/Subtype, associated filename extensions.
text/plain txt dat
text/html html htm
audio/basic au snd
audio/x-realaudio ra ram
audio/x-wav wav
image/gif gif
image/jpeg jpeg jpg jpe
image/tiff tiff tif
video/mpeg mpeg mpg mpe
video/quicktime qt mov
application/postscript ai eps ps
application/rtf rtf
application/pdf pdf
application/zip zip
which you can copy and edit as needed to conform to the location of
applications on _your_ system (in the MAILCAP file), and to the
filename extensions of files (in the MIMETYPE file). (Note: Unix Pine
uses different pathnames and applications than PC-Pine.)
_________________________________________________________________
9.12 How can I read a ROT13 encoded message?
_Applies to Pine for Unix only_
When viewing the message, use the '|' (Pipe) command and give it the
following:
tr '[A-Za-z]' '[N-ZA-Mn-za-m]'
Or write a script including the above line, and pipe the message to
the script. Note: the pipe command only works in Pine 3.90 or higher
with the enable-unix-pipe-cmd feature must be set.
Another tactic, if it is possible to change fonts during a dialup
session, is to switch to a font in which the characters are rearranged
in ROT13 order.
For those dialing in from MS-DOS, a package including a VGA
font-editing and changing utility is available as freeware. If your
terminal program allows you to shell out to DOS then it is possible to
use the font-changing program in this package to swap between a cp1252
font (Windows superset of ISO-8859-1) and a ROT13 font. Those using a
Windows-based terminal emulator can use a Windows ROT13 font in either
Terminal, HyperTerminal, or Notepad.
For more information, see:
Tip # 19: ISO-8859-1 and CP1252 fonts and VGA font-swapping
ROT13 or The Lumber Cartel (TINLC) "Sooper Sekrit" Decoder Ring!
Full Sail Vol.2 No.4: Computers With Character(s)
_Thanks to Norman De Forest for contributing to this FAQ._
_________________________________________________________________
9.13 How can I make Pine work with a Wyse 60 terminal?
Add the following lines to your feature-list:
termdef-takes-precedence and
enable-arrow-navigation
The first one allows your termdef file to be used for the specified
emulations. The second allows the arrow keys to be used under a mixed
environment. Please note, however, that this may break the arrow key
navigation in some terminal types.
_Thanks to Bryan Springborn for suggesting this FAQ._
_________________________________________________________________
9.14 Does Pine offer color support?
Yes, beginning in Pine 4.20.
For color-style, from the [M]ain Menu select [S]etup followed by
[K]olor -- [C] was already taken :). For index coloring from the Setup
menu, select [R]ules, [I]ndexcoloring.
_________________________________________________________________
9.15 How can I perform spell checking with PC-Pine for Windows?
_PC-Pine 4.00 has spell-checking built in. For older versions, read
on:_
Brian Quinion has developed a Spell Checker for Windows that can be
used with many Microsoft Windows applications that do not have their
own spell checker.
Spell Checker for Windows requires Windows version 3.1 or higher. A
32-bit version of the spell checker is not available yet (as of 27
Sep. 1996) and _the 16-bit version of the Spell Checker for Windows
does not work with the 32-bit version of PC-Pine._
The following installation instructions have been tested on Windows
for Workgroups, Windows NT and Windows95 with the _16-bit_ version of
PC-Pine. This installation assumes that the 16-bit version of PC-Pine
is already installed.
1. Create a subdirectory called pcpspell on your local hard drive
(e.g. C:\ - all examples in these instructions assume the
installation is on C:\).
2. The Spell Check program itself, and dictionaries for it in several
languages, are available from the World Wide Web at:
http://www.quinion.com/mqa/spell.htm
Download the Spell Check program and the dictionary of your choice
to your C:\PcSpell directory.
3. Use the decompression program PKUNZIP or equivalent to expand both
of the .zip files you downloaded, beginning with the program
itself -- for example,
1. spel300e.zip (the program itself, version 3.00), and then
2. useng.zip (the US English dictionary).
During the expansion of the dictionary, you'll get a message that
README.1ST already exits. Choose _R_ to rename the second
README.1ST file to README. Make certain that you read both of
these information files at the end of the installation.
+ If you do not already have PKUNZIP, it can be obtained by
downloading it from:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/pcpine/pkunzip.exe
4. From Windows, execute C:\PcSpell\Spell.exe. The installation may
take a couple of minutes to complete.
+ When the Options dialog box appears, ensure that the language
in the dictionary box is the one you intend to use. The
Windows Help file C:\PcSpell\Spell.hlp provides additional
information on how to make the correct language appear.
+ Once the correct language appears in the dialog box, you are
ready to try the spell checker from within PC-Pine. The
dictionary file called useng.scd is for the US English
Language. Close the Options dialog box (and any open README
files).
5. After closing the Options dialog box, run PC-Pine, compose a
message, and enter _^T_ to invoke the spell checker from within
the message window.
6. For Spell Checker for Windows to work automatically with each
reboot, copy the program's DLL file and the dictionary file (for
example, Spellch3.dll and useng.scd) to the directory
C:\Windows\System\. If the spell checker still does not work
automatically, try running C:\PcSpell\spell.exe after each reboot,
close spell's window and try again.
7. You can remove the spell checker by executing C:\PcSpell\Spell.exe
and clicking on "uninstall". After restarting Windows, you can
then remove all files in the C:\PcSpell directory on your local
hard drive. Also, delete the two .dll and .scd files you copied to
C:\Windows\System\.
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Pine Legal Issues
10.1 Is Pine Open Source?
It depends on how that term is defined. Source for Unix Pine is
provided to allow users and system administrators to customize and
adapt Pine for their own requirements. UW's Pine license allows anyone
to download source code for Unix Pine and make modifications for their
own local use without asking permission. Anyone can also create and
distribute patch files to implement bug fixes or minor enhancements
without asking permission. However, redistribution of a modified
version of Pine requires explicit permission from the University of
Washington.
_________________________________________________________________
10.2 Weren't earlier Pine licenses less restrictive regarding redistribution
of modified versions?
No. License wording has changed from time to time, but the owner's
intent has not. When it was discovered that some individuals were
misinterpreting the intent of the University, the license wording was
clarified.
