Electronic mail, or e-mail, is your personal connection to the world of the Net. All of the millions of people around the world who use the Net have their own e-mail addresses. A growing number of "gateways" tie more and more people to the Net every day. When you logged onto the host system you are now using, it automatically generated an address for you, as well. The basic concepts behind e-mail parallel those of regular mail. You send mail to people at their particular addresses. In turn, they write to you at your e-mail address. You can subscribe to the electronic equivalent of magazines and newspapers. You might even get electronic junk mail. E-mail has two distinct advantages over regular mail. The most obvious is speed. Instead of several days, your message can reach the other side of the world in hours, minutes or even seconds (depending on where you drop off your mail and the state of the connections between there and your recipient). The other advantage is that once you master the basics, you'll be able to use e-mail to access databases and file libraries. You'll see how to do this later, along with learning how to transfer program and data files through e-mail. E-mail also has advantages over the telephone. You send your message when it's convenient for you. Your recipients respond at their convenience. No more telephone tag. And while a phone call across the country or around the world can quickly result in huge phone bills, e-mail lets you exchange vast amounts of mail for only a few pennies — even if the other person is in New Zealand. E-mail is your connection to help — your Net lifeline. The Net can sometimes seem a frustrating place! No matter how hard you try, no matter where you look, you just might not be able to find the answer to whatever is causing you problems. But when you know how to use e-mail, help is often just a few keystrokes away: you can ask your system administrator or a friend for help in an e-mail message. The quickest way to start learning e-mail is to send yourself a message. Most public-access sites actually have several different types of mail systems, all of which let you both send and receive mail. We'll start with the simplest one, known, appropriately enough, as "mail," and then look at a couple of other interfaces. At your host system's command prompt, type:
mail username
where username is the name you gave yourself when you first logged on. Hit enter. The computer might respond with
subject:
Type
test
or, actually, anything at all (but you'll have to hit enter before you get to the end of the screen). Hit enter. The cursor will drop down a line. You can now begin writing the actual message. Type a sentence, again, anything at all. And here's where you hit your first Unix frustration, one that will bug you repeatedly: you have to hit enter before you get to the very end of the line. Just like typewriters, many Unix programs have no word-wrapping (although there are ways to get some Unix text processors, such as emacs, to word-wrap). When done with your message, hit return. Now hit control-D (the control and the D keys at the same time). This is a Unix command that tells the computer you're done writing and that it should close your "envelope" and mail it off (you could also hit enter once and then, on a blank line, type a period at the beginning of the line and hit enter again). You've just sent your first e-mail message. And because you're sending mail to yourself, rather than to someone somewhere else on the Net, your message has already arrived, as we'll see in a moment. If you had wanted, you could have even written your message on your own computer and then uploaded it into this electronic "envelope." There are a couple of good reasons to do this with long or involved messages. One is that once you hit enter at the end of a line in "mail" you can't readily fix any mistakes on that line (unless you use some special commands to call up a Unix text processor). Also, if you are paying for access by the hour, uploading a prepared message can save you money. Remember to save the document in ASCII or text format. Uploading a document you've created in a word processor that uses special formatting commands (which these days means many programs) will cause strange effects. When you get that blank line after the subject line, upload the message using the ASCII protocol. Or you can copy and paste the text, if your software allows that. When done, hit control-D as above. Now you have mail waiting for you. Normally, when you log on, your public-access site will tell you whether you have new mail waiting. To open your mailbox and see your waiting mail, type
and hit enter.When the host system sees "mail" without a name after it, itknows you want to look in your mailbox rather than send a message.Your screen, on a plain-vanilla Unix system will display:
Mail version SMI 4.0 Mon Apr 24 18:34:15 PDT 1989 Type ? for help."/usr/spool/mail/adamg": 1 message 1 new 1 unread
>N 1 adamg Sat Jan 15 20:04 12/290 test
Ignore the first line; it's just computerese of value only to the people who run your system. You can type a question mark and hit return, but unless you're familiar with Unix, most of what you'll see won't make much sense at this point. The second line tells you the directory on the host system where your mail messages are put, which again, is not something you'll likely need to know. The second line also tells you how many messages are in your mailbox, how many have come in since the last time you looked and how many messages you haven't read yet. It's the third line that is of real interest — it tells you who the message is from, when it arrived, how many lines and characters it takes up, and what the subject is. The "N" means it is a new message — it arrived after the last time you looked in your mailbox. Hit enter. And there's your message — only now it's a lot longer than what you wrote!
