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Pine: for email and Internet news

"

Links to executables are in bin directory:

text data bss dec hex filename

3083659 210676 39612 3333947 32df3b bin/pine

603980 7604 2176 613760 95d80 bin/mtest

639024 7728 9460 656212 a0354 bin/imapd

197089 5140 2588 204817 32011 bin/pico

195109 5012 2588 202709 317d5 bin/pilot

Done

"

And that's it. Now for the setup and configuration. Go ahead and read the tech-notes in the docs directory.

Okay, now run bin/pine. Hit Return if you're especially enthusiastic about Pine or haven't hit return for this screen before. To skip being counted, hit `e'.

Press `i' to look at your inbox. On a standard Linux and Pine setup, this should show up straightaway. Don't worry if it doesn't. Make sure that you have mail, and hit `msc'. That's m, followed by s, followed by c. Peer at the lower 2 lines of the screen after each key, and you'll see what we mean by "Quick keystroke reference is available on-screen".

Now you should be in the config screen. This is how Pine allows you to edit the ~/.pinerc file, which is the user's pinerc. The system pinerc can be in several places, and there may be a conf file involved, so check the tech-notes.

Okay. Make sure to set personal-name (`Satya' for us), user-domain (`satya.virtualave.net' in our case), and smtp-server (we use `localhost' as we run sendmail onthe same box).

If your mail isn't showing up in the inbox, try setting inbox-path here. These settings should be enough to get started, but read the help for all the others as well. Note, on the second last line of the screen, the help key is `?'. That's context-sensitive help. Use it often. Watch the bottom two lines at all times, there's a lot going on there.

The bin directory also holds an IMAP daemon (to which Pine can connect, to read mail on the server directly), a small text editor called `pico', a simple file browser called `pilot', and an impenetrable program `mtest' which we don't need to use.

Note: If you are already running an older version of Pine, do not install the new version! First make sure it is running satisfactorily. The usual way to do this is to rename the older executable to, for example, `pine-old' and the latest (here we have 4.33) to `pine4.33', and add a symlink:

$ ln -s pine4.33 pine