MH Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with Answers

Archive-name: mail/mh-faq/part1
Last-modified: $Date: 2005-10-10 18:43:39 -0700 (Mon, 10 Oct 2005) $
Version: $Revision: 7385 $
Posting-Frequency: monthly

This is a living list of frequently asked questions on the mailer
user interface, Mail Handler, or MH. The point of this is to
circulate existing information, and avoid rehashing old answers.
Better to build on top than start again. Please read this document
before ever posting to this newsgroup.

This article is posted monthly. If it has already expired and
you're not reading this, you can hope that you saved the
instructions to retrieve the FAQ (see "Where can I get MH") so that
you can get a copy through other means.

Please do not post an answer when someone posts a frequently asked
question; rather, email the relevant section of the FAQ to eliminate
unnecessary traffic in this newsgroup.

This list depends on your comments, additions and fixes: please send
them to Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>.

Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2001, 2004, 2005 Bill Wohler

Permission to use, copy, distribute, and translate this document for
any non-commercial purpose is hereby granted, provided that this
copyright notice appears in all copies. Commercial distributions
require prior written consent.

This article is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Table of Contents
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 11:29:16 -0800

Legend: + new, - deleted, ! changed
__________________

01.00 Introduction

01.01 Why should I use MH?
!01.02 What is the current version/status of MH?
01.03 Where can I get MH?
01.04 What references exist for MH?
01.05 What other MH software is available?
01.06 How can I print a MH manual?
01.07 How should I report bugs?
01.08 How can I convert from my mailer to MH?
+01.09 What is the copyright status of nmh?
_________________

02.00 Building MH

02.01 What machines does MH run on?
02.02 How do I build MH?
02.03 What options should I use?
02.04 What do I need to do to use POP?
02.05 Does MH support IMAP?
02.06 Why does "mailgroup mail" only affect inc and not slocal?
02.07 How can I build MH on Solaris 2?
02.08 How can I build MH on Linux?
02.09 How can I build MH on IRIX?
02.10 How can I get MH to interpret the Content-Length field?
02.11 How do I build MH on HP-UX?
02.12 Can I prevent adding the local hostname to addresses behind firewalls?
02.13 Is there a patch to fix this or that?
02.14 How can I build MH on OS/2?
02.15 Do any POP/IMAP servers handle MH format?
02.16 How can I build MH on Windows?
02.17 How can I build MH on a Mac?
________________________

03.00 Scanning & Reading

03.01 What do I do if scan shows the wrong date?
03.02 How would one go about reading Usenet with MH?
03.03 How can I search through multiple folders?
03.04 Why don't MH format commands such as %(friendly) work?
03.05 Why doesn't "show" display all of a MIME message?
03.06 Can I get show not to run "less" so much on MIME messages?
03.07 Why do I get "mhn: don't know how to display content"?
03.08 How can I automatically delete MH backup files?
03.09 Fixing "cannot fopen and lock /var/spool/mail/(user)"
03.10 Can I read my mail with a Web browser?
03.11 How can I run inc automatically with POP?
03.12 Why does inc hang (on Sun)?
03.13 How can I get POP to work?
03.14 How do I persuade mhshow (mhn) not to bring up a new window?
03.15 How do I turn off of all the mhshow (mhn) prompts?
03.16 Why is inc splitting messages improperly?
03.17 Can MH thread messages?
03.18 How can I avoid reading the HTML version of the message?
03.19 How do I view or save attachments?
03.20 How do I view HTML attachments with Netscape?
03.21 Fixing folders: unable to allocate storage for msgstats
03.22 How do I recursively list message attachments?
+03.23 Why do folder and flist overlook some of my sub-folders?
____________

04.00 Filing

04.01 Can I append MH messages to a Unix mailbox format file?
04.02 Can I append MH messages to a GNU Emacs rmail BABYL-format file?
04.03 Why do I get ".../.mh_sequences is poorly formatted?"
04.04 How can you save News articles into an MH folder?
04.05 Are there any good tools to archive MH messages?
04.06 How can I remove duplicate messages?
04.07 How can I remove holes in numbering?
__________________________

05.00 Composing & Replying

05.01 Why does repl add a "Re:" to a message that already has one?
05.02 How do I include messages in repl with or without ">"?
05.03 How can I eliminate duplicate copies of letters to myself?
05.04 How can I include my signature?
05.05 How do I call my editor with arguments?
05.06 How can I digestify messages in a folder for mail to another user?
05.07 How can I change my return address?
05.08 How can I change my From header?
05.09 How can I save a copy of all messages I send?
05.10 Can the folder in Fcc: be dynamically specified?
05.11 Can I post secure/encryped mail?
05.12 How can I send multi-media (MIME) attachments?
05.13 What's the best way to send mail to a long list of people?
05.14 What is the Dcc header?
05.15 How can I make sense of the replcomps file?
05.16 How can I convert quoted-printable to 8bit in quoted text in replies?
05.17 Can I have aliases include aliases?
05.18 Why doesn't mhmail understand aliases?
05.19 How do I send blind carbon copies?
05.20 When I forward a message, can I use its Subject?
05.21 Why is the timezone field in my 'Date:' field wrong?
05.22 Can I automate the comp -editor mhn process?
05.23 How can I remove those "=20" characters when forwarding?
05.24 Can I use mh-format substitution with forw?
05.25 How can I keep repl from breaking long lines?
_____________

06.00 Posting

06.01 What to do with "Problems with edit - draft removed".
06.02 Can I run my message through a program (e.g., ispell) before sending?
06.03 What to do with "bad address 'xxx' - no at-sign after local-part".
06.04 Fixing "post: problem initializing server; [BHST] no servers available"
06.05 Fixing "post: problem initializing server; [RPLY] 503 Sender
already specified"
06.06 Fixing "post: unexpected response; [BHST] no socket opened"
06.07 How do I fix the "X-Authentication-Warning" header?
06.08 Fixing "post: unexpected response; [RPLY] 503 Need MAIL
before RCPT"
06.09 Fixing "post: problem initializing server; [BHST] premature
end-of-file on socket"
06.10 Fixing "Sender didn't use the HELO protocol"
06.11 Fixing "post: problem initializing server; [RPLY] 553 Local
configuration error, hostname not recognized as local
__________________

07.00 Mail Filters

07.01 What mail filters are available?
07.02 Why slocal writes messages to system mailbox that from(1) can't read.
07.03 Where can I read about slocal and the format of .maildelivery?
07.04 How do I debug my .maildelivery file?
07.05 Why isn't slocal working?
07.06 Are there any good biff applications for MH?
07.07 How do I read new messages filed by procmail?
__________

08.00 MH-E

08.01 I have a question about MH-E
_________

09.00 Xmh

09.01 How can I get xmh to use Emacs as the editor?
09.02 Does xmh support subfolders?
09.03 How do I precede included messages with ">" when replying in xmh?
________

Appendix

Glossary & Acknowledgments
Switching xmh's editor
babyl2mh.pl
inco - babyl to MH converter
t2h - add hyperlinks to message viewed
srvrsmtp.c patch
IRIX config file
HP-UX 10.20 config file
Removing duplicate messages (Bourne)
Removing duplicate messages (Perl)
Removing duplicate messages (Perl)

------------------------------

Subject: Viewing This Article
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 14:44:19 -0800

To skip to a particular question with Subject or number xx, use
"/^S.*xx" with most pagers. In GNU Emacs type "M-C-s ^S.*xx", (or
C-r to search backwards), followed by ESC to end the search.

