Replacement for Mail?

[Bruco]

Hi there, excuse my newb-ness.

I have a FreeBSD 6.3 box at work I just use for monitoring some things. I ssh to it, no GUI is installed or anything.

I use mail to view messages from cron and that sort of thing, but that's it. I don't create or send mail through SMTP or anything like that.

Anyway, mail feels kind of clunky to me, and I was wondering if people used alternatives for what I'm doing, which doesn't require SMTP or anything, just viewing that system-generated mail?

Thanks.

[stukov]

mutt? pine?

[scottro]

I haven't used pine in years. You can install mutt-lite or mutt-devel-lite. Then, when you log in, just type
mutt
The first time, it will offer to create a mailbox in your $HOME directory which is fine. After that, when you log in and type mutt, the first thing it will check is system messages.

I would guess it's lighter than pine, though I'm not sure.

[Carpetsmoker]

pine is deprecated, use it's successor, alpine.

mutt works very well for me.

[Bruco]

Thanks, guys. I'll check out mutt. Also I meant to put this in the Ports and Packages forum, I apologize.

[phoenix]

Even better solution is to configure /etc/aliases to direct root's mail to your e-mail address. Then you can use whatever e-mail program you like. :) Just be sure to have some kind of queue-runner process in place to forward e-mail to your mail server.

We haven't had mail sit on a server for several years now. It's a lot easier to check one mailbox than to ssh to a bunch of different servers and read mail on them. :)

[TerryP]

I use mail (I believe it is actually mailx in FreeBSDs case, anyone feel free to correct me) and have thought about using it for regular e-mail on occasion...


It's simple enough that it fits into the category of /bin/ed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_%28Unix%29) but is useful in a pinch.


Mutt which seems to be very highly recommended here 0.o, is without a doubt the best MUA available -- if you are willing to put up with having to install it on the machine rather then using mail, you won't be displeased once you learn how to use it. You might even find yourself using mutt for regular e-mail as well if you use it enough !


I've always considered the lit' mutt the vim of MUA's ;-)

[scottro]

Might as well spam my page on mutt.
http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/mutt.html

[Carpetsmoker]

An update to Scott's page:

gmail now also supports IMAP, which is much better than POP3 IMO .. See:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695&topic=13294
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78799

For mutt that would be:
set spoolfile = "imaps://imap.gmail.com"
set imap_user = "myname@gmail.com"
set imap_pass = "mypass"

[unicyclist]

Does Mail(x) have a way to forward email and also to print email? I read the man page, but if it is there, I sure overlooked it :(

I use mutt but have wondered about Mail abilities.