Shawn wrote: > Hi, I'm confused. Nice to meet you... Just smack me > upside the head please. *SMACK* Feel better? ;-) > Everyone talks about using Pine, or other text based mail > programs. I was just curious as to how the text based > mail programs relate and tie in with web browsers. Maybe > it's just easier for me to use Netscape mail still. what > I'm looking at though is to be able to get mail outside of > my browser so I don't have to run netscape in the > background. That's where I was thinking of using > sendmail, besides it's already installed. Maybe Pine > would be a better option? Or, Bob had talked about one > that acts like Lookout. OK. Quick crash course you could probably get in any Mail FAQ. In order to use pine or mutt, Mail User Agents (MUA's), you have to do a number of things. They're not all that difficult to set up, but steps you have to take, none the less. Firstly, you need to retrieve your email from other sources (POP or IMAP) and deliver it to your local machine. fetchmail(1) is the best tool for this -- bar none. Used in combination with procmail(1) as your local delivery agent (LDA), it makes a powerful combination for filtering incoming mail, blocking spam, and other useful things. bash# apt-get install fetchmail procmail The next step is to send email via SMTP. If your box is behind a firewall, or if you'd like your ISP to deliver your email for you, configure your Mail Transport Agent to act as a "null client". In other words, it simply forwards mail to your "smart hub" to be delivered. A very minimalistic MTA is ssmtp(1). If you want more power, you can use MTA's such as postfix (my favorite), sendmail, exim, smail, or even qmail(in non-free, I believe). They all work fine for this capacity. I would suggest ssmtp if you're using your ISP to relay for you. bash# apt-get install ssmtp The rest, such as setup, you should be able to gather on your own through /usr/share/doc/<package> and the various HOWTO's available at http://www.linuxdoc.org. (Or, install the HOWTO's locally.) -- ^chewie Sorry about not signing my email...I can't get access to my home workstation today. CCW-20010320