Pine

[complication]

Hello,

I have some questions on Pine.

What exactly is it, and how does it work?

How do I go about using it and installing it on my box?

Links will do.

Thanks a lot.

[Slackmonster]

I've tried and failed at getting PINE configured at work but then again I don't have more than 20 minutes to devote to it. I really like the looks of it but not really able to answer many questions on it yet.

But on to the facts! :)

Here's the pine home page... http://www.washtington.edu/pine

Here you can find documentation, news, faqs, bug fixes, older versions etc. etc. Great source for all things pine!

Pine is a mail agent and news reader all rolled into one. It supports multiple folders, filtering of incoming mail, and many many other things. Check out the pine web site for a more thorough description and a be sure to read the FAQs!! Good luck!

singlemalt

[Craig McPherson]

It's Unix's most popular e-mail client.

It's not Free Software, though, so if you're a purist, you'll want to try mutt or one of the other alternatives instead.

You install it just like anything else. It grabs your mail from /var/spool/mail (it also has built-in pop3, but I wouldn't recommend using it -- download your mail with fetchmail instead if you need to get mail from a pop3 server), and stores mail (I think) in maildir style. It might have an option to use mbox style instead, also.

[eXtremist]

Does anyone have any info on setting up fetchmail? I want to download from 3 different POP servers, then read all my mail in PINE..

[milanuk]

Another site worth checking out is Infinite Ink at www.ii.com. (http://www.ii.com.) Nancy McGough has several _very_ good tutorials on Pine and procmail.

Basically, fetchmail is pretty simple to set up. RTFM (sorry), and follow the examples. Put an entry for each isp that you want it to connect to, along w/ passwords, etc that it needs, and the syntax to tell it to deliver that mail to which ever user you want. Then, if you are feeling *****ious, you can use procmail to sort/filter that mail as it comes in, to kill spam, put mail from different ISP's in different folders, etc. The big issues w/ pine is that it is designed first and foremost to be an IMAP mail client, where the messages actually stay on the server. It is one of the _best_ clients for that. If your ISP uses pop3 instead (most do), then you need fetchmail to grab the mail and spool it locally.

Monte

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by eXtremist:
<STRONG>Does anyone have any info on setting up fetchmail?</STRONG>

If you have X on the machine, you can use fetchmailconf to generate your .fetchmailrc for you, if you're in a hurry. Or read the man page for configuration options.

The configuration file is in a rather weird "pseudo-English" format, like this:

poll popc.ipa.net with proto POP3
user cmcpher there with password zzzzzz is craig here

That line in my ~/.fetchmailrc tells fetchmail to connect to popc.ipa.net using the POP3 protocol, log in with username cmcpher and password zzzzzz (not my real password), download the mail, and put it in the mailspool of "craig" on the local system.