OS/2 Professional/OS2PRO194.ISO/os2/com/utils/elm/sources/readme.os2

Text File | 1992-10-04 | 12.0 KB | 315 lines

This is an OS/2 version of the ELM Mail System. It runs on OS/2
1.x and 2.x together with UUPC 1.11 and hopefully newer versions.

Elm was heavily hacked to run in this environment because it was a
*real* Unix program, with many long pathnames and Unix dependen-
cies hardcoded. I have made it independent of pathnames and
constants defined at compile time. All files of the elm system are
stored in the UUPC directory tree.

No extra environment variables have to be set for elm in additon
to those already used by the UUPC software. It checks the UUPC
system and user configuration files (usually uupc.rc and
personal.rc) pointed to by the UUPCSYSRC and UUPCUSRRC environment
variables for the UUPC location, hostname, domainname and other
information.

The LOGNAME environment variable, UUPC passwd file (if any) and
user configuration file (personal.rc) are checked for the user's
name, full name and "home directory" which could be set in passwd
to a subdirectory of the UUPC root directory for convenience.

Make sure you include the drive specification in the home
directory fields in the passwd file if you want to call elm from
another drive (don't worry about the : in the drive spec, because
it is treated specially in the passwd lines, in which the fields
are separated by : too).

The TMP environment variable is used to determine the directory
where temporary files are created.

Elm uses the termcap database and library to access the screen.
It uses the TERM (and possibly TERMCAP) environment variables and
a file called termcap.dat under OS/2.

User selection/multiple users:

- Like UUPC, elm looks for an environment variable LOGNAME which
  should contain the name of the current user. If it is not found
  elm looks into the user config file (pointed to by UUPCUSRRC)
  for the name to determine the user's incoming mailbox. The full
  name of the user and his (her) "home directory" are read from
  the passwd file in the UUPC configuration directory. If it
  cannot be found (no passwd file or no matching entry in it) and
  LOGNAME matches the name in the user config file, the full name
  and home directory are read from the user config file. If an
  entry in passwd is found for the user which owns the user config
  file, the passwd entry has precedence over the user config file.

- By setting the LOGNAME variable, you can easily switch to
  another user, if more than one user uses your OS/2 system for
  e-mail. But this does only work for elm, not for the standard
  UUPC mailer.

Restrictions:

- mailbox (folder) names are restricted to 8 characters on FAT
  file systems. If you use the save command in elm to save a
  message to the default folder (which has the same name as the
  sender, =<sender>), you will get trouble if the sender's name
  (login id in this case) exceeds 8 characters, but this is rarely
  the case. This restriction does not apply to HPFS systems.

File name changes:

Because of the 8.3. restriction on FAT file systems, the following
file names have been changed in the elm distribution. The manuals were
not changed. Have these name changes in mind when reading the
manuals. Note that /uupc is assumed as a sample UUPC directory
here, substitute your UUPC directory for it. ~ denotes your home
directory.

  EMERGENCY_MBOX               to  emergenc.mbx
  MBOX.EMERGENCY               to  emerg.mbx

  /etc/passwd                  to  /uupc/passwd
  /usr/mail/<name>             to  /uupc/mail/<name>
  /tmp/mbox.<name>             to  /uupc/elm/<name>.mbx

  [Note that /uupc/mail may be different if you change the
   MailDir= setting in the system config file.]

  /usr/local/lib/elm-help.*    to  /uupc/elm/elm-help.*
  /usr/local/lib/aliases.text  to  /uupc/elm/aliases.txt
  /usr/local/lib/aliases.hash  to  /uupc/elm/aliases.hsh
  /usr/local/lib/aliases.data  to  /uupc/elm/aliases.dat

  ~/.elm/aliases.text          to  ~/elm/aliases.txt
  ~/.elm/aliases.hash          to  ~/elm/aliases.hsh
  ~/.elm/aliases.data          to  ~/elm/aliases.dat

  ~/.elm/elmrc                 to  ~/elm/elmrc
  ~/.elm/elmheaders            to  ~/elm/elmhdrs

  ~/.elm/filter-rules          to  ~/elm/filter.rul
  ~/.elm/filterlog             to  ~/elm/filter.log
  ~/.elm/filtersum             to  ~/elm/filter.sum

  ~/.readmsg                   to  ~/current.msg

  /etc/autoreply.data          to  /uupc/elm/autorep.dat
  /etc/autoreply.log           to  /uupc/elm/autorep.log

Some other temporary and lock file names were changed as needed.

Installation:

- put elm.exe and perhaps other programs of the elm distribution
  into the directory where mail.exe and rmail.exe reside.

- Make a subdirectory ELM in the UUPC configuration directory
  (ConfDir) and put there the following files from the
  distribution:

  newalias.exe
  elmrc.inf
  elm-help.0
  elm-help.1
  elm-help.2
  elm-help.3

  You may also want to create a system alias file called
  aliases.txt here with system wide aliases. Run "newalias -g" to
  create aliases.hsh and aliases.dat in this case. See the elm
  manuals about the format of alias files.

- In your "home directory", where UUPC keeps your signature files
  and mail folders, create a subdirectory ELM too. Put there your
  personal configuration files, such as elmrc (created
  automatically when you first change options in elm and save
  them), your signature files (put their names into elmrc) and
  personal alias file aliases.txt (also created and maintained
  from within elm). The personal ELM directory is needed for every
  elm user on the system. If you don't yet have such files (i.e.
  don't have already used elm on a Unix system and are new to
  elm), don't worry, the necessary files are created by elm
  automatically.