To skip to new or changed questions, use "/^S.*[!+]" with most pagers and
"M-C-s ^S.*[!+]" in GNU Emacs.

This article is in digest format. nn may have already broken this
message into separate articles; if not, then type "G %". In rn, use
^G to skip sections.

This article is treated as an outline when edited by GNU Emacs. Run
"M-x describe-mode" to see available outline-mode commands. Useful
commands are "M-x hide-body", "C-c C-s" (show-subtree) and "M-x
show-all"

Check out the Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive (see "What references
exist for nn?"). Files available by ftp, man pages, and other Web
pages, as well as cross-references like the one in this paragraph
are just a click away.

A "Date" field whose time is 00:00:00 is approximate. The month and
year in these fields represent the time they were added to the FAQ,
rather than when they were contributed by the author, as is the case
since November, 1995.

If you should need the Internet address, use nslookup or dig if you
have them, or send mail to <dns at grasp.insa-lyon.fr> with
"help" for a Subject.

References to $MHLIB refer to the directory that contains MH support
files and routines. This directory is usually /usr/lib/mh or
/usr/local/lib/mh (or /usr/local/nmh/lib or /etc/nmh for nmh). Do
not use $MHLIB literally; use the real, absolute path to your MH
library directory.

There are slight differences between the original MH and nmh. In the
text, the nmh command or filename is preferred, and the MH
equivalent is placed in parenthesis. For example, the MH
configuration is in $MHLIB/mts.conf (mtstailor); mhshow (mhn -show)
is used to view attachments.

Note that due to bottom feeding email address harvesting spam scum,
mailto links have been removed and @s in addresses have been
replaced by "at."

------------------------------

Subject: 01.00 ***** Introduction *****
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

------------------------------

Subject: 01.01 Why should I use MH?
From: Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

The MH message handling system is a set of electronic mail programs
in the public domain. If your computer runs Unix, it can probably
run MH.

The big difference between MH and most other "mail user agents" is
that you can use MH from a Unix shell prompt. In MH, each command
is a separate program, and the shell is used as an interpreter. So,
all the power of Unix shells (pipes, redirection, history, aliases,
and so on) works with MH--you don't have to learn a new interface.
Other mail agents have their own command interpreter for their
individual mail commands (although the mush mail agent simulates a
Unix shell).

Because MH commands aren't part of a monolithic mail system, you can
use them at any time; you don't have to start or quit the mail
agent. Because you use them from a shell prompt, you can use all
the power of the shell.

If your shell has time-saving aliases or functions (and most do),
you'll be able to use them with MH, of course. And because MH isn't
a monolithic mail agent, you can use MH commands in Unix shell
scripts, or call them from programs in high-level languages like C.

Unlike most mail agents, MH keeps each message in a separate file.
The filename is the message number. To rearrange the messages, MH
just changes the filenames. MH can use standard Unix file system
operations such as removing, copying and linking messages. The
message files are grouped into one or more folders, which are
actually Unix directories.

MH is free, powerful, flexible--and the basics are easy to learn.

------------------------------

Subject: !01.02 What is the current version/status of MH.
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:51:02 -0700

The current official version of MH is 6.8.3, although a beta of
6.8.4 is available.

This version includes MIME, a multi-media MH package that implements
the new IETF work on Multi-media 822 (MIME). This allows you to
include things like audio, graphics, and the like, in your mail
messages. --Marshall Rose <mrose at dbc.mtview.ca.us>

MH now works with Kerberos as well.

In addition, a new program called mhparam extracts arguments from
.mh_profile which is useful in shell scripts.

Please see the file CHANGES in the distribution for more details.

Due to the languishing state of MH, Richard Coleman <coleman at
math.gatech.edu> created another version of MH called nmh based upon
MH 6.8.3. He added GNU autoconf to ease installation considerably
and fixed several bugs and inconsistencies. Doug Morris <doug at
mhost.com. hosted the web site, mailing lists, web pages, and CVS
repository for a long time. Ken Hornstein <kenh at pobox.com> picked
up the torch in 2002 and moved development to Savannah where Jon
Steinhart <nmh at fourwinds.com> joined him as a project maintainer.
See http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/. The stable version of nmh is 1.0.4,
but 1.1-RC4 is also available. The file DIFFERENCES in the nmh
distribution contains an ever-growing list of differences between
nmh and MH.

GNU mailutils (version 0.6) is a collection of mail-related
utilities. At the core of mailutils is libmailbox, a library which
provides access to various forms of mailbox files (including remote
mailboxes via popular protocols and MH). See
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailutils/.

------------------------------

Subject: !01.03 Where can I get MH?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 21:05:17 -0700

MH comes standard with:

Berkeley Software Design BSD/386 . . . . MH 6.8.3
Control Data Corp. CDC4680-MP . . . . . . EMH 1.4.2 (modified MH)
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . nmh 1.1-RC3
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . mailutils 0.6.1
DEC Ultrix 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.5
DEC Ultrix 4.2A.4 . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.7.1
DEC OSF/1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.7
Evans and Sutherland ES/OS 2.3 . . . . . MH 6.6
FreeBSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.8.4
IBM PS/2 AIX 1.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.4
IBM RISC System/6000 AIX 3.x and 4.x . . MH 6.6
MIPS RISC/OS 4.52 . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.6
Red Hat Linux (3.0.3, 4.0 and 4.1) . . . MH 6.8.3
SGI Irix 6.2 Freeware 2.0 CDROM . . . . . MH 6.8.3
Sony NEWS-OS 4.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . MH 6.7.2
Tektronix UTek . . . . . . . . . . . . . MH (Version Unknown)
Table maintained by: "James R. Hamilton" <jrh at interlog.com>

Download MH:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/...1.1-RC4.tar.gz 761kB
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-6.8.tar.Z 2MB
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/mh/mh-6.8.tar.Z 2MB
ftp://ftp.efd.lth.se/pub/mail/mh-6.8.3.tar.gz 1.3MB
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/updates/MH.6.8.4.Z 46kB

Download GNU mailutils:

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mailutils/mailutils-0.6.tar.gz 2.7MB

------------------------------

Subject: 01.04 What references exist for MH?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:21:51 -0700

The Web:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/
http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailutils/
http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/

Books:
MH & xmh: E-mail for Users & Programmers. Third edition. Jerry
Peek, with Bill Wohler and Brent Welch.
ISBN 1-56592-093-7. 738 pages.
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Out of print as of August, 1996.

References to "the MH book" in this document refer to the third
edition of this book (section numbers for the second edition
appear in parentheses). Links to the online edition are to the
updated third edition at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/.