In particular, the earliest Pine licenses included the words:
"Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software... is
hereby granted," but some people tried to pervert the meaning of that
sentence to define "this software" to include derivative works of
"this software". The intent has always been that you can re-distribute
the UW distribution, but if you modify it, you have created a
derivative work and must ask permission to redistribute it. There has
never been implicit or explicit permission given to redistribute
modified or derivative versions without permission. The license
wording was therefore changed to clarify this point.
_________________________________________________________________
10.3 Can patch files be distributed by Pine users?
Yes. Distribution of patch files "to accomplish bug fixes, minor
enhancements, or adaptation to new operating systems" are permitted
and encouraged. (For more extensive changes, check with the UW.)
_________________________________________________________________
10.4 Are UW's "C-Client" libraries released under the same license as Pine?
No; currently a less restrictive license is used for those libraries.
See the University of Washington's Free Fork License on the IMAP
Information Center Web site.
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Information for System Administrators, Developers, and the Technically Inclined
Primarily, but may also be of interest to advanced end users. For more
on Pine's "nuts and bolts" see the Technical Notes.
11.1 Can we use Pine/Pico/Pilot source code in commercial products?
For information on use of Pine, Pico and Pilot software, see the Pine
Legal Notices at:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/legal.html
_________________________________________________________________
11.2 What are the advantages of the various mailbox formats Pine supports?
(formerly "_What is a Tenex mailbox and why should I use it?_")
Pine, being based on the c-client library for messaging applications,
supports several formats for mailboxes. For a comparative table and
details on how to select the format Pine will use, and on mailbox name
conventions, see, respectively, the files docs/drivers.txt and
docs/naming.txt that are included in the UW IMAP server source
distribution, which is available from:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/imap.tar.Z
Basically, mbx is the recommended (and default) format for PC-Pine.
(PC Pine 4.x supports mbx, mtx, tenex, and unix formats, all
read-write. PC Pine 3.x supported mtx and tenex read-write and unix
read-only.) For UNIX Pine, the mbx format, because it allows
multi-session access, is recommended over the unix format if (and only
if) NFS is not involved.
Using the mbx format allows multiple sessions (or multiple users,
subject to the usual access controls) to have full Read-Write (RW)
access to the INBOX. Message state changes (e.g. marking a message as
deleted) and expunges can be done, and all such actions are
automatically communicated to other sessions which have the mailbox
open. In contrast: the normal Berkeley style folders can have only one
RW client at a time, so given the current software the latest session
steals the RW lock away from any previous session, with the earlier
session becoming Read-Only. mbx format is also considerably faster and
uses memory much more efficiently than the normal Berkeley style
folder format.
An mbx format mailbox can be created by prefixing the desired name
with "#driver.mbx/". For example, if you want an mbx format mailbox
called "test", create "#driver.mbx/test". The "#driver.mbx/" prefix is
used only when creating the mailbox; to open it, just use "test". A
user can have their INBOX in mbx format as well, by creating
"#driver.mbx/INBOX". Mail will be automatically moved from the mail
spool to the mbx format INBOX whenever Pine or an IMAP/POP server is
run.
_CAUTION:_ mbx format uses read/write open modes and file locking, and
depends upon local disk file semantics which are not present on NFS.
Although mbx format will "work" via NFS, there are likely to be
problems; consequently we do NOT advise using mbx format over NFS.
_CAUTION:_ mbx format is supported only on software based upon the UW
c-client library, such as Pine, imapd, and ipop3d. If you use other
software, e.g. elm, mm, etc., you should not use mbx format.
_________________________________________________________________
11.3 Can Kerberos authentication be used with Pine?
Kerberos 5 support was added in Pine version 4.00; see the Pine
Technical Notes for including Kerberos 5 functionality.
More information about Kerberos can be found at:
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/
_________________________________________________________________
11.4 How does folder locking work?
Locks are used by Pine and other mail programs to prevent damage from
occurring to the mail file when multiple programs try to write to the
file at the same time.
Because there are many different schemes of mail file locking used on
UNIX, Pine implements all of them. The result is a lot of complexity.
There are several reasons why locking needs to be done:
1. If you want to read the mail file, you want to make sure that no
other process will modify the mail file while you are reading it.
2. If you want to write to the mail file, you want to make sure that
no other process is accessing the mail file while you are writing
it.
3. If you have the mail file open, you want to make sure that no
other process can alter any of the internal contents of the mail
file that you have read, but it is OK if another process appends
new data to the mail file.
4. If you want to alter any of the internal contents of the mail
file, you want to make sure that no other process has the mail
file open.
There are several mechanisms of locking:
* The creation of a file which has the same name as the mail file,
but with a suffix of ".lock" (for example, this lock for
/usr/spool/mail/isma is named /usr/spool/mail/isma.lock). This
file accomplishes locks (1) and (2) above. This is an exclusive
lock.
* The use of an flock() with LOCK_SH on the mail file. This
accomplishes lock (1), and prevents lock (2). Multiple processes
can do this.
* The use of an flock() with LOCK_EX on the mail file. This
accomplishes lock (2), and prevents lock (1). This is an exclusive
lock.
* The use of an flock() with LOCK_EX on a file on /tmp. The file
name used depends upon the version of Pine. This accomplishes
locks (3) and (4). This is an exclusive lock.
On SVR4-based systems, the lockf() subroutine or fcntl() system call
it used instead of flock(). It is rumored that this creates a kind of
lock file as well, but this has not been directly verified.
NOTE: flock() on BSD systems does not work over NFS, so only the most
basic .lock file locking -- locks (1) and (2) happen over NFS. On SVR4
systems, fcntl() locking attempts to work over NFS, but there are
known problems in the rpc.lockd daemon which have caused hangs if an
application beats on the mechanism too much (and Pine beats on it).
All of the above mechanisms work reliably over IMAP connections.
_________________________________________________________________
11.5 Where does Pine create lockfiles, and what should that directory's
permissions be?
To protect against conflicts with mail delivery by sendmail, which
could cause INBOX corruption, Pine creates lockfiles in the directory
/var/spool/mail [1]. The permission setting for that directory should
be 1777 (world writable with the sticky bit set). The alternative
would be to make all mail programs setgid to some special group -- an
unacceptable security risk in the opinion of the Pine developers [2].
