LINUX mailx 5.3b is a nice, lean user agent
for use with smail and sendmail. Use instead
of elm (or as an adjunct). Source and binary

LINUX mailx 5.3b is a nice, lean user agent
for use with smail and sendmail. Use instead
of elm (or as an adjunct). Source and binary
(Copyright (C) 1993 Ian Jackson.
Copyright (C) Scott Adkins.
Copyright (C) The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley.

This program, a derivative work of mailx-5.3a, itself a derivative
of BSD mailx, both of which are under the BSD copyright, is hereby
placed under the protection of the GNU General Public Licence,
version 2 or later, at your option.

See the file COPYING in your Linux distribution and the copyright
notices at the top of the C source files for more details.

Note that this program comes with NO WARRANTY.

- Ian Jackson , 30th June 1993).


Well, after getting sick of the original mail program that was
supplied by the SLS distribution, and the fact that I prefer *not*
to use menu operated mail programs such as Elm, I then decided to
port the Berkeley Mail program, aka mailx. It is much nicer and
works pretty well. I will continue to work on a few more problems I
have found with it before asking Peter to replace his mail program
with this version.

I will do my best to support the Linux version of this program. For
any bug reports or questions, send mail to "[email protected]".

Note that this is a Linux-only version. I had to change some of
the source and hack at it for awhile in order to get it to compile
and to compile cleanly. I fixed some problems that I found in the
source, some were bad logic errors, and others were syntax errors
that miraculously worked anyway. I provided the source for those
people who feel the need to compile before installing the package.
It should compile without warnings, since I spent a lot of time
working on this aspect of compilation. Also, once again stressing
that this is a Linux-only version, I removed some unecessary files
and changed the source so that it will no longer compile on other
systems. If you want to use it for other systems, get the source
elsewhere.

I make no guarantees as to whether this package will work on your
system or not, but if it doesn't, then recompiling the source for
Linux should not be too bad, since I provided the source.


To install:

1) If you are just installing the binaries, then change to the "bin"
directory (while su or root) and type "make install". There
is a statically linked binary (Mail-static), in case you have
problems with the version of the shared libraries you are using.
Otherwise I recommend you delete Mail-static and use the
dynamically linked version - you'll need libc.4.3.3 or above.

2) If you wish to recompile the sources before installing, then
change to the "src" directory and type "make". Once the sources
are compiled, then you can type "make install" (while su or root).
Before compiling, you may wish to look at v7.local.h for some
pathnames and definitions. The binaries will be linked to use
the shared libraries. To make them statically linked, just use
the appropriate CFLAGS line in the Makefile.


Changes made to source for Linux:

1) I had to include a copy of a modified /usr/include/sys/wait.h header
file after I discovered a missing line that should have been in it.
The line has to do with the wait union, and was necessary for the
program to compile.

2) I changed the calls to signal from integer types to void * types
with respect to the second argument.

3) Several functions were not available, so I either changed them or
commented them out. The functions are as follows:
chsize(), fwalk(), gtty(), zalloc() and maybe some others

4) I changed the v7.local.h file to have more reasonable names and
paths suitable to most people.

5) Added "set indentprefix" capability to the package, and also included
it in the default Mail.rc files.

6) Added code to main() and in lock.c to do allow safe (I hope!)
installation setgid to group mail.
- [email protected], 30th June 1993



What this version expects:

1) The mail deliverer is /usr/bin/smail.
2) The default editor is /usr/bin/vi.
3) The default shell is /bin/sh.
4) The default pager is /usr/bin/more.
5) The mail spool is in /usr/spool/mail.
6) It looks for the some files in /usr/lib:
Mail.rc, Mail.help, and Mail.help.~

If you are using sendmail instead of smail, then the easiest thing to do
is make a symbolic link as follows:

cd /usr/bin; ln -s /usr/bin/sendmail smail

Otherwise, recompile the source with the correct path (which is the better
option anyway).


Well, have fun!
Scott Adkins
[email protected]