This book is also available online in the following locations:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/ (western USA, Web)
http://www.tac.nyc.ny.us/mirrors/mh-book/ (eastern USA, Web)
http://www.fan.net.au/mirrors/freebooks/mh/ (Australia, Web)
http://www.huygens.org/~eijk/mh_book/ (the Netherlands, Web)
http://www.funet.fi/index/MH/book/ (Finland, Web)
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/book/index.htm (western USA, FTP)
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/index/MH/book/index.htm (Finland, FTP)

Examples from this book are in:
ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/oreilly/n...h/MHxmh3.tar.Z 114k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/book/download/MHxmh3.tar.Z (updated) 115k

There is another book that contains a number of examples of
advanced mail handing using MH as the example message handler.
It's also quite a good reference on email in general.

The Internet Message. Marshall T. Rose
ISBN 0-13-092941-7. 396 pages.
P T R Prentice Hall

Papers:
MHN Tutorial by Jerry Sweet
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/contrib...-tutorial.ps.Z 141k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/contrib...tutorial.tex.Z 48k

Usenet:
comp.mail.mh
gmane.mail.exmh.devel
gmane.mail.exmh.user
gmane.mail.mh-e.announce
gmane.mail.mh-e.devel
gmane.mail.mh-e.user
gmane.mail.nmh.devel

Mailing lists:
There are three mailing lists for nmh: nmh-announce, nmh-workers,
and nmh-commits. See:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=nmh

The page for each list contains a link to the archives.

MH-users archives:
The files are in packf(1) format, compressed with compress(1). To
get them, use anonymous ftp and set "binary" transfer mode.

current archive, uncompressed:
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.mbox

ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.95.Z 1724k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.95.scan.Z 113k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.94.Z 1669k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.94.scan.Z 57k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.93.Z 1507k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.93.scan.Z 51k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.92.Z 1251k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.92.scan.Z 43k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.91.Z 858k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.91.scan.Z 36k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.90.Z 393k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.90.scan.Z 21k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.89.Z 89k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.89.scan.Z 5k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.88.Z 178k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.88.scan.Z 11k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.87.Z 54k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.87.scan.Z 3k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/mh-users.86.Z 8k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-user...sers.86.scan.Z 771

There are directions in ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/mh-users/README.
Basically, you can use either "msh" or the individual commands
"inc -file" to get the messages into a folder, and then "scan",
"pick", "show", and so on (or your favorite commands in xmh, MH-E,
etc.). --Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>

Achim Bohnet <ach at rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de> has created an
excellent indexed version of the archive, plus some other archives
besides.

http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de...ists/mh-users/
http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de...ng-lists/exmh/
http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de...ists/procmail/
http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de...lists/mhonarc/

This document:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/mh-faq.../preamble.html
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-di...faq/part1.html

MH-E documentation:
GNU Emacs 19.29 comes with a version of MH-E that now includes
online (Texinfo) documentation. Try "C-h i m mh-e RET". It is
also available online at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/mh-e/.
See also "What other MH software is available?" to see where you
can get the latest version of MH-E which includes the
documentation sources.

exmh:
The FAQ is available at http://www.beedub.com/exmh/exmh-faq.html.
The online exmh sections from the MH book can be found at

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/exmh/tocs/jump.htm.

Signature and Finger FAQ:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/signature-faq/

------------------------------

Subject: 01.05 What other MH software is available?
From: Stephen Gildea <gildea at stop.mail-abuse.org>, Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 21:20:57 -0700

MH-E is the Emacs interface to the MH mail system. It offers all the
functionality of MH, the visual orientation and simplicity of use of
a GUI, and full integration with Emacs and XEmacs, including
thorough configuration and online help.

MH-E allows one to read and process mail very quickly: many commands
are single characters; completion and smart defaults are used for
folder names and aliases. With MH-E you compose outgoing messages in
Emacs. This is a big plus for Emacs users, but even non-Emacs users
have been known to use MH-E after only learning the most basic
cursor motion commands.

Additional features include:

* attractive text rendering with font lock
* composition and display of MIME body parts
* display of images and HTML within the Emacs frame
* folder browsing with speedbar
* threading
* ticking messages
* lightning-fast full-text indexed searches of all of your email
* virtual folders to view ticked and unseen messages, search results
* multiple personalities
* signing and encrypting
* spam filter interaction
* XFace, Face header field support

The GNU Emacs distribution includes MH-E.

MH-E is maintained at SourceForge:

http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/

From: Chris Menzel <cmenzel at philebus.tamu.edu>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 10:02:38 -0600

The terminal-oriented, fast, and powerful mutt mail client not only
supports the MH mail format but also supports .mh_sequences files,
providing a robust interface to MH. It is also amazingly
configurable and is very adept at handling MIME attachments and HTML
mail.

Unlike MH, the displayed message numbers do not necessarily
correspond to the message filenames. This makes threading and
sorting lightning fast but slower to display very large folders.

http://www.mutt.org/

From: Brent Welch <welch at acm.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:42:15 -0800

EXMH is a user interface for the MH mail system written in TCL/TK.

Exmh has MIME support, color feedback in the scan listing, a folder
display with one label per folder, clever scan caching, facesaver
bitmap display; background inc, various inc styles, searching over
folder listing and message body, a dialog-box interface to MH pick,
a simple built-in emacs-like editor, interfaces to other editors,
user preferences, user hacking support. For more info or to obtain
exmh, see:

http://exmh.sourceforge.net/

From: "Eric D. Friedman" <friedman at hydra.acs.uci.edu>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 22:52:44 -0800

Mhtake is a perl script that lets you add people to your mail
aliases file by typing mhtake [message #].

http://orion.oac.uci.edu/~friedman/mhtake.txt

From: Steinar Bang <sb at metis.no>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 13:51:08 +0100

Mew (an Emacs interface to MH that has MIME and PGP capabilities) is
found at:

ftp://ftp.aist-nara.ac.jp/pub/elisp/...current.tar.gz

[MH-E has had these capabilities since version 7.0 so mew is
obsolete if you use MH-E.--Ed]

From: James Perkins <jamesp at sp-eug.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

Vmh is designed for people using the bulletin-board features of MH,
where mail is stored in packed (single-file) folders. As a result,
use of this program cannot be mixed with the use of normal MH
commands. Vmh is a part of the official MH distribution.

From: James Perkins <jamesp at sp-eug.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

Xmh is a X11 mouse-based MH browsing tool. It is very powerful and
feature-filled and thus comes with a moderate learning curve. Its
dependence on the X11 environment makes it very reconfigurable, but
only by people well-versed in X applications programming. Its
message reply built-in-editor interface is not always popular among
those used to having MH bring up the editor of their choice.

Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

xmh is part of the standard X Window System distribution from the X
Consortium. Ultrix also ships dxmail which is similar.

ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/xmh.shar.Z 162k

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <hta at boheme.er.sintef.no>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

Here's a version of xmh that includes MIME.

ftp://aun.uninett.no/pub/mail/mixmh/mixmh-0.3.tar.Z 232k

From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb at thumper.bellcore.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 19:04:51 -0800

Metamail is a package that can be used to convert virtually ANY
mail-reading program on Unix into a multi-media mail-reading
program. It is an extremely generic implementation of MIME
(Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), the proposed standard for
multi-media mail formats on the Internet. The implementation is
extremely flexible and extensible, using a "mailcap" file mechanism
for adding support for new data formats when sent through the mail.
At a heterogeneous site where many mail readers are in use, the
mailcap mechanism can be used to extend them all to support new
types of multi-media mail by a single addition to a mailcap file.