By contrast, lockfiles created in the /tmp directory serve
interlocking of different Pine sessions with each other, not of Pine
with the Mail Delivery Agent. Lockfiles in the /tmp directory are mode
666 because of the case of shared folders (e.g., tenex format) and
"kiss of death" functionality (UNIX mbox format and MMDF format). The
lock needs to be accessible by processes which may be logged in as
another user name; this is a tradeoff between security and
functionality.
[1] Versions of Pine prior to 3.92 did not warn users when locking in
/var/spool/mail failed.
[2] Some version of the Linux operating system are being distributed
with permissions that would _require_ Pine to run setgid.
_________________________________________________________________
11.6 Why does Pine have problems with my filter's locking?
There are multiple levels of locking, just as there are multiple
levels of operations on a mail file.
Pine reads the mail file and keeps a notion in memory of what messages
exist and where they are in the file. It is alright to modify the mail
file by appending new messages to it (which is what the mailer does in
delivering mail) and Pine permits this to happen (it does not keep the
file.lock style of lock locked).
However, if you modify the part of the mail file which Pine has
already read, then Pine has no way of knowing what it is you might
have done other than by tossing out everything it knows about the mail
file and completely rereading it. In the internal engine used by Pine,
this is done by a "mail_close()" followed by a "mail_open()"
operation. Pine normally does not issue a mail_close() call on INBOX
except when you quit Pine.
Pine detects that the file has been modified from under it and changes
its notion of the internal state from "representation of the mail
file" to "snapshot of a representation of the mail file sometime in
the past". The difference between the two is that only the former will
be written back to the disk if you do something such as a flag change
or an expunge.
Pine also has an extra level of locking, to prevent the inadvertant
modification of mailboxes from under it. This locking is implemented
by the internal engine used by Pine. If you implement this sort of
locking in your application, you can write code to steal this lock
from Pine, or to prevent you from modifying the internals of the file
(note that appending is OK) while Pine has it open. Source code for
this locking is found in the file pine/imap/c-client/bezerk.c
_________________________________________________________________
11.7 Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field?
It would be a significant detriment to the performance of the Berkeley
format mailbox parsing code, as well as to Pine's behavior on normal
systems which do not use the Content-Length: header, if any attempt
were made to implement Content-Length:.
There are many serious technical problems with the Content-Length:
header, and we do not recommend its use. Furthermore, we recommend
that a mail delivery agent such as our tmail tool be used that applies
smart quoting, as opposed to the ordinary BSD /bin/mail quoting of all
lines that begin with "From:". We have installed such tools on all of
our systems.
For example, one problem is that a system whose mailer does not
implement Content-Length: will also not enforce its validity should
that header appear. This offers significant potential for mischief.
Another problem is that Berkeley format mailbox files which use the
Content-Length: header can not be edited with an editor such as emacs
or vi without invalidating the Content-Length: field. If this problem
is not a consideration at your site, we recommend the use of the tenex
format (mail.txt), which is also length tagged but in a much more
efficient fashion.
_________________________________________________________________
11.8 How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail?
You have several options:
1. Leave inbox in /usr/spool/mail, but turn on the Pine option to
prompt users to move read messages to a folder in their home
directory upon exiting Pine.
2. Modify your mail delivery program to deliver mail directly into
the user's home directory, and specify that inbox-path in your
global pine.conf (See the "tmail" program on
ftp.cac.washington.edu for an example.)
3. "mailutil create #driver.mbx/INBOX"e; in each home directory,
which will cause Pine (upon startup) to pull mail from
/usr/spool/mail into ~/INBOX -- however, mail.txt will be a
mbx-format, rather than Berkeley mail format folder (faster, but
non-standard).
4. "touch mbox" in each home directory, which will cause Pine (upon
startup) to pull mail from /usr/spool/mail into ~/mbox, which will
be a Bky-format folder.
_________________________________________________________________
11.9 Why did my messages disappear after I ran Pine? I can still see them in
Pine, but not with any other program (e.g. my ISP's POP server).
This is probably caused by the mbox driver. If the file "mbox" exists
on the user's home directory and is in UNIX mailbox format, then when
INBOX is opened this file will be selected as INBOX instead of the
mail spool file. Messages will be automatically transferred from the
mail spool file into the mbox file.
If you delete mbox file, this behavior will no longer occur.
_________________________________________________________________
11.10 Why do I get the message "Unparsable Date" when I read messages?
Pine parses the date and time in the UNIX mbox "From:" line in order
to determine an "internal date" for each message. One of the
components of this date and time is the offset from Universal Time.
Certain older mailers write a symbolic timezone name instead of the
more modern numeric offset, which expresses number of hours of
deviation from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The problem with symbolic
timezone names is that such names are ambiguous. Is BST "Bering
Standard Time" or "British Summer Time"? Is KST in Korea or Kuwait?
etc.
The routine mail_parse_date() in pine/imap/c-client/mail.c knows how
to parse some, but not all, of these symbolic timezones. We recommend
that you modify this routine to add support for your own local
timezone. Due to the ambiguity problem, however, it is unlikely that
we will add any more symbolic timezones in the distribution sources.
But, hopefully, this will only be a minor editing consideration for
you.
The correct solution is to undertake the transition from symbolic
timezone names to numeric timezone values. UNIX software is definitely
moving in this direction due to the ambiguity problem, and has been
doing so for several years now.
_________________________________________________________________
11.11 Why can't I compile Pine under SCO unix?
Q&A from: Gunther Anderson <gunther@ssi.edc.org>
Pine has been tested and compiles just fine on a suitably equipped SCO
Unix 3.2.4, and probably works on the whole 3.2 series (testing has
not been as extensive). It handles both MMDF and sendmail mailboxes
without needing recompilation. It should be sufficient just to unpack
the source tree and run "sh build sco" at the top level. You need to
own the complete Development System, and the Developer's Versions of
the other packages. Pine will not compile without TCP/IP support.
The most common problem is when people own the Development System, but
keep getting missing header files (netbd.h is one) in their builds.
This is a common problem on SCO systems because of the great
fragmentation SCO enjoys in the marketing of system components. It is
easy to get confused about just what you've bought. And in this case,
haven't bought. What you need is the "Developer's Version" of the
TCP/IP product. The normal version just supports the TCP/IP protocol,
but doesn't include tools (including header files) to compile
TCP/IP-specific programs. Alas, the only remedies available to you are
to pick up a pre-compiled version (mine is on odi.cwc.whecn.edu,
ftp.celestial.com has their own, which prefers Bezerk mailboxes,
though it supports MMDF too), or to buy the Developer's Version of
TCP/IP. If you intend to do any serious compiling of Internet-
available programs, I'd recommend the latter, though many of the most
useful ones are available precompiled on other FTP sites.