Message 1:From adamg Jan 15 20:04:55 1994Received: by eff.org id AA28949(5.65c/IDA-1.4.4/pen-ident for adamg); Sat, 15 Jan 1994 20:04:55 -0400(ident-sender: adamg@eff.org)Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 21:34:55 -0400From: Adam Gaffin
This is only a test!
Whoa! What is all that stuff? It's your message with a postmark gone mad. Just as the postal service puts its marks on every piece of mail it handles, so do Net postal systems. Only it's called a "header" instead of a postmark. Each system that handles or routes your mail puts its stamp on it. Since many messages go through a number of systems on their way to you, you will often get messages with headers that seem to go on forever. Among other things, a header will tell you exactly when a message was sent and received (even the difference between your local time and Greenwich Mean Time — as at the end of line 4 above). If this had been a long message, it would just keep scrolling across and down your screen — unless the people who run your public- access site have set it up to pause every 24 lines. One way to deal with a message that doesn't stop is to use your telecommunication software's logging or text-buffer function. Start it before you hit the number of the message you want to see. Your computer will ask you what you want to call the file you're about to create. After you name the file and hit enter, type the number of the message you want to see and hit enter. When the message finishes scrolling, turn off the text-buffer function. The message is now saved in your computer. This way, you can read the message while not connected to the Net (which can save you money if you're paying by the hour) and write a reply offline. But in the meantime, now what? You can respond to the message, delete it or save it. To respond, type a lowercase r and hit enter. You'll get something like this:
To: adamgSubject: Re: test
Note that this time, you don't have to enter a user name. The computer takes it from the message you're replying to and automatically addresses your message to its sender. The computer also automatically inserts a subject line, by adding "Re:" to the original subject. From here, it's just like writing a new message. But say you change your mind and decide not to reply after all. How do you get out of the message? Hit control-C once. You'll get this:
(Interrupt — one more to kill letter)
If you hit control-C once more, the message will disappear and you'll get back to your mail's command line. Now, if you type a lowercase d and then hit enter, you'll delete the original message. Type a lowercase q to exit your mailbox. If you type a q without first hitting d, your message is transferred to a file called mbox. This file is where all read, but un-deleted messages go. If you want to leave it in your mailbox for now, type a lowercase x and hit enter. This gets you out of mail without making any changes. The mbox file works a lot like your mailbox. To access it, type
mail -f mbox
at your host system's command line and hit enter. You'll get a menu identical to the one in your mailbox from which you can read these old messages, delete them or respond to them. It's probably a good idea to clear out your mailbox and mbox file from time to time, if only to keep them uncluttered. Are there any drawbacks to e-mail? There are a few. One is that people seem more willing to fly off the handle electronically than in person, or over the phone. Maybe it's because it's so easy to hit r and reply to a message without pausing and reflecting a moment. That's why we have smileys (see section 2.4)! There's no online equivalent yet of a return receipt: chances are your message got to where it's going, but there's no absolute way for you to know for sure unless you get a reply from the other person. So now you're ready to send e-mail to other people on the Net. Of course, you need somebody's address to send them mail. How do you get it? Alas, the simplest answer is not what you'd call the most elegant: you call them up on the phone or write them a letter on paper and ask them. Residents of the electronic frontier are only beginning to develop the equivalent of phone books, and the ones that exist today are far from complete (still, later on, in Chapter 6, we'll show you how to use some of these directories). Eventually, you'll start corresponding with people, which means you'll want to know how to address mail to them. It's vital to know how to do this, because the smallest mistake — using a comma when you should have used a period, for instance, can bounce the message back to you, undelivered. In this sense, Net addresses are like phone numbers: one wrong digit and you get the wrong person. Fortunately, most net addresses now adhere to a relatively easy-to-understand system. Earlier, you sent yourself a mail message using just your user- name. This was sort of like making a local phone call — you didn't have to dial a 1 or an area code. This also works for mail to anybody else who has an account on the same system as you. Sending mail outside of your system, though, will require the use of the Net equivalent of area codes, called "domains." A basic Net address will look something like this:
tomg@world.std.com
Tomg is somebody's user ID, and he is at (hence the @ sign) a site (or in Internetese, a "domain") known as std.com. Large organizations often have more than one computer linked to the Internet; in this case, the name of the particular machine is world (you will quickly notice that, like boat owners, Internet computer owners always name their machines). Domains tell you the name of the organization that runs a given e-mail site and what kind of site it is or, if it's not in the U.S., what country it's located in. Large organizations may have more than one computer or gateway tied to the Internet, so you'll often see a two-part domain name; and sometimes even three- or four-part domain names. In general, American addresses end in an organizational suffix, such as ".edu," which means the site is at a college or university. Other American suffixes include:
.com for businesses .org for non-profit organizations .gov and .mil for government and military agencies .net for companies or organizations that run large networks.