The metamail distribution comes complete with a small patch for each
of over a dozen popular mail reading programs, including Berkeley
mail, mh, Elm, Xmh, Xmail, Mailtool, Emacs Rmail, Emacs VM, Andrew,
and others. Note that the MH patches are now integrated into MH 6.8.

ftp://ftp.bellcore.com/pub/nsb/mm2.7.tar.Z

From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist at perl.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 22:55:24 -0800

Plum is a highly configurable and extensible screen-oriented
front-end for processing MH mail on ASCII terminals. Unlike MH-E,
the extension language used in plum is perl, not LISP. Plum offers
many of the advantages of xmh, but lacks several of xmh's
disadvantages. The look&feel derives more from vi than from emacs.
Key bindings and functions may be changed on the fly to suit the
user's preference. It offers filename and word completion on folder,
variables, and command names.

Until it is included in the standard distribution (under
miscellany), you can find a copy on:

http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Chri...cripts/plum.gz 29k

or mail requests to Tom

From: Jerry Sweet <jsweet at irvine.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0800

Mhunify is a set of perl scripts and templates that provides
shell-level MH functionality with USENET news. Since MH supports
MIME, MIME-format news articles just work. I've found that being
able to handle news in the same way that I handle email is very
useful, although there are some tradeoffs.

Mhunify also treats MH folders just like news groups. If you
subscribe to several mailing lists, and your email is automatically
delivered to separate folders, say, via procmail or via MMDF's
.maildelivery, the mhunify package lets you progress automatically
through your folders just as you would news groups.

ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/contrib...hunify.shar.gz

From: Dale Carstensen <dlc at c3file.c3.lanl.gov>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0800

olmh is a demo for OLIT (Open Look Interface Toolkit, the Open Look
wrapper to Xt) in Sun's Open Windows 3 that does handle 3rd and
subsequent levels of nesting of folders.

Obtain the Open Windows 3 distribution CD/ROM from Sun (SPARC only).
To do this, call 1-800-USA-4SUN and send tone "2" for telemarketing
after it answers. The 4.1.2 CD/ROM may also have Open Windows 3. The
list price for the 4.1.2 CD/ROM is $200.

From: James Perkins <jamesp at sp-eug.com>
Date: Sun, 1 May 1994 00:00:00 -0800

Vmail is a curses-based, vi-like message browser which calls on MH
programs to manipulate mail. It can be used on almost any terminal.
It organizes mail folders into index pages, from which a message can
be selected to be shown, replied-to, forwarded, refiled, deleted,
and so on. The vi-like interface and command keystrokes are
comfortable to less-experienced Unix users, and it is a small,
compact program, unlike the MH-E Emacs package.

This version of vmail has been bugfixed and enhanced from the
original vmail published on the net in 1987 by J. Zobel.

ftp://ftp.uu.net/comp.sources.unix/v...vmail/part0*.Z 46k
ftp://ftp.ucs.ubc.ca/pub/mh/vmail.[1-3]of3.Z 58k

Or mail requests to James.

From: James Perkins <jamesp at sp-eug.com>
Date: Sun, 1 May 1994 00:00:00 -0800

vmailtool may be for you if you have a Sun workstation. It is a
button gadget panel for the above-mentioned vmail program. It brings
vmail into the windows era where people no longer need to memorize
specific command keystrokes. It also provides a mail icon with the
flag that pops up when new mail arrives. Again, this is a compact,
simple tool, unlike the powerful xmh program. Still, it's a welcome
alternative for many people who are running SunView or OpenWindows.

ftp://ftp.ucs.ubc.ca/pub/mh/vmailtool.Z 18k

or mail requests to James.

MMH, My Mail Handler, is a Motif interface for reading and sending
mail. It uses the MH commands to actually handle sending a receiving
messages. It does not support all the capabilities of MH, but offers
a large enough subset to handle the majority of users. Its intended
user is someone between "bumbling email novice" and "sophisticated
user". Hooks are provided to allow the user to customize and add new
commands.

ftp://ftp.eos.ncsu.edu/pub/bill/bill.tar.Z 120k

From: Andrew Waugh <ajw at mel.dit.csiro.au>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

X.500 lookups: If a name is enclosed in square brackets, when
entering a destination address:

To: [Greg Wickham,CSIRO]

a search will be made in the X.500 Directory for the individual's
entry. If an address exists then it will be extracted and placed
into the headers. Mail requests for the software to the author.

From: Barbara Dyker <dyker at teal.csn.org>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

QuemeMH is an email based service request and tracking system
based on the Rand Mail Handler.

ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/sys.../queuemh.tar.Z 98k

From: <info at rootgroup.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 00:00:00 -0800

Qmh is an MH-based group mail management tool. Written entirely in
perl, Qmh combines the best aspects of MH with group mail heuristics
and delivers a sensible package for all levels of Unix users. A
limitless number of individual queues and associated groups of
permitted users can be established.

Specific functionality includes the following modes of operation;
checking header dates and sending reminder/deadline mail, editing
existing messages, help screens, creating new messages from scratch
or exiting messages, resolving messages, scanning queue folders, and
annotating with status both by editing and sending mail.

Qmh is a single generic program in and of itself from which all
modes of operation are invoked. Additionally, each separate queue
may be accessed via a link to the single program. All system
configuration is maintained in a single file that is read upon each
invocation of Qmh. Formatting and template files are provided in the
system library, although individual users can override the defaults
simply by creating equivalent files in their own MH mail directory.

Qmh provides a powerful database-like functionality by allowing
limitless per-queue X-Qmh-<$value> headers to be included in
messages. These "fields" then form the context of the queue messages
and provide a user-defined, but yet structured environment for
queries, reporting, and random information.

Qmh is designed to provide a complete solution for SA groups, help
desks, support organizations, or wherever two or more individuals
are trying to manage multiple mail requests.

Qmh is also compatible with versions of xmh that provide user-level
command buttons. Provided in the Qmh package is a ~/.Xdefaults
template file that's setup to harness the power of Qmh.

From: Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>, Shannon Yeh <yeh at netix.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 00:23:21 -0800

MacMH and PC/MH:
These were available only for non-commercial degree-granting
institutions from:

Networking & Communication Systems
115 Pine Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4122
Phone: +1 415-723-3909

See also:
ftp://netix.com/pub/pc-mh-info/*

For more PC/MH info, contact:

Netix Communications, Inc.
15375 Barranca Parkway
Building G, Suite 107
Irvine, CA 92718
Phone: +1 714-727-9532
FAX: +1 714-727-3922
Internet: info at netix.com

In addition, you might try Wollongong, to see if they have something you
can get.