_________________________________________________________________
11.12 How can I set up Pine for rimap under Solaris 2.4 and NIS+?
Q&A submitted by: David Drum <david@services.more.net>
I have figured out how to configure Solaris 2.4 running NIS+ and Pine
so that users may access an imapd server without having to provide
their password yet not compromising the security of the imap server
machine.
I hope that these instructions are useful to someone. Perhaps this
will go in the FAQ.
You may also contact me if you have problems compiling Pine under
Solaris.
0) Install /etc/rimapd
1) Reconfigure the Solaris nsswitch.conf
The OS must know how to treat login requests. We use NIS passwd entry
rewriting to ensure the login security of the server machine. Thus we
must tell the OS to use NIS-style lookups.
Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf on the computer running the imapd server.
Replace the "passwd: [files] [nis] [nisplus]" line with:
passwd: compat
passwd_compat: nisplus
2) Tell the imap server machine about the machines that will be requesting
remote logins
Edit /etc/hosts.equiv and add the names of the trusted hosts:
host1.your.domain
...
hostn.your.domain
3) Configure /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to filter NIS+ password entries
This is where the security measures are made. We "rewrite" password
entries for users not in /etc/passwd, giving them a different shell -
/etc/rimapd - which allows rlogin, but not shell access.
Append this line to /etc/passwd:
+:x:-1:-1:::/etc/rimapd
Append this line to /etc/shadow:
+::-1::::::
_________________________________________________________________
11.13 What do I need to do when compiling Pine to let users change their
``From:'' line?
Beginning in Pine 4.30, allow-changing-from is the default.
In Pine 4.00 through 4.21, users can add allow-changing-from to the
feature-list in their system configuration file (by editing the pinerc
file, not via SETUP CONFIGURATION), and then add From to their
customized-hdrs option. For previous versions, read on:
Q&A submitted by: Timothy J. Luoma <luomat+pine@luomat.peak.org>
You must edit the appropriate file in the source code. Assuming the current
version of pine is 'x.y' you would need to go to pine.x.y/pine/osdep/
and edit the appropriate ``os-XXX.h'' file, where ``XXX stands for the
3-letter abbreviation for your OS. Look for the line:
/* #define ALLOW_CHANGING_FROM /* comment out to not allow changing From */
and change it to
#define ALLOW_CHANGING_FROM /* comment out to not allow changing From */
and then compile as usual.
See also 9.5 How do I change my 'From:' line? in Customization and
Configuration.
_________________________________________________________________
11.14 Where is the .pine-debug setting set at compile-time?
Q&A submitted by: Timothy J. Luoma <luomat+pine@luomat.peak.org>
The default settings are defined in the os-XXX.h file inside the
_osdep_ directory in the pine source code directory, where XXX stands
for the three-letter abbreviation for your Operating System; for
example, the file _pine/osdep/os-bsd.h_ would be used for those
compiling PINE for BSD.
There are three settings:
_DEBUGFILE_ = Where to put the output of pine in debug mode. Files are
created in the user's home directory and have a number appended to
them when there is more than one.
_NUMDEBUGFILES_ = The number of debug files to maintain
_DEFAULT_DEBUG_ = The default level of debugging information
_________________________________________________________________
11.15 What do I need to do to configure specific servers for use with Pine?
Some messaging servers may require configuration changes to work
properly with the Pine client (and perhaps other clients as well).
This information is provided here only for the convenience of
administrators of those servers, and not necessarily exhaustive or
based on experiences or tests by the University of Washington.
* _Microsoft Exchange 5.5_: "Enable Fast Message Retrieval" (which
causes Exchange to give an estimate of message size, rather than
exact size) must _not_ be selected; otherwise, messages when read
by Pine may appear truncated or with "garbage" characters at the
end. Unfortunately, even after turning "Enable Fast Message
Retrieval" off, there is still a known bug in Exchange 5.5 in
calculating the message size for certain types of MIME messages.
Microsoft has told us (8 September 1998) that this bug is fixed in
the next release of Exchange.
Be sure also to set rsh-open-timeout to zero in pinerc, since rsh
is not supported on NT/Exchange. If you do not, you will
experience long delays in accessing the remote server.
You should also consult the server's documentation on these issues.
_________________________________________________________________
11.16 What do I need to know about Pine file locking and what does the
"mailbox vulnerable" error mean?
There is an extensive section on locking in the Pine Technical Notes:
Folder Locking; this information is intended to provide answers to
some common questions:
* _Why did locking change in Pine 4.00?_
The actual locking mechanisms did not change in 4.00. What changed
is that when one particular locking mechanism used by Pine fails,
Pine now issues a warning message. Prior to 4.00, the locking
failure would occur, but no warning was issued.
* _Is this what the "Mailbox vulnerable" message is about?_
Yes. It means that Pine was unable to create a lockfile in the
spool directory, generally because of overly restrictive
protections on the spool directory. The correct permissions on the
spool directory for running Pine are 1777, i.e. read-write-execute
permission for everyone, with the sticky-bit set, so only owners
of a file can delete them.
* _Why does Pine require that the mail spool directory have 1777
protections?_
Pine was designed to run without special privileges. This means
that in order to create a lockfile in the spool directory, it is
necessary to have the spool directory permissions be
world-writable.
* _Can't you create the lockfile somewhere else?_
No. The lockfile in question must be in the mail spool directory,
because that's where the mail delivery program expects to find it,
and the purpose of the file is to coordinate access between the
mail client (Pine) and the mail delivery program.
* _Isn't having the spool directory world-writable a big security
risk?_
No. Remember that the individual mail files in the spool directory
are NOT world-writable, only the containing directory. Setting the
"sticky bit" -- indicated by the "1" before the "777" mode --
means that only the owner of the file (or root) can delete files
in the directory. So the only bad behavior that is invited by the
1777 mode is that anyone could create a random file in the spool
directory. If the spool directory is under quota control along
with home directories, there is little incentive for anyone to do
this, and even without quotas a periodic scan for non-mail files
usually takes care of the problem.
