Re: problems with "mail"

[Jordi Mallach]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 11:24:41PM +0200, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
> Could you please tell me which snapshot you are using (the last
> modification date from the ChangeLog)? It is evolving
> rather quickly :^) 

It's 20020326. Jeff, if you're reading, mailutils-doc is missing the
upstream changelog.

> The 'composition-terminating' character is controlled by the boolean
> variable 'dot'. If it is set, then typing dot on a line alone
> terminates the letter. Otherwise, mail expects end-of-file
> character (C-D) to terminate the letter. So, in your case, it will
> suffice to add
> 
>       set dot
> 
> to your /etc/mail.rc or ~/.mailrc.

Oh, cool. If it should be the default setting (mailx accepts both by
default, or maybe it's the Debian default setting), I don't know.
I've learned to be happy with EOF now, tho :)

> > In short, I haven't been able.
> > While mailx would show my mail in /var/mail/jordi just invoking it with
> > "mail", mailutils seems to only look after ~/mbox by default.
> That is, when you run mail with no arguments it opens ~/mbox, right?
> OK, I'll check it.

Yes, but I have no such file, all my mail is in /var or ~/Mail

> > If I use the -f switch, it completely ignores it:
> > 65563:address@hidden:~$ mail -f /var/mail/jordi
> This is a very frequent mistake, unfortunately. In mailutils' mail
> an argument to --file (-f) is optional, therefore it must follow
> -f option without intervening whitespace.

Oh, I see. Would it do harm to parse it with spaces between the option
and the value? It may misslead users (hey, maybe I'm just very careless
:)

> > 65565:address@hidden:~$ mail --file=3D/var/mail/jordi=20
> > Can not read mailbox
> Very alarming. I will try to reproduce the situation on my box.
> Did you use any special options when configuring the package?

Doesn't seem so.

        cd $(BUILD_TREE) && ./configure --prefix=/usr \
        --infodir=/usr/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc \
        --mandir=/usr/share/man --with-gdbm \
        --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)

I guess you've discovered that -f isn't working anyway:
65587:address@hidden:...mailutils-20020326/debian$ mail -f/var/mail/jordi  
mail (mailutils) 0.0.9c, Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
mail is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
Send bug reports to <address@hidden>.
Can not read mailbox

Same error as with --file

> > There's also Debian Bug#139678, which says that the -m long option name
> > "--maildir", is confusing. I agree. I wish the option was called
> > --mailspool or --spooldir or whatever, so it doens't clash with the
> > Maildir format.
> Agreed. This is quite reasonable.

Cool :)

> Thank you.

To you all, for quick reaction :)

Jordi
-- 
Jordi Mallach Pérez || address@hidden || Rediscovering Freedom,
   aka Oskuro in    || address@hidden      || Using Debian GNU/Linux
 Reinos de Leyenda  || address@hidden          || http://debian.org

http://sindominio.net  GnuPG public information:      pub  1024D/917A225E 
telnet pusa.uv.es 23   73ED 4244 FD43 5886 20AC  2644 2584 94BA 917A 225E

pgpjP7bvmo8o1.pgp
Description: PGP signature