[This information appears to be out of date. Please send me
pointers to valid information. Potential sites include
jessica.stanford.edu.--Ed]

Two other potential methods to run MH under Windows: Run Unix
under Windows with VMware (http://www.vmware.com/) or try to
compile nmh with the Cygwin tools (http://www.cygwin.com/).

------------------------------

Subject: 01.06 How can I print a MH manual?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>, Jos Vos <jos at bull.nl>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 01:21:49 -0700

First, check out the documents available on http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/.

To order a copy by mail, see the section on how to get MH by mail
(see "Where can I get MH?" and "What references exist for MH?").

To print your own copy, first obtain the MH sources (see "Where can
I get MH?") if you don't already have it. Go into the "doc"
directory and run "make guide" to create the administrators guide
and "make manual" to create a user's manual which includes tutorials
and man pages. If the doc directory is empty or is missing the
Makefile, you'll have to run "mhconfig MH" in the conf directory so
that the documentation with correct local information is created.

For properly formatting the documentation (at least the manual
pages) you might even have to install MH, because a reference to a
tmac.h file in the MH lib directory is made in the manual pages.

You can also ftp the ASCII or postscript versions:

ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/doc/tutorial.ps.Z 65k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/doc/ADMIN.ps.Z 56k
ftp://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/mh/doc/MH.ps.Z (man pages) 261k
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/mh/doc/tutorial.ps.Z
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/mh/doc/ADMIN.ps.Z
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/mh/doc/MH.ps.Z (man pages)

Or, you can send a note to <mail-server at NL.net> with a body
containing the following:

send /mail/mh/papers-ps/tutorial.ps.Z

------------------------------

Subject: 01.07 How should I report bugs?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:12:42 -0700

Bugs in nmh should be reported at:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=nmh

Bugs in MH-E should be reported at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid...group_id=13357

------------------------------

Subject: 01.08 How can I convert from my mailer to MH?
From: Mike Sutton <mws115 at llcoolj.dayton.saic.com>
Date: 7 Jul 1995 10:03:50 GMT

The unrmail function will convert rmail format to mbox format.

From: Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

If you use one of a mail agent like 'mail', 'mailx', 'elm' or
'mush', converting to MH is easy. When you run the 'inc' command,
it reads all new messages from the system mailbox into your 'inbox'
folder. Those mail agents also have separate files or "folders"
that hold messages in the same format as the system mailbox. You
can read them with the 'inc -file' command. For example, to read
the messages from your 'mbox' mail file into your MH 'inbox' folder,
you'd type:

% cd
% cp mbox mbox.backup
% inc -file mbox

If you see the usual "Incorporating new mail into inbox..." message
and a scan listing, the messages probably were converted. Read some
or all of them (with the 'show' command) and be sure. The 'inc'
won't remove your mbox unless you use '-truncate'.

From: "Jason R. Mastaler" <jason at Mastaler.COM>
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 00:00:00 -0800

You can also specify an alternate folder to inc. Here's how you
can convert all your folders en masse:

for arg in `cat flist`; do
echo "converting $arg"
inc +"$arg" -file "$arg" -silent
done

Section D.4 of the MH book's second edition lists two scripts to
convert mail files to MH folders: babyl2mh to convert from rmail's
BABYL format; vmsmail2mh to convert from VMS's mail (see "What
references exist for MH") to see where the book's examples can be
ftped from). These scripts aren't in the third edition but are in
its archive file.

From: Vivek Khera <khera at cs.duke.edu>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

I rewrote the above script in Perl since the original script doesn't
work for some people (see "babyl2mh.pl" below).

From: Juergen Nickelsen <nickel at cs.tu-berlin.de>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

You can remove the second to last second line ("> $input"), so
that the script doesn't zero out your RMAIL file.

Another alternative is to replace this line with "inc -file $tmpmbox
$folder && > $input", so that the RMAIL is only zeroed if inc
successfully incorporated the mail. Finally one could add a switch
-z, so that the RMAIL file is only zeroed if the switch is given.
(See "Appendix inco".)

Date: Sun, 1 May 1994 00:00:00 -0800

Use the following to convert a BABYL format file to Unix mail
format.

ftp://inf.informatik.uni-stuttgart.d...rmailtovm.el.Z
6k

See also MH book second edition (Appendix D).

------------------------------

Subject: 01.09 What is the copyright status of nmh?
From: Richard Coleman <coleman at math.gatech.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:16:58 -0700

nmh is distributed under a variant of the classical BSD copyright.
Check the COPYRIGHT file in the nmh distribution for the details.
There are some specific files which were contributed to the original
MH package that are copyrighted by their original author. We have
retained the copyright notices of these authors in these files.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.00 ***** Building MH *****
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

------------------------------

Subject: 02.01 What machines does MH run on?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 21:22:55 -0700

MH isn't just for Unix any more. Versions are reported to run on
OS/2 (see "How can I build MH on OS/2?"), Windows (see "How can I
build MH on Windows?"), and Mac (see "How can I build MH on Mac?").
Oh yeah, the Mac is now Unix. Maybe Windows Longhorn will be built
on Unix too.

From: Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

If you have a computer running Unix, you can probably run MH.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.02 How do I build MH?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:13:12 -0700

If you're using Linux, you can simply install the nmh or MH package
which is available in most distributions.

If you want to build nmh, follow the directions in the file named
INSTALL. Basically, it's simply "./configure; make; make install."

If you have MH on the other hand, if you carefully read the file
named READ-ME in the root of the source hierarchy, you should not
have any trouble building MH.

If you're having troubles building MH, it could be that the problem
has already been fixed, but hasn't yet gotten into an official
release. Please see http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/ for more info.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.03 What options should I use?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 00:00:00 -0800

BERK: Do NOT include the BERK option (in versions 6.7 or later)!
BERK breaks the mh-format functions that take apart address lines,
for example mbox, from, and friendly. This would really put a crimp
on my replcomps file.

LOCKF: if you have NFS, you need to lock your mailbox with lockf()
so the lock will be honored by all machines on the local network.
If you have the lockf() system call, include LOCKF.

JQ Johnson <jqj at duff.uoregon.edu> makes the point that one
should use this option carefully since it requires a robust lockf()
call. For example, this option caused serious problems on his SunOS
4.1.1. He suggested using LOK_BELL instead, and adding "lockstyle:
1" to $MHLIB/mts.conf (mtstailor).

ATZ: makes your timezones print like "EST" instead of "-0500". Much
prettier. --Stephen Gildea <gildea at stop.mail-abuse.org>

However, Tony Landells <ahl at technix.oz.au> replies: "Yes;
very pretty. How unfortunate that timezone names are so ambiguous,
so that EST can be interpreted, at a minimum, as (American) Eastern
Standard Time, (Australian) Eastern Standard Time, or (Australian)
Eastern Summer Time (and yes, I think it's dumb having the same
acronym for both normal and Summer time, but that's a different
problem). While the numeric timezones may not look as nice, they
are, at least, reasonably unambiguous. I would urge anyone who ever
intends/hopes/expects to use email outside the U.S. to NOT use ATZ
(sorry Stephen)."