Sites in the rest of the world tend to use a two-letter code that represents their country. Most make sense, such as .ca for Canadian sites, but there are a couple of seemingly odd ones. Swiss sites end in .ch, while South African ones end in .za. Some U.S. sites have followed this international convention (such as well.sf.ca.us). You'll notice that the above addresses are all in lower-case. Unlike almost everything else having anything at all to do with Unix, most Net mailing systems don't care about case, so you generally don't have to worry about capitalizing e-mail addresses. Alas, there are a few exceptions — some public-access sites do allow for capital letters in user names. When in doubt, ask the person you want to write to, or let her send you a message first (recall how a person's e-mail address is usually found on the top of her message). The domain name, the part of the address after the @ sign, never has to be capitalized. It's all a fairly simple system that works very well, except, again, it's vital to get the address exactly right — just as you have to dial a phone number exactly right. Send a message to tomg@unm.edu (which is the University of New Mexico) when you meant to send it to tomg@umn.edu (the University of Minnesota), and your letter will either bounce back to you undelivered, or go to the wrong person. If your message is bounced back to you as undeliverable, you'll get an ominous looking-message from MAILER-DAEMON (actually a rather benign Unix program that exists to handle mail), with an evil-looking header followed by the text of your message. Sometimes, you can tell what went wrong by looking at the first few lines of the bounced message. Besides an incorrect address, it's possible your host system does not have the other site in the "map" it maintains of other host systems. Or you could be trying to send mail to another network, such as Bitnet or CompuServe, that has special addressing requirements. Sometimes, figuring all this out can prove highly frustrating. But remember the prime Net commandment: Ask. Send a message to your system administrator. He or she might be able to help decipher the problem. There is one kind of address that may give your host system particular problems. There are two main ways that Unix systems exchange mail. One is known as UUCP and started out with a different addressing system than the rest of the Net. Most UUCP systems have since switched over to the standard Net addressing system, but a few traditional sites still cling to their original type, which tends to have lots of exclamation points in it, like this:
uunet!somesite!othersite!mybuddy
The problem for many host sites is that exclamation points (also known as "bangs") now mean something special in the more common systems or "shells" used to operate many Unix computers. This means that addressing mail to such a site (or even responding to a message you received from one) could confuse the poor computer to no end and your message never gets sent out. If that happens, try putting backslashes in front of each exclamation point, so that you get an address that looks like this:
uunet\!somesite\!othersite\!mybuddy
Note that this means you may not be able to respond to such a message by typing a lowercase r — you may get an error message and you'll have to create a brand-new message. If you want to get a taste of what's possible through e-mail, start an e-mail message to
almanac@oes.orst.edu
Leave the "subject:" line blank. As a message, write this:
send quote
Or, if you're feeling a little down, write this instead:
send moral-support
In either case, you will get back a message within a few seconds to a few hours (depending on the state of your host system's Internet connection). If you simply asked for a quote, you'll get back a fortune-cookie-like saying. If you asked for moral support, you'll also get back a fortune-cookie-like saying, only supposedly more uplifting. This particular "mail server" is run by Oregon State University. Its main purpose is actually to provide a way to distribute agricultural information via e-mail. If you'd like to find out how to use the server's full range of services, send a message to its address with this line in it:
send help
You'll quickly get back a lengthy document detailing just what's available and how to get it. Feeling opinionated? Want to give the President of the United States a piece of your mind? Send a message to president@whitehouse.gov. Or if the vice president will do, write vice-president@whitehouse.gov. The "mail" program is actually a very powerful one and a Netwide standard, at least on Unix computers. But it can be hard to figure out — you can type a question mark to get a list of commands, but these may be of limited use unless you're already familiar with Unix. Fortunately, there are a couple of other mail programs that are easier to use.
Elm is a combination mailbox and letter-writing system that uses menus to help you navigate through mail. Most Unix-based host systems now have it online. To use it, type
elm
and hit enter. You'll get a menu of your waiting mail, along with a list of commands you can execute, that will look something like this:
Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/adamg' with 38 messages [ELM 2.3 PL11]
