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\bold{Installation Notes for the AUIS-63L0-MAIL Package

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\bold{FORWARD}


This is another of several planned versions of "packages" of the 
\bold{Andrew User Interface System} (\bold{\italic{AUIS}}).  AUIS can be 
difficult to describe fully since it encompasses such a large variety of 
applications and uses.  In an effort to break this into something more 
manageable, both in size and scope, I have created this particular package 
which is aimed principally at people interested in those who are seeking a 
\bold{MULTI-MEDIA and BETTER MAIL INTERFACE}.  \italic{Messages} was the 
one of the very first MIME-compliant mailers.


This package requires that you have already installed the AUIS Word 
Processing package, auis63L0-wp.tgz.  Do not mix versions (for example, L1 
with L2), as this can result in surprising and undesirable behavior.  This 
document assumes you already have a working mail system.  I assume you 
already can send mail and have something to receive and display mail sent 
to you.  This software will do nothing for you until that works.  Think of 
this software as a better version of "elm" (for instance).


\italic{Messages} is also a MIME mailer.  It was written by the originator 
of the MIME rfc, Nathaniel Borenstein.  With \italic{messages} you can mail 
pictures and text with fonts to others who have MIME-compliant mailers.  \



Be forewarned.  The \italic{messages} program is \bold{NOT} fully 
compatible with other mailers.  It saves mail you receive as separate (and 
indexed) files in $HOME/Mailbox, rather than in a single file in $HOME/Mail 
(more on this elsewhere in the document).


Watch for a series of articles on AUIS to appear in the Linux Journal 
beginning sometime the summer of 1994.


\flushright{Terry Gliedt	\


tpg@mr.net	\


}

\bold{INSTALLATION}


This packaged is distributed as a single tar file of approximately 2.0 MB 
which will expand to approximately 4.8 MB of ADDITIONAL disk space over 
that required for the word processing package.  To install this package, do 
the following as root:


\indent{cd /

tar xzf [path]/auis63L0-mail.tgz

/usr/andrew/etc/complete-setup mail

}
This will add files to \italic{/usr/andrew} that you created earlier with 
the -wp package.



\bold{USING MESSAGES}


This assumes you already know your way around \italic{ez} - because the 
\italic{messages} program uses precisely the same menu-scheme, scroll-bars 
etc.


You MUST also have a working mail system already in place.  If you do not, 
get it working \bold{FIRST} and \bold{THEN} try out \italic{messages}. 
 Messages will not magically start making e-mail work for your system.  In 
particular this means the /etc/sendmail command works as expected.


Enter "\bold{auishelp messages}" in your \italic{xterm} for help on the 
mail system.


AUIS applications are highly tailorable for your personal needs and 
preferences.  This is especially so for the mail application, 
\italic{messages}.  After you become accustomed to \italic{messages}, you 
will want to begin enabling some of the options it provides. 
 \italic{Messages} provides its own interface for setting preferences. 
 Begin by selecting the \italic{Set Options} menu item on the \italic{Other} 
menu card.  \italic{Messages} will write the preference settings you select 
to your $HOME/preferences file.


Using \italic{messages} does not prevent you from sending mail with any 
other program or receiving mail with another program.  The only difference 
is that once you \italic{\bold{receive}} mail, the two mailers 
(\italic{messages} and \italic{elm}, for instance) will not know about the 
mail the other received.



\bold{NOW WHAT'S THIS ABOUT COMPATIBILITY?}


\italic{Messages} is part of a very complex set of software called the 
Andrew Message System (AMS).  This has the ability to act as a news reader, 
has support for bulletin boards and can deliver mail directly to other 
Andrew File System cells (without using \italic{sendmail}).  Most of this 
function has been disabled in the version you have here.


The reason for telling you this all is that in doing all this, the original 
designers chose to not keep \italic{messages} compatible with 
\italic{mail}/\italic{elm} mailers with respect to its database.  In 
conventional Un*x mailers (e.g. mail) when mail is received, it is stored 
in /usr/spool/mail/$USER as a conventional "flat" file.  All the mail is 
mashed together as one physical file.  Its up to the mailer to sort these 
out. This works fine when the file is small, but when you have 100 pieces 
of multi-media mail, each 50K in size, it starts getting unwieldy and slow.


Now when you invoke your mailer (e.g. \italic{elm}), the mailer shows you 
whats in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  When you save the mail to a folder, the 
mail is appended to some file in $HOME/Mail  (e.g. ~/Mail/tpg in my case). 
Just as with the mail in /usr/spool/mail, this is also a simple file with 
many logical files (pieces of mail) in it.  It will suffer even more from 
performance problems as you keep more and more mail around.


In the world where AUIS was developed, it is not unusal for one to have 
thousands of pieces of mail (and large multi-media mail at that). So 
another, incompatible approach was taken.  Messages keeps each individual 
piece of mail as a separate file in a folder (i.e. directory) and builds an 
index so it can quickly show whats in the folder. Each of these folders is 
kept in the directory $HOME/.MESSAGES.