At any rate, the conf/examples directory has been updated and
contains many examples show you which options are required on your
platform and which are optional (in the upcoming version MH 6.8). At
any rate, it is recommended that you examine the options in the
example configuration files, and read about them in READ-ME.

RPATHS: a side-effect is that slocal writes messages to your system
maildrop without the MMDF C-A's that separate messages, so your BSD
tools like from work.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.04 What do I need to do to use POP?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 23:31:01 -0700

MH6.7 (and earlier versions too) include a server for version 3 of POP.

From: Morgan Fletcher <morgan at tupelo.best.com>
Date: 14 Mar 1996 19:24:23 -0800

Ensure that /etc/services contains the following:

pop2 109/tcp postoffice # POP version 2
pop2 109/udp
->pop 110/tcp # POP version 3 (MH's inc thinks it's "pop")
->pop 110/udp
pop3 110/tcp # POP version 3
pop3 110/udp

Also compile with the POP options: POP, DPOP, RPOP, etc.

From: Richard Coleman <coleman at math.gatech.edu>
Date: 06 Feb 1997 03:43:17 -0500

To get MH to use the pop3 service, add POPSERVICE=pop3 to your MH
configuration and recompile:

------------------------------

Subject: 02.05 Does MH support IMAP?
From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at MessagingDirect.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 1999 11:33:39 -0600

Run exmh on the laptop, and modify your .mh_profile to inc using
APOP. This is how I run MH-E and it works fine. (I did have to
modify MH-E a wee bit to allow it to prompt for the password. You
would likely have to do something similar with exmh.)

As a spare time project I'm adding enough IMAP support to MH (6.8.3)
to allow you to 'inc -imap [-imapfolder foo]'. If I ever get this
done I'll stick the diffs up somewhere. (It's not a big priority as
I can get at my IMAP INBOX using APOP.)

From: Tim Showalter <tjs at andrew.cmu.edu>, John Prevost <visigoth at cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 21:34:56 -0400

We are developing fmh and intend to support as much of MH as is
feasible. However, MH and IMAP don't necessarily agree as to what
things are going to look like. MH has static message numbers until
you pack a folder; IMAP keeps two numbers on a message, one which is
absolutely static and one which is relative to the top of a mailbox.
Messages in IMAP are essentially immutable. IMAP doesn't
(currently) allow message annotations. fmh will keep state with a
background daemon instead of writing it to disk, and will probably
try and keep as little on disk as possible.

fmh doesn't understand MH folders at the moment, and probably won't
for a really long time, if ever. As I said before, we're mostly
interested in the IMAP aspects as we're using a networked file
system and saving stuff on the local disk just isn't an option.

fmh is not MH at a very fundamental level. It is very unlikely that
it will be merged, as we're not quite as interested in creating
something that is MH and IMAP as we are in writing a good IMAP
client. Also, the MH code isn't going to take the introduction of
IMAP without a near complete rewrite.

It is not available yet. Inquiries are welcome at
<tjs+fmh at andrew.cmu.edu>.

From: Rahul Dhesi <dhesi at rahul.net>
Date: 23 Sep 1996 08:39:52 GMT

What prevents people from doing a telnet to their mail server,
logging in, and firing up MH directly? Site policy? An operating
system that does not let MH compile or run? Overloaded machine with
insufficient processing power for MH? All these are site-specific
problems and the solution lies in solving them locally, not in
forcing MH to go over IMAP.

IMAP was never designed to emulate a filesytem. MH was designed to
make direct advantage of the filesytem structure. There is no
compatibility between the two. By the time IMAP is revised enough
to support MH you will have reinvented NFS.

There *is* scope for redesign here, though. It would be nice to
have a single-user filesystem. Create a binary telnet session to
the filesystem server, log in as yourself, and then over that
session run a filesystem protocol. Normal filesystem protections at
the other end will be sufficient for all permissions checking, so
the filesystem protocol would need to do no other permissions
checking. The question of whom to export directories to would go
away: They are exported to whoever completes a successful login, and
accessible to the user if he would be able to access them on the
server as his login id. You could even use challenge-response for
the initial login, coupled with ssh-based encryption, so you
automatically have a secure filesystem without even trying.

IMAP is too restricted in its scope to be easily modifiable to
emulate such a filesystem. It would have to be a redesign from
scratch.

From: John Romine <jromine at ics.uci.edu>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:45:27 -0700

No. MH only supports retrieving mail using POP3. POP3 is on the
"standards track"--it is now an elective Internet Draft Standard
(see RFC 1939 for more details). At this point, IMAP[23] are
"experimental, limited use" protocols; it is unlikely that MH will
support them.

From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:45:32 -0700

Since John posted the message above, IMAP has progressed from an
"experiemental, limited use" protocol. While IMAP is not universal,
many vendors now have implementations.

I've found several things which might help. First, a definition
lifted from the Pine FAQ:

What is IMAP?

IMAP stands for "Internet Message Access Protocol". An IMAP client
program on any platform at any location on the Internet can access
email folders on an IMAP server. While the messages appear to be
local, they reside on the server until the client explicitly moves
or deletes them. The IMAP protocol is a superset of POP, containing
all POP commands plus more. For a comparison of IMAP and POP, see
the paper Comparing Two Approaches to Remote Mailbox Access: IMAP
vs. POP (in ftp.cac.washington.edu:/mail/imap.vs.pop). IMAP is what
allows Pine (or any other IMAP client) to get to email on a central
campus email server. There are current IETF working groups revising
IMAP and readying it to become an Internet standard. A copy of the
latest IMAP draft may be obtained from:

ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/latest-imap-draft

For a list of IMAP clients, see the file imap.software, in the same
directory.

From: David L Miller <dlm at cac.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 00:00:00 -0800

ipop3d from the UW IMAP toolkit can operate in a couple modes. As a
straight POP3 server, it uses the same C-client library as imapd, so
it co-exists comfortably with imapd. It can also operate as a
POP-to-IMAP gateway so that your POP-only clients can access IMAP
services.

ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap.tar.Z 1.0M

From: Mark Crispin <MRC at Panda.COM>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 00:00:00 -0800

The only answer I can give for [how MH users can use IMAP] is that
Pine can read mailboxes in MH format; and that someone might in the
future develop a version of MH that can use IMAP.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.06 Why does "mailgroup mail" only affect inc but not slocal?
From: John Romine <jromine at ics.uci.edu>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

If "mailgroup" is set, inc is made set-group-id to this group name.
Some SYS5 systems want this to be set to "mail". Set this if
/usr/spool/mail (or /usr/mail) is not world-writable. These
changes were contributed by Peter Marvit, and "inc" is very careful
about its use of the set-gid privilege.

Note that slocal doesn't know how to deal with this, and will not
work under these systems; just making it set-group-id will open a
security hole (since it doesn't know when to drop the set-gid
privileges). If you're using "mailgroup", you should remove slocal
(and its man page) from your system.

Alternatives to slocal include deliver, procmail, and mailagent.
(See "What mail filters are available?")

------------------------------

Subject: 02.07 How can I build MH on Solaris 2?
From: Richard Coleman <coleman at math.gatech.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 02:19:58 -0500

nmh builds out of the box on Solaris.

