University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center | Search Pine Information Center 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? | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: July 15, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: November 13, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center What is...? 2.1 What is PINE? This general information on the Pine message system is also available from the main menu by pressing _?_: PineŽ 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 29, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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 UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: December 12, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: October 29, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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 _ _(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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: October 29, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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.) | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 4, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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 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". | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 29, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 4, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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" _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\. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: April 16, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 4, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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 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 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 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 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 | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: April 25, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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 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 | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: January 29, 2002 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: April 16, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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: <<>> 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: July 15, 2003 University of Washington Search | Directories | Reference Tools UW Home > UWIN > Computing and Networking > Pine Information Center > FAQs | Search Pine Information Center 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. | Search Pine Information Center UW Seal PineŽ Information Center Comments? Modified: April 4, 2002