* _Why not run Pine as setgid mail?_
Pine was never designed to run with privileges, and to do so
introduces a significant security vulnerability. For example, if a
user suspends Pine, the resulting shell will have group
privileges. This is one example of why we strongly recommend
against running Pine as a privileged program. In addition, a
"privileged mailer" paradigm would mean that normal users could
not test Pine versions or other mailers that had not been
installed by the system administrators.
* _Are there any alternatives to creating .lock files in the spool
dir?_
There are, but they all have different sets of tradeoffs, and not
all will work on all systems. Some examples:
+ Use lock system calls. Works fine on a few systems, provided
mail spool is local. Doesn't work reliably if NFS is used.
Doesn't work unless all the mail programs accessing the spool
dir use the same calls.
+ Deliver mail to user's home directory. An excellent solution,
highly recommended -- but one which is incompatible with some
"legacy" mail tools that always look in the spool directory
for the mail.
* _Are these spool directory lock files the only kinds of locks used
by Pine?_
No. Pine also creates lockfiles in the /tmp directory. For normal
Unix mailbox format folders, these are used to coordinate access
between multiple Pine sessions.
* _What about the "quell-lock-failure-warnings" feature added in
Pine 4.01?_
This is for people who are content to live dangerously, or who
have specific knowledge that the spool directory lockfiles are
superfluous on their system (because both Pine and the mail
delivery program are using system call file locking in a context
that works reliably, e.g. not NFS.)
* _Where can I find more details on how Pine locking works?_
See the Pine Technical Notes: Folder Locking.
_________________________________________________________________
11.17 How do I convert mh to mbx folders?
If you want to convert mh to mbx folders, you should get a copy of the
mbxcvt program, part of the imap-utils, located at the URL:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap-utils.tar.Z
Then use something similar to the command "mbxcvt #mh/oldname mbx
newname"
Read about Folder Collections in the Pine help to learn how to set up
~/Mail as a directory containing mailboxes.
If you want to access your existing mh folders without converting
them, you can access them from Pine by prefixing the mh folder name
with "#mh/" for example, to access your "foo" mh folder, use
"#mh/foo".
For a comparative table and details on Pine formats, and on mailbox
name conventions, see, respectively, the files imap/docs/drivers.txt,
imap/docs/formats.txt and imap/docs/naming.txt that are included in
the UW IMAP server source distribution, which is available at the URL:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/imap.tar.Z
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Account Conversion and Transfer
12.1 How do I transfer messages from Pine on a Unix host to my PC?
_Applies to Pine for Unix only_
Users of Pine on a remote host may sometimes wish to transfer messages
to their desktop computer. The process for this depends on the version
of Pine you are using and on how you connect from your PC to the host
running Pine.
* In Pine, go to the message, or select the message(s)* you wish to
transfer.
* Export the message(s) by pressing "_E_".
* If you are using Pine version _3.92 or later_ _and_ are connecting
to the account on which you are running Pine using
terminal-emulation communications software (such as Procomm,
Kermit, Telix, or MS Windows Terminal for IBM-compatibles; or
MicroPhone or ZTerm for Macintosh) and a modem, you can simplify
the process of downloading exported messages to your PC. In Pine's
SETUP CONFIGURATION screen, go to the download-command line and
read the context-sensitive help to learn how to configure Pine to
transfer exported messages to your PC using a serial line transfer
protocol (which must be available _both_ on the host on which you
are running Pine and from the communications software on your PC;
check with your Internet account provider if in doubt) such as
Xmodem, Zmodem, or Kermit. With this configuration, you can
eliminate the following steps.
* Otherwise, read on:
1. Make note of the name you provide for the resulting file when
prompted by the Export function. If you enter only a filename
(for example: export.msg), the file will be saved to your
Unix account's home directory. You can also provide a path
including a subdirectory (it must already exist!), for
example: temp/export.msg_The following steps are not a
function of Pine; contact your Internet account provider
and/or consult the documentation/technical support for your
PC software if you encounter problems or need further
details._
o If you have FTP client software on your PC, you can now
use it to transfer the file you just exported from the
host on which you are running Pine to your PC. _Skip to
the last numbered instruction_. (Note: If you can run
FTP client software on your PC, and use the DOS or
Microsoft Windows operating systems, you can probably
(check with your Internet access provider) also run
PC-Pine, which eliminates the need to transfer files
between your PC and the host on which you are running
Pine, because PC-Pine runs _on_ your PC.)
2. Suspend (must be enabled in Pine's SETUP CONFIG screen with
the option enable-suspend) or exit Pine.
o Depending on how your Unix account environment is set
up, you may be able or required to perform the remaining
steps by making choices from a menu; or by entering
commands at the Unix prompt, as shown below. In either
case, check with your Unix account provider for details
on the procedure if you encounter problems.
o For the following transfer, you need to choose a serial
line transfer protocol that must be available _both_ on
the host on which you are running Pine and from the
communications software on your PC. Common ones are
Xmodem, Ymodem, Kermit, and Zmodem. Assuming you are
using Zmodem:
3. At the Unix prompt, type: sz filename where filename is the
name you gave the file when you exported your message(s) from
Pine.
o Many file transfer sending commands, including sz, have
a variety of command-line options; among the more useful
being those that assure that the "carriage returns" in
text files are preserved as intended when the file
arrives on your PC, dep ending on its operating system.
Type man _command_ at the Unix prompt (where _command_
is your chosen file sending command) to learn about
them.
4. The Unix host is now sending the file. Depending on your PC
software, you must now initiate the download sequence to
receive the file; or, a strong feature of the Zmodem
protocol, your PC communications software may recognize that
a file is being sent and initiate receiving using Zmodem
automatically.
5. After the transfer, you may wish to delete the exported file
from your Unix account to eliminate duplication and save disk
space.
_*Multiple messages can be exported to a single file by selecting them
(if enable-aggregate-command-set is checked in Pine's SETUP
CONFIGURATION) and applying the Export command to them. The sequence
of the messages in the exported file can be changed by sorting (press
$ in the FOLDER INDEX view) the messages first._
_________________________________________________________________
12.2 How can I have all future messages sent to me automatically forwarded to
another account?
_This is actually not a function of Pine itself, but is often asked by
Pine users, thus we cover this question here._
Many users migrate from one Internet account to another as they
graduate from college, switch Internet Service Providers, and so on.