From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:56:31 -0700

See http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/solaris/ for patches you may need.

From: Neil Rickert <rickert at cs.niu.edu>,
Scott K. Hutton <shutton at habanero.ucs.indiana.edu>,
Casper H.S. Dik <casper at fwi.uva.nl>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:57:25 -0700

First, don't use the BSD compatible stuff. Make sure that the Sun
or GNU compiler appear before the BSD compiler in your PATH (e.g.,
/usr/ccs/bin).

Second, don't use GNU make. Make sure that the Sun make appears
before the GNU make in your PATH.

Use conf/examples/solaris2.sun.com and fix the paths, if necessary.
Optionally change the following to use the GNU compiler, to perform
optimization, and to create shared libraries.

cc gcc
ccoptions -O -g -msupersparc
slflags -shared

Fix mhn.c with the diff in

http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/solaris/si_value_2.3.

Optionally incorporate the Content-Length header fix. (See "How can
I get MH to interpret the Content-Length field?")

Linking with /usr/ucblib/libucb.so is incompatible with including
<dirent.h>.

When compiling, you can ignore the following warning:

fmtcompile.c", line 238: warning: semantics of "/" change in ANSI C;
use explicit cast

If you're using AFS, you'll have to replace any occurrence of "ln"
with "ln -s" wherever the make dies when it tries to make a link
"on a different file system."

See also ftp://ftp.fwi.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.faq.

Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 00:00:00 -0800

Unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

From: Gary Strand <strandwg at ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 00:00:00 -0800

To cure slocal's Segmentation Fault problems, I decided to try 'cc'
instead of 'gcc' (an alleged no-no under Solaris) and MH built just
fine, and it's working perfectly.

From: "Jason R. Mastaler" <jason at Mastaler.COM>
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 17:35:13 -0400

Don't use "ldoptions -s" with gcc. It may cause the compile to fail
with:

gcc: Internal compiler error: program ld got fatal signal 11
*** Error code 1

From: "Jeffrey T. Eaton" <jeaton at galt.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 15:30:36 GMT

Fixed [DBM_PAGFNO_NOT_AVAILABLE error] by getting the latest gdbm
package, compiling and installing it and the dbm/ndbm compatability
stuff, and moving Sun's broken ndbm.h out of /usr/include.

To fix "../sbr/libmh.so: undefined reference to
`__builtin_va_arg_incr'", add "option __BUILTIN_VA_ARG_INCR" to your
MH configuration.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.08 How can I build MH on Linux?
From: Richard Coleman <coleman at math.gatech.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 02:19:58 -0500

nmh should build out of the box for most Linux systems.

From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 23:04:53 -0800

The Debian distribution of Linux comes with an MH and nmh packages. See

http://www.debian.org/.

See also http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/linux/.

From: "James A. Robinson" <jimr at simons-rock.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 96 20:39:02 GMT

Somebody on Debian ported it to Linux ELF. Look on
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable/b...h_6.8.4-13.deb for
the .deb package of MH (it's a compressed tar file). The source is
in ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable/s....4-orig.tar.gz
and mh_6.8.4-13.diff.gz.

From: Brian Kirouac <bri at psa.pencom.com>
Date: 18 Apr 96 14:00:20 GMT

If you are running Redhat and have rpm available you can also use
ftp://???/pub/redhat-3.0.3/i386/RedH...8.3-5.i386.rpm.
The source code is in
ftp://???/pub/redhat-3.0.3/i386/SRPM...8.3-5.i386.rpm

From: "Brandon S. Allbery" <bsa at kf8nh.wariat.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 16:18:50 -0800

The current patch is the first one listed below. The old patch only
works with libc-4.4, which is no longer used. The current patch is
split into two pieces, as with the previous patch, but now the
divisions are purely functional: the first diff enables MH to
compile, the second allows creation of a shared library. [Ed: The
paths are up to date, but I think the info in this paragraph is
old.]

Recent versions of GNU make choke on MH's makefiles. Unfortunately,
the shared library patches depend on "export". If you have problems
building MH, remove the "export" lines from all of the makefiles (if
you applied the shared library patches) and try using BSD pmake
instead.

If you don't want to compile MH, the second file contains
pre-compiled ready-to-run binaries which can simply be extracted in
the root directory.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/syst...3-diffs.tar.gz
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/syst...8.3-bin.tar.gz

The sizes are 650k and 22k respectively.

Note that these files are occasionally "cleaned up" by accident so
please let me know if they are missing.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.09 How can I build MH on IRIX?
From: Richard Coleman <coleman at math.gatech.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 02:19:58 -0500

nmh should build out of the box for Irix.

From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:33:22 -0700

See http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/sgi/ for patches you may need.

From: Arne K. Frick <frick at info.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Date: 06 Jun 1995 18:30:01 GMT

There is a file at viz.tamu.edu:/pub/sgi (see FAQ) containing a diff
and sample configuration. If you cannot locate it, I can mail it to
you. Note, however, that I had tremendous difficulties with them
under 5.3:

1. Be sure to use /bin/make, NOT GNU make.
2. patch vomits over the diff. You can get around this by increasing the
"fuzz factor" to 4.
3. The Makefile target for the shared library doesn't work. I had to do it
by hand.

But I'm stuck compiling mhn.c.

From: Shankar Unni <shankar at sgi.com>
Date: 9 Jun 1995 01:53:48 GMT

The fix for compiling mhn.c is in

http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/solaris/si_value_2.3.

From: Jack Repenning <jackr at informix.com>
Date: 25 Jul 1995 02:35:41 GMT

(See "IRIX config file") below.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.10 How can I get MH to interpret the Content-Length field?
From: Casper H.S. Dik <Casper.Dik at Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:38:30 -0700

Apply http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/so...content_length to
your MH distribution and add the configuration option
"CONTENT_LENGTH". It also includes the si_ fix in

http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/solaris/si_value_2.3

------------------------------

Subject: 02.11 How can I build MH on HP-UX?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 15:50:54 -0700

If you find that your zotnet/tws directory isn't compiling, upgrade
your MH (see "What is the current version/status of MH?") which
includes fixes to lexedit.sed.

See http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/hp/ for for patches you may need.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.12 Can I prevent adding the local hostname to addresses behind firewalls?

From: Ted Remillard <tedr at hood.sd.com>
Date: 24 Jun 1996 08:53:42 -0700

You can get MH to stop managing the headers and let the email server
to do it. To do this, build MH with the options DUMB and REALLYDUMB.
In the $MHLIB/mts.conf (mtstailor) file, set the server option to
the IP address of the email server. After this is done, MH sends
email directly to the email server and Local email To: and From:
fields just have the user's simple email address, e.g., <fred>, and
the remote email From: header will contain user@domainname, e.g.,
<fred@sd.com>.

Don't forget to define the REALLYDUMB option in the file
sbr/addrsbr.c described below.

From: Bret Rothenberg <bretr at endeavour.exar.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 12:25:24 -0800 (PST)

Yes, use the "localname" parameter in "$MHLIB/mts.conf" (mtstailor)
to specify the desired hostname.

