NAME¶
mailcheck - Check multiple mailboxes and/or Maildirs for new mail
SYNOPSIS¶
mailcheck [-lbcsh] [-f rcfile]
DESCRIPTION¶
mailcheck is a simple, configurable tool that allows multiple mailboxes
to be checked for the existence of mail. For local mail, it supports both the
traditional mbox format and the newer Maildir format. Mail can also be checked
for on remote servers using either the POP3 or IMAP protocol.
Typically, one would invoke
mailcheck in /etc/profile or a user-specific
login script. E-mail junkies may also find it useful to invoke
mailcheck occasionally to check for new mail in alternate mailboxes.
The author uses
mailcheck to keep track of messages arriving in mailboxes
corresponding to several mailing lists he subscribes to.
OPTIONS¶
- -l
- Runs mailcheck in login mode. If a ~/.hushlogin file exists,
mailcheck will exit silently. This option is intended to be used on
systems that invoke mailcheck from a global login script such as
/etc/profile.
- -b
- Brief mode. Produces less verbose output. If mailbox or Maildir is inside
user's home direcory, only relative path is printed to output.
- -c
- Use more advanced counting method. While counting mails, mailcheck
looks inside mboxes and Maildirs and count new and unread messages
separately. If mbox/maildir does not contain any new or unread mail, it's
excluded from report. Produced output contains more valuable information,
but this method is more time-consuming.
- -s
- Print "no mail" summary. If no new mail message is found, print
at least "no mail message" at the end. Only makes sense in
combination with -c.
- -f
- Specify alternative rc file location. If provided, default locations (see
FILES) are not checked.
- -h
- Print short usage information.
CONFIGURATION¶
Configuring
mailcheck is simple. Upon startup,
mailcheck looks for
a file called
.mailcheckrc in the user's home directory. If that file
does not exist, the default configuration file
/etc/mailcheckrc is used
instead.
Lines beginning with a hash sign (
#) are treated as comments and will
not be processed. Lines beginning with
pop3: or
imap: are parsed
like URLs and used to connect to network mail servers. All other lines are
treated as pathnames to mailbox files or Maildir directories.
Environment variables in the format
$(NAME) will be expanded inline. For
example:
- /var/spool/mail/$(USER)
- Will check the user's mailbox in /var/spool/mail.
- $(HOME)/Mailbox
- Will check the default mailbox used by qmail installations.
When connecting to POP3 or IMAP servers, the account password is not stored in
the mailcheckrc file. Instead, the
.netrc file in the user's home
directory is used. This file, originally intended for use with
ftp(1)
and later used by
fetchmail(1), should be readable only by the user
owning it. It stores server/user/password combinations in the form:
machine
servername login
username password
password
FILES¶
- /etc/mailcheckrc
- This is the site-default mailcheck configuration file. It should be edited
by the system administrator to meet the needs of most users on the
system.
- ~/.mailcheckrc
- This is the user-specific mailcheck configuration file. If it exists for a
particular user, the site-default configuration file will not be
used.
- ~/.netrc
- This tells mailcheck what password to use for a given server/user
combination when checking POP3 or IMAP mail.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, Jefferson E. Noxon.
Portions Copyright (C) 1996, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Portions Copyright (C) 1996, Gordon Matzigkeit.
Portions Copyright (C) 1998, Trent Piepho.
Other copyrights may apply.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
On Debian GNU/Linux see /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL
AUTHOR¶
Mailcheck was written for Debian GNU/Linux by Jefferson E. Noxon
<jeff@planetfall.com>.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS¶
POP3 and IMAP support was added by Rob Funk <rfunk@funknet.net>.
Several enhancements by Tomas Hoger <thoger@pobox.sk>.
BUGS¶
It is probably not a good idea to store passwords in a .netrc file.
No SSL/TLS support for POP3 and IMAP.
SEE ALSO¶
netrc(5),
mbox(5),
maildir(5),
login(1),
fetchmail(1)