Others maintain multiple Internet accounts, receive email messages in
all or several of them, but want to manage and respond to all their
email from one of them. In those situations, you may want to have your
email automatically forwarded from one account to another.
Let's says you currently have this email address at your university:
lella@here.edu, but you are graduating and will lose that account in
another few weeks. Thus, you sign up with an Internet Service Provider
for a personal account, where your email address is:
lombardi@elsewhere.net. You decide that, rather than logging into both
accounts during the time period you have both to check your email, you
want to receive all your messages in your new elsewhere.net account,
and respond to them from there, especially to inform those who still
send email to your here.edu account that they should start sending
email only to your new address.
If your here.edu account is on a Unix host, you can accomplish this
automatic forwarding by creating a file named _.forward_ --note the
dot at the beginning of the filename!--in your home directory in that
account. This file should contain the email address to which you want
all your email forwarded, in this case: lombardi@elsewhere.net
--nothing more and nothing less. After creating the .forward file,
send yourself a message to your lella@here.edu address, then check
whether it arrived in your lombardi@elsewhere.net email INBOX. Note:
establishing this _.forward_ file only forwards messages arriving from
now on, not those already in your account. For achieving that, see the
next Frequently Asked Question below. If you
* are not sure whether your here.edu account _is_ on a Unix host
* if it is, do not know how to create a file in your Unix account's
home directory
* believe that your systems administrator may have provided other
means of enabling message forwarding
* are sure that your here.edu account _is not_ on a Unix host then
ask the technical support staff for your here.edu account for
assistance on how to forward email from it to another address.
_________________________________________________________________
12.3 "How can I forward messages I have already saved in Pine to another
account?
To copy messages you _already have saved_ in PINE to another account,
you can use one of these methods:
* Store messages on personal computer using PC-Pine
* Save directly to folders in other account using IMAP
* Copy mail folders via FTP or rcp or portable storage medium
* Send folders as attachments to email messages
* Bounce messages
They are listed in order of probable preference based on safety and
practicality, but each has its advantages, disadvantages, and specific
requirements, so you should evaluate carefully which one might work
best in your particular situation. It is best to do this while you
still have access to both accounts, and the technical support people
of the organizations providing them, for a while. Regardless of which
method (except for the first one) you choose, you should be able to
access both accounts simultaneously to monitor the operation's
progress. In particular, _do not delete_ any messages before you have
assured yourself that their transfer has completed, and that they are
accessible, as expected.
_Store messages on personal computer using PC-Pine_
Note: for this method to work, the messages in your present account -
the one _from_ which you wish to transfer messages _to_ another
account - must be stored on an IMAP server. If in doubt, contact your
local computing support people. This method has the advantage that you
do not already have to have your "other" account established; however,
that account should be one that will allow you to use PC-Pine. If you
already have the "other" account, also see the method _Save directly
to folders in other account using IMAP_ for an alternative; it also
works using PC-Pine.
If you have your own personal computer, install PC-Pine on it. After
installing, check enable-aggregate-command-set in PC-Pine's SETUP
CONFIGURATION screen, and read that feature's context-sensitive help,
as you will use it for transferring your messages.
Then, create folder collection definitions for the IMAP server on
which your messages are stored, and for your PC's hard disk and/or
floppy disk. For the syntax on defining these folder collections, see
PC-Pine's context-sensitive help for folder-collections in the SETUP
CONFIGURATION screen for versions up to and including 3.96. (In
PC-Pine 4, from the [M]AIN MENU, go to [S]ETUP collection[L]ist, then
choose [A]dd Cltn.) In the folder collection(s) on your PC, you can
create folders for saving messages to first, or you can do that "on
the fly" while saving messages to your PC from the IMAP server later -
just enter the name of the folder you want on your PC, and then con
firm when prompted for its creation. Then, for each folder on the IMAP
server, Select the messages to transfer, then Apply-Save them to a
folder in (one of) the folder collection(s) on your PC. Don't be
suprised - especially if you are using a modem connection from your PC
to do this - if saving messages to folders on your PC takes much
longer than moving messages among folders using Unix PINE on the same
account, since the messages have to be transported from the IMAP
server to your PC.
Later, if you wish, you can transfer the messages from your PC to your
other account if it supports IMAP server-based storage.
_Save directly to folders in other account using IMAP_
Note: enable-aggregate-command-set in your SETUP CONFIGURATION screen
must be checked for this method to work. Read that feature's
context-sensitive help if you are not familiar with it. This method
requires that your other account allow you to store messages on an
IMAP server (check with that account's provider if in doubt).
Save the messages from each PINE folder in your current account to a
folder on your other account's IMAP server, using Select, Apply and
Save. For the syntax on defining the folder (collection) for your
other account so you can save messages to them with PINE, see PINE's
context-sensitive help for folder-collections in the SETUP
CONFIGURATION screen for versions up to and including 3.96. (In PINE
4, see the context-sensitive help for the COLLECTION LIST screen.)
When accessing the folder in your other account to save to, you may be
prompted for that account's username (if you did not specify it in
your folder (collection) definition already) and password. Don't be
suprised if saving messages to folders in your other account takes
longer than moving messages among folders in the same account on which
you are currently using PINE, since the messages have to be
transported across the Internet to the other account's IMAP server.
_Copy mail folders via FTP or rcp or portable storage medium_
Transfer the file(s) containing the mail folder(s) to the other
account using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or rcp (remote file copy),
or save them to a portable medium such as floppy disks, removable hard
disks, or backup tapes; see also _3.3 How do I transfer messages from
Pine on a Unix host to my PC?_. If you have questions about how to use
FTP or rcp after consulting these utilities' documentation (man ftp or
man rcp at the Unix prompt), where your mail folder files are located,
or how to save mail folder files to a portable storage medium, contact
your local computing support people.
However, using the mail folders thus transferred _with an email
client_ in your other account will only work if the email client you
are using with your other account supports the same mail folder format
used with PINE. To use the FTP transfer method, you will also have to
be able to FTP "into" your other account (preferrably the area where
mail folders are stored), which is often not the case with POP (Post
Office Protocol) accounts; check with the account provider if in
doubt. To use the rcp transfer method, both accounts need to be on
Unix hosts, and you need to have shell access on both.
