Well here is a little something for those like me who are having trouble configuring Pine or never used pine before and would like to know how to configure it to be used with your current ISP email account.


The problem with my configuration was that i was trying to authenticate myself to send when i shouldn't have all you really need to do is download your message before hand using fetchmail and in the pine configuration all you really need is the smtp address of your isp mail server.

Now as for the fetchmail configuration it is as follows;


Downloading Your E-mail

To download whatever e-mail you have onto your system, you should use a program called fetchmail. It handles POP3 (probably what you use), IMAP, and a bunch of other protocols for e-mail transfer. For IMAP you probably want to use pine.

Set Up Your ".fetchmailrc" File

To use fetchmail, you should set up a file in your home directory called .fetchmailrc. It probably doesn't exist yet, so create it by typing pico ~/.fetchmailrc. Here's what mine looks like:

poll mail.mia.bellsouth.net proto POP3 fetchall

That will tell fetchmail to check the server mail.mia.bellsouth.net using the POP3 protocol. Since bellsouth.net marks the messages as already being seen, I have to put in the "fetchall" part to tell it to get the messages no matter what.

Note that all the options for the server are on one line.

If you want to, you can also put your password in the .fetchmailrc file. Use the "pass" option. For example, if my password were "barrel", my sample .fetchmailrc file would look like this:

poll mail.mia.bellsouth.net proto POP3 pass barrel fetchall

In the event that your password has strange characters in it, you will want to put it in quotation marks. I would not recommend putting your password in your .fetchmailrc file, because if anybody ever gets the root account on your system, they will also be able to get your password. If you're not worried about the security of your machine, and just want to get your mail with the least hassle possible, then include it.

Fill in your .fetchmailrc file with the options you need to (there are tons more options that you can view by typing man fetchmail). You should have at least the "poll" and the "proto" fields. Then save the file and exit. Once you're back at the prompt, type chmod 600 ~/.fetchmailrc.

Using Fetchmail

Now all you have to do is type fetchmail and it should prompt you for the password. It takes your username on your own machine and uses it as the login name for the account on the POP3 server. If you need to change it to get your e-mail, add the "-u" flag and then your username. So if I had to use the username jgo instead of joshuago to download my mail, my fetchmail command line would be fetchmail -u jgo instead. If you want to keep it in your .fetchmailrc file, use the option user [name].

Reading Mail

There are four major programs that I know of that you can use to read your e-mail. One is pine, the second is mutt, the third is mail, and the last is elm. I have experience through normal use only with PINE (although I like Mutt a little bit too), so that's what I'll give instructions on.

Start up PINE by typing pine at the command prompt (it works in an xterm window as well). If this is the first time that you've started up PINE, you'll have to go through the setup procedure by typing the following keys once you're in the main PINE menu: S, C. This will take you to a screen that looks like this:

PINE 4.44 SETUP CONFIGURATION Folder: INBOX 539 Messages

personal-name = Joshua
user-domain = <No Value Set>
smtp-server = mail.mia.bellsouth.net
nntp-server = <No Value Set>
inbox-path = <No Value Set: using "inbox">
incoming-archive-folders = <No Value Set>
pruned-folders = <No Value Set>
default-fcc = <No Value Set: using "sent-mail">
default-saved-msg-folder = <No Value Set: using "saved-messages">
postponed-folder = <No Value Set: using "postponed-msgs">
read-message-folder = <No Value Set>
form-letter-folder = <No Value Set>
signature-file = <No Value Set: using ".signature">
feature-list =
Set Feature Name
--- ----------------------
[ Composer Preferences ]
[ ] compose-cut-from-cursor
[ ] compose-maps-delete-key-to-ctrl-d
[ ] compose-rejects-unqualified-addrs

? Help E Exit Setup P Prev - PrevPage A Add Value % Print
C [Change Val] N Next Spc NextPage D Delete Val W WhereIs

The "user-domain" part is the part that appears after the "@" in your e-mail address. In my configuration it's configured to show my e-mail address as "jgo@local.net". As far as I know, that will just make your e-mail address appear a certain way so that people can reply. It doesn't actually use that server to send or receive mail.

Make sure the username you are using on your Linux machine is the same as the username you have on the ISP or mail provider. If you don't have that, make sure you know how to use the adduser shell script (it's a text file with commands to give to Linux to add a new user). I only use "root" to take care of local system tasks, to dial in, and to start point-to-point protocol (PPP).



I hope this helps everyone that is interested in using Pine as a email client.

* well done *