From: Ken Hornstein <kenh at cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
Date: 18 Aug 1995 23:51:48 -0400

If you're behind a firewall and sendmail gives you fits because MH
adds the node name or site name to each address in the To: and CC:
fields, you'll need to modify the MH source.

The relevant source has to do with the REALLYDUMB option in
sbr/addrsbr.c. Essentially what you need to do is set it up so
REALLYDUMB is turned on (normally, it's turned off if you have MMDF
or SMTP turned on). This will do what you want. I did this at our
site, and it's been working great. The stuff for REALLYDUMB starts
around line 613.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.13 Is there a patch to fix this or that?
From: Kimmo Suominen <kim at tac.nyc.ny.us>
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 13:40:35 -0800

The MH Patch Archive has been opened at

http://www.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/
ftp://ftp.gw.com/mail/mh/patches/

It is a collection of patches to MH (the RAND MH Message Handling
System), a set of electronic mail programs in the public domain.
Since the last complete release of MH (version 6.8.3) UNIX systems
have evolved making changes in the MH code necessary. Several new
UNIX systems have emerged requiring new configuration templates and
examples. This archive tries to collect all these fixes and
enhancements that in the past have been available only through
word-of-mouth and occasional reposts to newsgroups or mailing lists.

The initial archive layout and the very time consuming collecting
and categorizing of patches has been done by Jerry Peek.

I will be the primary maintainer of the archive. Even though I will
be monitoring several sources for new material (mainly the
comp.mail.mh newsgroup but also the mailing lists
<mh-workers at ics.uci.edu>, <mh-e-users at lists.sourceforge.net> and
<exmh-workers at redhat.com>), I'd like to encourage everyone to submit
patches also directly to the archive at <mh-archive at gw.com>.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.14 How can I build MH on OS/2?
From: Sanjay Aiyagari <sanjay at sandbox.snetnsa.com>
Date: 21 Nov 1996 19:37:10 GMT

ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/os/os2/network/MH/

------------------------------

Subject: 02.15 Do any POP/IMAP servers handle MH format?
From: "Carl S. Gutekunst" <csg at eng.sun.com>
Date: 27 May 1997 07:24:34 GMT

The University of Washington POP3 and IMAP servers can be backended
by a variety of stores, including MH. This is the basis for
Netscape's store, curiously enough. I haven't looked closely at how
Mark Crispin implemented support for the new IMAP4 features when
using an MH backend; it seems like there is a lot of computation
when opening a folder for the first time, writing in the UID fields
and such. But it basically appears to work.

From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at MessagingDirect.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 1999 11:36:25 -0600

But [the UW IMAP server] can't delete/expunge from MH folders. (At
least I've never been able to get it to work, and I've tried just
about everything.) #mh in UW imapd isn't something I'd recommend to
any serious MH user.

From: Mark Crispin <mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 14:43:25 -0700

> But it can't delete/expunge from MH folders.

That's a very old version. delete/expunge has been in imap-4.x for a
long while. However, there's no sticky flags.

> #mh in UW imapd isn't something I'd recommend to any serious MH user.

The converse is also true. The two don't play ball very well.

From: Dieter Weber <dieter at Compatible.COM>
Date: 11 Feb 2003 04:23:38 -0800

The UW imap server supports MH folders. In order to see the MH
mailboxes, you need to "subscribe" to the folders or add them to the
.mailboxlist file in your home directory.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.16 How can I build MH on Windows?
From: Satyaki Das <satyaki at theforce.stanford.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 20:57:19 -0700

I have gotten MH-E to work on Windows (under Cygwin) using Earl
Hood's patched nmh. It was really quite simple, but not very
portable. I just needed to add/subtract "c:/cygwin" from a couple of
places. Now it can read and send mail (even does PGP attachments).
Thought this might be of interest to those of you stuck using
Windows at work.

From: Earl Hood <ehood at earlhood.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2002 20:30:44 GMT

I've made a tar/bz2 bundle available at

<http://www.nacs.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/tmp/nmh-1.0.4-ehood-cygwin.tar.bz2>

This includes the patched source with binaries pre-built.

I just remembered that I also had to hack the makefiles to get
things to install since windoze executables have to end with .exe. I
hacked the generated makefiles, so if you rerun configure, you may
lose the hacks. Also, I believe the install will fail when trying to
install the documentation, so to force things do:

make -i install

The binaries and support files should get installed (under
/usr/local/nmh), but the docs probably won't.

Then you will need to edit /usr/local/nmh/etc/mts.conf to reflect
your local configuration.

If anyone has any problems installing, I could zip up my
/usr/local/nmh since I think it contains everything needed for
runtime usage.

From: Bill Goffe <goffe at oswego.edu>
Date: 25 May 1999 18:13:55 GMT

If you have Windows, consider looking at VMware

http://www.vmware.com/

which provides a virtual machine where you can run Unix and
therefore MH under Windows.

From: Ted Nolan <ted at ags.ga.erg.sri.com>
Date: 24 May 99 17:20:27 GMT

The latest Cygnus Cygwin, GNU tools that run under Windows,

http://www.cygwin.com/

seems to work pretty well and may well be able to build nmh.

------------------------------

Subject: 02.17 How can I build MH on a Mac?
From: Dr Eberhard W Lisse <el at lisse.na>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:52:47 +0200

nmh compiles on the G4 iBook running Mac OS X 10.3.7 more or less out
of the box with the powerpc HOST option. Use make all install.
A fink package is available to make this even easier.

metamail does not work out of the box. I received a patch that did
get it to run.

For exmh, first use fink to install the tcltk package. Then use fink
to install exmh.

------------------------------

Subject: 03.00 ***** Scanning & Reading *****
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 13:03:15 -0800

------------------------------

Subject: 03.01 What do I do if scan shows the wrong date?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:00:00 -0800

Upgrade to MH 6.8 or nmh.

From: Darryl Okahata <darrylo at sr.hp.com>
Date: 19 Jan 2000 23:01:10 -0800

MH 6.8.3 and nmh 1.0 still have a minor buglet where sortm doesn't
always sort messages properly. If a (questionable) mail client sends
messages with 2-digit years, like:

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 09 22:02:01 EST

or sends out buggy dates like (as buggy versions of Elm do):

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 100 22:02:01 EST

then sortm will not sort these messages properly.

I have submitted patches to nmh-workers.

------------------------------

Subject: 03.02 How would one go about reading Usenet with MH?
From: Bill Wohler <wohler at newt.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 12:32:09 -0800

You can post via mail. Send your article to
<mail2news at news.demon.co.uk> with a legitimate Newsgroups
field.

From: Jerry Peek <jpeek at jpeek.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0800

You can save articles in the news readers for later perusal with MH.

First, create a symbolic link from your mail directory (e.g., usenet) to
your news directory (e.g., "ln -s ~/News ~/Mail/usenet"). You can then
treat your news directory as a mail folder. Thus, to select a news
group, use "folder +usenet/comp/mail/mh".

To set the default save location correctly in rn, use:

rn -M -/

or in your nn presentation sequence:

news.announce. +$F/$N
comp.mail.mh +