As an alternative to transferring the mail folder files directly,
which will not work if they are stored on a host you cannot directly
log into (which is often the case at least for your INBOX), you can
Select, Apply (enable-aggregate-command-set in your SETUP
CONFIGURATION screen must be checked) and Export messages from folders
to files and then transfer those files; however, this will at least
temporarily increase your storage capacity requirements - a
consideration if your PINE account has a storage quota.
Before using either of the next two methods, be _sure_ that
* you know the correct email address of your other account;
* our other account can receive email messages _at this time_ - you
may want to send one or two test messages to it and check for
their arrival before proceeding; and
* your other account has enough storage space for the messages you
intend to forward to it, since they will likely be quite large
either in size or in number.
_Send folders as attachments to email messages_
Note: For this method to work, your PINE mail folders have to be
stored on the same host as the one on which PINE is running; on Unix
hosts, this is typically your ~/mail/ directory. Increasingly, message
folders are _instead_ stored on a dedicated IMAP server. In that case,
this method _won't work_ for you. If in doubt about the location of
your mail folders, contact your local computing support people. You
also should be comfortable with the process of sending attachments
with PINE email messages.
Since each PINE mail folder is stored as a file, you can attach one or
more of those files to a PINE email message and send that to your
other account. There, you can then save each attachment (file
containing a PINE message folder) back to disk. However, using the
mail folders thus transferred _with an email client_ in your other
account will only work if the email client you are using with your
other account supports the same mail folder format used with PINE.
_Bounce messages_
Among those listed here, this method should work most independently of
your other account's _and_ email software's attributes. However, use
this method judiciously, as forwarding many email messages at once
consumes considerable system and network resources. Note: in your PINE
SETUP CONFIGURATION screen, enable-aggregate-command-set and
enable-bounce-cmd _must_ be checked, and fcc-on-bounce _should not_ be
checked, for this method.
1. Go to the PINE folder from which you want to forward messages.
2. Press "_;_ Select" to select the messages you wish to forward.
3. Choose "_A_ Apply, then "_B_ Bounce".
4. At the BOUNCE (redirect) N messages to: prompt, input, or choose
from your addressbook, the email address of your other account.
Confirm at the Send N messages? prompt.
5. The messages should all appear in the INBOX of your other account.
You may want to move them to other folders _in your other account_
before repeating this procedure with other folders _in the account
from which you are forwarding,_ unless you don't mind messages you
had saved from different folders all being together in your INBOX,
from where you may have to sort them out into different folders
again.
12.3.1 While I'm transferring my messages...how do I transfer my email
addressbook?
When transferring your PINE message folders to another account, you
may also wish to transfer your PINE addressbook. You can do this by
attaching the addressbook file to an email message, and saving that
attachment from the received message in your other account, as
described for message folder files in Send folders as attachments to
email messages ; or copying it to your other account or PC, as
described for message folder files in Copy mail folders via FTP or rcp
or portable storage medium. The addressbook for Unix PINE is by
default stored in your ~/.addressbook file.
_________________________________________________________________
12.4 How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook?
The Pine source distribution includes a shell script to do this in the
contrib/utils directory. It is called brk2pine.sh.
_________________________________________________________________
12.5 How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook?
_From_: Klaus Wacker <wacker@Physik.Uni-Dortmund.DE>
I wrote my own perl script, which I claim digests everything elm
accepts and converts it into something pine accepts. Please tell me if
you find otherwise. I intend to use this script regularly to keep
system-wide aliases and addressbooks in synch. The source is available
from
http://www.Physik.Uni-Dortmund.DE/~wacker/elm-to-pine
_________________________________________________________________
12.6 How do I convert from Pine Address Book to/from the equivalents in
Eudora, Netscape, Pegasus, ... ?
Here are two solutions to this, both created by others:
* Joseph Davidson has created a WWW site to perform conversion
between the address book of Pine and a number of other address
book/data file formats at: http://www.interguru.com/mailconv.htm
* Johannes Becker (Johannes.Becker@hrz.uni-giessen.de) has a
web-based addressbook converter available for general use at:
http://www.uni-giessen.de/hrz/kommuni/ldap/a_book.shtml. He says
that it "just converts between Netscape, Pegasus and Pine, but
it's for free."
_Please note that we have not tested either of these ourselves._
_________________________________________________________________
12.7 How do I convert my Pine addressbook file to Mutt alias format?
Use this Perl command:
perl -ane '$F[$#F] = "<$F[$#F]>"; print "alias @F\n";' \
$HOME/.addressbook > $HOME/.mutt.aliases
The resulting data (the mail aliases) will be saved in file
"$HOME/.mutt.aliases"; to make mutt read them in on startup you must
add this line to mutt's setup file:
source $HOME/.mutt.aliases
Q&A from Sven Guckes
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Security
13.1 General Pine Security
Making your system as secure as possible is an important first step to
making your applications, including Pine, more secure. The following
links provide resources to help you make your system more secure:
CERT Coordination Center
The CERT Coordination Center studies Internet security
vulnerabilities, provides incident response services to sites
that have been the victims of attack, publishes a variety of
security alerts, researches security and survivability in
wide-area-networked computing, and develops information to help
you improve security at your site.
The World Wide Web Security FAQ
This is the World Wide Web Security Frequently Asked Question
list (FAQ). It attempts to answer some of the most frequently
asked questions relating to the security implications of
running a Web server and using Web browsers.
CIAC (Computer Incident Advisory Capability group)
The CIAC Website provides an extensive, comprehensive resource
for diverse computer security issues. These resources are
presented in various forms and topics and are available to the
public as well as the DOE community.
Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and
Security
Purdue University's center for multidisciplinary research and
education in areas of information security (computer security,
network security, and communications security), and information
assurance. (See also the related COAST web site.)
_________________________________________________________________
13.2 How do I get a secure version of PC-Pine?
All versions of PC-Pine include TLS/SSL support. Some versions also
are available with Kerberos. Both Kerberos and TLS/SSL require setup
on the administrative end.
_________________________________________________________________
13.3 Is there a "remote exploit" bug in Pine's handling of mailcap entries?
Many people have inquired about a recent widely-distributed message
describing a "remote exploit in pine," specifically, a "vulnerability
in the metamail package used with pine" and a claim that the "`"
character "is incorrectly expanded by pine."
We believe the following to be true:
* There is indeed a vulnerability in the default _mailcap_ file
distributed with the popular metamail MIME-support package.