- Make sure you have set UUPCSYSRC, UUPCUSRRC and perhaps LOGNAME
  correctly.

- Set the environment variable EDITOR to the editor you wish to use
  for editing mail and PAGER for the program you wish to use for
  viewing mail messages. This step is optional, because both programs
  can be set from within the elm options menu and are saved in the
  elm configuration file for each user.

- If you don't yet have a termcap database file installed, copy
  the termcap.dat file from the os2 subdirectory of the
  distribution to a directory where you keep configuration files
  and make sure it can be found using the PATH, DPATH or INIT
  environment variables. Note that it is named termcap.dat, not
  only termcap like under Unix.


That's all.

Elm should work now if you call it and display your mailbox. The
format of the UUPC mailbox folders is a bit different than under
Unix, because the messages are separated by lines containing only
20 ASCII 001 characters. However, elm can also read standard Unix
mailbox folders.

If you install UUPC and ELM on a LAN of OS/2 workstations, you can
install them on a shared network drive. In this case, they serve as a
local mailing system in the LAN too, with a bridge over UUPC to the
outer world.

Besides elm.exe, other programs are included with the distribution:

- answer.exe, a program for secretaries or other people not too familiar
  with computers, to send mail.
- autorep.exe and arepdaem.exe, an "answering machine" for mail.
- fastmail.exe, to send mass batch mail.
- filter.exe, to filter your incoming mail.
- from.exe, to show an overview of your mailbox contents.
- listalias.exe, to list mail aliases.
- newalias.exe, a subprogram called by elm to maintain alias files.
- newmail.exe, which can monitor a mailbox in the background and notify
  you of incoming mail. It can be copied to wnewmail.exe for a different
  behaviour, see manuals.
- readmsg.exe, to read single messages out of mailbox folders to feed
  them into other programs over pipes (such as filter.exe). It is called
  from within elm.exe too.

Documentation for the programs is included in the distribution in pre-
formatted versions in the manuals subdirectory. The .PS files are
PostScript files for the printed manuals while the .MAN files are
preformatted online manual files.

Not all of these programs make sense in a standalone setup, for which
probably only answer.exe, and filter.exe may be useful (and readmsg.exe
and newalias.exe, of course, called by elm.exe). The other programs may
be useful in LAN environments, where UUPC and ELM are used as a local
mailing system as mentioned above.

The rmail.exe included with UUPC uses forward files like sendmail and
thus allows to use filter.exe like mentioned for Unix with sendmail in
the filter manual, i.e. allows to put "|filter" in your forward file.
Put this line without the quotes in the forward file as specified in the
UUPC installation manual.

Please read the documentation in the manuals directory carefully for
further information.

The distribution contains full source code and diffs to the original
files for those who want to adapt ELM to other mailers. ELM uses
rmail.exe of UUPC in RFC-822 mode.

Please send bug reports (if any) to me.


Initial release,
March 22 1992

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bug fix release 1,
March 29 1992

Changes:

- The UUPC system config file (usually uupc.rc) is checked for more
  settings.
- The mail directory is no longer fixed but read from MailDir in
  uupc.rc.
- The passwd file is now parsed correctly.
- LOGNAME, user config file (personal.rc) and passwd usage strategy
  cleaned up and documented in README.OS2
- The missing termcap database file was added.
- Mailbox file extension of UUPC is now supported.
- A NULL pointer reference was fixed.
- PATCH01.OS2 file added which contains list of changed files
  in this bug fix release.
- Some minor other bugs fixed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bug fix release 2,
May 3 1992

Changes:

- Printing now works correctly.
- The folder listing (? at the 'c' command) now works.
- Some other minor bugs fixed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bug fix release 3,
May 26 1992

Changes:

- Parsing of mail folders corrected/enhanced.
- Forwarding of messages corrected.
- Handling of (reply to) received forwarded messages corrected.
- Support for UUPC's directory option added.
- Folder editing fixed (close current folder before calling editor).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bug fix release 4,
Aug 16 1992

Changes:

- Keyboard timeout implemented (for mailbox check)
- inclusion of ~/elm/elmhdrs fixed
- uses BSD crypt routine now for encoded mail,
  but still doesn't work to/from Unix, no idea why
- New -n option for "do not save outgoing mail", for batch mailing
- New -u option for "scan UUPC mailbox more restrictive"

Note to -u: without it, the UUPC message separators (20 times ^A)
are ignored and scanning like under Unix takes place. With -u and
if the mailbox starts with a UUPC separator (and only then), only
messages separated this way are recognized. This treats messages
correctly which are part of the body of another message.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bug fix release 5,
Oct 04 1992

Changes:

- can now compiled to 32-bit version too (with emx+gcc 0.8e)
- more cursor keys supported
- uses GNU glibc crypt (ufc) routine now for encoded mail and
  this does now really work to/from Unix systems!
- correct README.OS2 on rmail searching method
- fix some path names to use / and some to use \ depending on
  what they are used for

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Original elm authors:

   Dave Taylor, Syd Weinstein

   See the manual for regular mail and e-mail addresses.

Ported to OS/2 by:

   Kai Uwe Rommel
   Zennerstrasse 1
   D-8000 Muenchen 70
   Germany

   Phone: [phone]
   Fax:   [phone]

   E-Mail: [e-mail] (primary, but UUCP-based, i.e. a bit slow)
       [e-mail] (large mails, faster turn-around)