\bold{SWITCHING to MESSAGES}


After you've tried \italic{messages} for a little bit, you might want to 
"convert" your existing mail to \italic{messages}.  Here's a technique I 
have found workable.  Now be careful here! This is not guarenteed to work 
in all cases. It worked for me.  Be careful.  If you don't erase any files, 
the worst case is that you will mess up some copies of mail.  Here's the 
approach I have used:


\bold{Goal}:  Get mail I have received from \italic{elm} into 
\italic{messages}


\indent{\italic{Elm} saves my mail in the folder $HOME/Mail/$USER (or 
unread mail in $HOME/Mail/received). This looks pretty much like it did 
when it was originally in /usr/spool/mail/tpg.  So the trick is to copy it 
there and tell \italic{messages} to read the "new" mail.


\description{1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  This should 
be a file of zero bytes.


2. cp $HOME/Mail/$USER /usr/spool/mail/$USER


3. Select "Read Mail" on the "messages" menu card.  This will copy the mail 
from /usr/spool/mail to $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail and show you the "new" mail. 
Just like it just arrived the first time.

}}

\bold{Goal}:  Get mail I have received by \italic{messages} back to 
something \italic{elm} understands


\indent{\italic{Elm} saves my unread mail in $HOME/Mail/received as one 
large file (just like it was in /usr/spool/mail/$USER).  \italic{Messages} 
has saved my mail in some folder like $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail as a set of 
individual files.  These files all have strange names (since you are 
normally not supposed to even look at these, that's as expected).  So 
suppose you want to "convert" all of these back to \italic{elm}? The trick 
is to copy the individual files to $HOME/Mail/received in the right format.


\description{1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  This should 
be a file of zero bytes.


2. Copy the files to /usr/spool/mail/$USER with something like the 
following:


\example{/bin/csh

cd $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail

foreach f (*)

  echo $f

  echo "From dummy Sat May 28 11:32:01 1994" >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER

  cat $f >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER

  echo "" >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER

end

}
3.  Invoke \italic{elm} (or whatever your mail reader is) and with any 
luck, they will all be recognized.

}}
Hopefully these notes will make you more comfortable with trying another 
mailer.  As long as you do not delete any mail (in either \italic{elm} or 
\italic{messages}), you still have it.  Give it a try.  I think 
\italic{messages} is by far the best mailer I have seen and I hope you'll 
agree. \




\bold{YOUR FIRST MULTI-MEDIA MAIL}


I know you're anxious to try your first multi-media mail, so we have 
something all set up for you.  Do the following:


	mkdir $HOME/Mailbox

	cp /usr/andrew/lib/Hello $HOME/Mailbox/mbox \



There is a pre-canned folder which demonstrates various aspects of 
\italic{messages}.  To see these in action, do the following:


	/usr/andrew/etc/gendemo -force ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo

	cd /usr/andrew/.MESSAGES/demo

	tar cf - . | (cd ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo; tar xf -)

	Select "Expose All" on the "Messages Folders" menucard

	Click on the "amsdemo folder"


Hold on to your chair and now enter:


	/usr/andrew/bin/messages



\bold{CHANGELOG}


Release auis63L0-mail has the following changes:


\indent{- Now based on AUIS 6.3


- An animator object called \italic{fad} is available in this package.  I 
did not have room in the -wp package and still be able to keep the tgz file 
small evough to fit  on one diskette.

}

\bold{SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW}


\description{This release was built on Slackware 1.2.0.


If you use some sort of POP server, you might want to configure 
\italic{messages} to call your POP client code (to fetch your mail) 
directly.  This can be done by setting the \bold{AMS_MailCollectionCommand} 
entry in \italic{/usr/andrew/etc/AndrewSetup}. An example of what this 
shell might look like follows (your mileage may vary):


\indent{#!/bin/csh

#

#	Bring up slip if need be

#	Get whatever mail is queued for me

#	Invoke pgm to copy from /usr/spool/mail/$USER to $HOME/Mailbox

#

if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then	# First time, bring up SLIP if you can

  /usr/local/bin/slipup

endif

#	Check if SLIP is up now.  If not this time, exit with error,

#	causing messages to generate a somewhat-bogus-looking error

if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then

  echo "SLIP connection failed."	\


  exit 2

endif

sleep 2 		# Just give it a little bit of time


#	Get mail from SLIP server

#	Option -v is verbose; -c put data to stdout; -k keep mail at MR.NET

/usr/local/bin/popclient -3 -o /usr/spool/mail/$USER -u slipuserid -p 
slippasswd sliphost.domain


#	Last step, Get mail into $HOME/Mailbox

/usr/andrew/bin/eatmail

}

Now that you are into multi-media mail, you might want to follow the 
newsgroup comp.mail.mime.


If you try \italic{messages} and get the error message "There are no 
messages in your incoming mailbox.", then you do not have /usr/andrew/bin 
on your PATH or your PATH is set up so that /usr/bin/messages is found 
before /usr/andrew/bin/messages.

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