* This same mailcap file has in the past been included in Pine
distributions as a sample; however, this sample file is not used
by Pine unless it is manually installed and renamed.
* While the metamail package _can_ be used with Pine, Pine does not
_require_ the installation of metamail.
* If a site chooses to install metamail, they should definitely
expunge the dangerous entries from the default mailcap file. A
corrected mailcap file is available.
* If correcting the system mailcap file is not immediately possible,
users may wish to set Pine's "mailcap-search-path" variable to a
personal mailcap file path. (See Pine's Main/Setup/Config screen.)
* Everyone should beware of offered workarounds in the form of Pine
patches that simply insert the shell-escape character before any
substituted back-quotes, as this only results in moving the
problem down one level of shell-nesting.
* PC-Pine users are not vulnerable to these dangerous mailcap
entries.
We do not agree that the "`" character "is incorrectly expanded by
pine." Rather, we believe that Pine correctly implements RFC-1524.
However, it is possible to modify Pine to preclude mailcap parameter
substitution and thereby avoid mailcap risks at sites where faulty
mailcap files may be installed. A patch to do this for Pine 4.10 is
available. Obviously, this patch will also break any legitimate
mailcap entries that depend on parameter substitution.
While one could modify Pine to guard against the particular exploit
permitted by the mailcap entries in question, it is very difficult to
conceive of a truly safe "paranoid mode" other than disabling
parameter substitution entirely. However, we suspect most people will
find it far easier to remove any unsafe entries from their mailcap
configuration file.
_________________________________________________________________
13.4 Can I get a virus through email?
The answer is, "yes," since email attachments sent to you can be
arbitrary programs containing a virus, or they can be documents
containing so-called "macro viruses." But remember that viruses are
computer programs, which must come as attachments, while electronic
mail often consists merely of plain text. You cannot get a virus from
a plain text email message, but you can get one from an attachment to
a plain email message.
Since most email programs permit users to send "attachments," and
these attachments can be executable programs, you need to be careful.
Nevertheless, you cannot get a virus from an attachment _unless you
run the program._ Pine will always ask you to confirm that you wish to
view an email attachment before doing anything else, such as running a
program that views the attachment or even executing the attachment
itself (if it is a runnable program file). Remember, if you tell Pine
to view an attachment, in many cases the associated application (such
as Word) will automatically be run. If in doubt, _do not view the
attachment._ Instead, check it first with a virus checker or just
delete it.
Keep in mind, as well, that modern spreadsheet programs and word
processing programs have full-featured macro languages, and that some
people have written viruses that take advantage of this. For this
reason, an attached spreadsheet or document _could_ contain an
executable macro program, and that program could conceivably be a
virus. To prevent this, you can disable the macro language in your
spreadsheet or word processing program. Be aware, though that this
might disable useful features, too. (As an alternative to disabling
macros in MS Word, try Nancy McGough's tips on Avoiding MS Word Macro
Viruses.) Instead, or in addition to this, you can make sure to always
use a virus checker. Again, try to only accept files from trusted
sources, but take your own precautions as well.
Yahoo! provides lists on virus information.
_________________________________________________________________
13.5 What should I do if I receive email about a computer virus?
The Internet is constantly being flooded with information about
computer viruses. However, interspersed among real virus notices are
computer virus hoaxes. While these hoaxes do not infect systems, the
flood of email messages they generate is nevertheless time consuming
and costly to handle. Therefore, before broadcasting a warning that
you received via email, it would be a good idea to check with trusted
computer support people. There are well-developed methods for
distributing information about viruses and it would be better for
interested people to check with those resources rather than pass on
questionable information.
You'll find examples of confirmed hoaxes, information about how to
identify a hoax, and what to do when you receive a virus warning at:
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
Another useful Web site is the "Computer Virus Myths home page"
(http://www.vmyths.com/) which contains descriptions of several known
hoaxes. In most cases, common sense would eliminate Internet hoaxes.
_________________________________________________________________
13.6 On Win2k, why do I get errors when trying to validate my host name?
There is a problem with pre-SP1 (Service Pack 1) versions of Windows
2000 that causes wildcard SSL certificates to fail. This was actually
a design feature in that version, which Microsoft was persuaded to
revoke.
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Pine Development
14.1 What is the latest version of Pine, and what's new in it?
See "Pine Release Chronology & Version Changes" at
http://www.washington.edu/pine/changes.html
_________________________________________________________________
14.2 When is the next release of Pine scheduled?
As late as possible, as soon as necessary, and vice versa! Seriously,
firm future release dates are hard to establish. To make sure _you_
won't miss the next release, you can subscribe to the Pine-Announce
mailing list; for more information on that, see
http://www.washington.edu/pine/pine-info/pine-announce.html
_________________________________________________________________
14.3 What are the results of the anonymous messages sent to the UW for
tallying?
This refers to the following message when Pine begins for the first
time, or when a new .pinerc is generated:
<<<This message will appear only once>>>
Welcome to Pine ... a Program for Internet News and Email
We hope you will explore Pine's many capabilities. From the Main Menu,
select Setup/Config to see many of the options available to you. Also
note that all screens have context-sensitive help text available.
SPECIAL REQUEST: This software is made available world-wide as a public
service of the University of Washington in Seattle. In order to justify
continuing development, it is helpful to have an idea of how many people
are using Pine. Are you willing to be counted as a Pine user? Pressing
Return will send an anonymous (meaning, your real email address will not
be revealed) message to the Pine development team at the University of
Washington for purposes of tallying.
Pine is a trademark of the University of Washington.
First-Use Statistics are generated from these messages.
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Additional Pine FAQs
15.1 Are there other Pine FAQs available?
Yes. Links to supporting Pine FAQs and other documentation are posted
on the Non-UW Pine adaptations and Resources page.
15.2 Can I contribute to these FAQs?
Yes. If you have a tip for Pine that is not yet discussed elsewhere in
the Pine documentation, and that you believe will be of value to other
Pine users, please submit it to _PIC@cac.washington.edu_ for inclusion
in this collection of questions and answers.
When submitting questions, try to make the answer as generic as
possible: Avoid references to specific versions of Pine and avoid
terminology and references that are specific to one platform or site.
If possible, references to sources of software or documentation should
be in the form of a URL pointing to the primary source.
The question and answer will be evaluated for accuracy and
appropriateness before inclusion in the collection.
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