1 Sep 1 Christopher Davis (13) here's another message.
2 Sep 1 Christopher Davis (91) This is a message from Eudora
3 Aug 31 Rita Marie Rouvali (161) First Internet Hunt !!! (fwd)
4 Aug 31 Peter Scott/Manage (69) New File
You can use any of the following commands by pressing the first character;d)elete or u)ndelete mail, m)ail a message, r)eply or f)orward mail, q)uitTo read a message, press
Each line shows the date you received the message, who sent it, how many lines long the message is, and the message's subject. If you are using VT100 emulation, you can move up and down the menu with your up and down arrow keys. Otherwise, type the line number of the message you want to read or delete and hit enter. When you read a message, it pauses every 24 lines, instead of scrolling until it's done. Hit the space bar to read the next page. You can type a lowercase r to reply or a lower-case q or i to get back to the menu (the I stands for "index"). At the main menu, hitting a lowercase m followed by enter will let you start a message. To delete a message, type a lower-case d. You can do this while reading the message. Or, if you are in the menu, move the cursor to the message's line and then hit d. When you're done with elm, type a lower-case q. The program will ask if you really want to delete the messages you marked. Then, it will ask you if you want to move any messages you've read but haven't marked for deletion to a "received" file. For now, hit your n key. Elm has a major disadvantage for the beginner. The default text editor it generally calls up when you hit your r or m key is often a program called emacs. Unixoids swear by emacs, but everybody else almost always finds it impossible. Unfortunately, you can't always get away from it (or vi, another text editor often found on Unix systems), so later on we'll talk about some basic commands that will keep you from going totally nuts. If you want to save a message to your own computer, hit s, either within the message or with your cursor on the message entry in the elm menu. A filename will pop up. If you do not like it, type a new name (you won't have to backspace). Hit enter, and the message will be saved with that file name in your "home directory" on your host system. After you exit elm, you can now download it (ask your system administrator for specifics on how to download — and upload — such files).
Pine is based on elm but includes a number of improvements that make it an ideal mail system for beginners. Like elm, pine starts you with a menu. It also has an "address book" feature that is handy for people with long or complex e-mail addresses. Hitting A at the main menu puts you in the address book, where you can type in the person's first name (or nickname) followed by her address. Then, when you want to send that person a message, you only have to type in her first name or nickname, and pine automatically inserts her actual address. The address book also lets you set up a mailing list. This feature allows you to send the same message to a number of people at once. What really sets pine apart is its built-in text editor, which looks and feels a lot more like word-processing programs available for MS-DOS and Macintosh users. Not only does it have word wrap (a revolutionary concept if ever there was one), it also has a spell-checker and a search command. Best of all, all of the commands you need are listed in a two-line mini-menu at the bottom of each screen. The commands look like this:
^W Where is
The little caret is a synonym for the key marked "control" on your keyboard. To find where a particular word is in your document, you'd hit your control key and your W key at the same time, which would bring up a prompt asking you for the word to look for. Some of pine's commands are a tad peculiar (control-V for "page down" for example), which comes from being based on a variant of emacs (which is utterly peculiar). But again, all of the commands you need are listed on that two-line mini-menu, so it shouldn't take you more than a couple of seconds to find the right one. To use pine, type
pine
at the command line and hit enter. It's a relatively new program, so some systems may not yet have it online. But it's so easy to use, you should probably send e-mail to your system administrator urging him to get it!
When you're involved in an online discussion, you can't see the smiles or shrugs that the other person might make in a live conversation to show he's only kidding. But online, there's no body language. So what you might think is funny, somebody else might take as an insult. To try to keep such misunderstandings from erupting into bitter disputes, we have smileys. Tilt your head to the left and look at the following sideways. :-). Or simply :). This is your basic "smiley." Use it to indicate people should not take that comment you just made as seriously as they might otherwise. You make a smiley by typing a colon, a hyphen and a right parenthetical bracket. Some people prefer using the word "grin," usually in this form:
Sometimes, though, you'll see it as *grin* or even just
Some other smileys include:
;-) Wink;:-( Frown;:-O Surprise;8-) Wearing glasses;=|:-)= Abe Lincoln.
OK, so maybe the last two are a little bogus :-).
There are a number of computer networks that are not directly part of the Net, but which are now connected through "gateways" that allow the passing of e-mail. Here's a list of some of the larger networks, how to send mail to them and how their users can send mail to you:
America Online
Remove any spaces from a user's name and append "aol.com," to get
user@aol.com
America Online users who want to send mail to you need only put your Net address in the "to:" field before composing a message.
ATTMail
Address your message to user@attmail.com.
From ATTMail, a user would send mail to you in this form:
internet!domain!user
So if your address were nancyr@world.std.com, your correspondent would send a message to you at
internet!world.std.com!nancyr
Bitnet
Users of Bitnet (and NetNorth in Canada and EARN in Europe) often have addresses in this form: IZZY@INDVMS. If you're lucky, all you'll have to do to mail to that address is add "bitnet" at the end, to get izzy@indvms.bitnet. Sometimes, however, mail to such an address will bounce back to you, because Bitnet addresses do not always translate well into an Internet form. If this happens, you can send mail through one of two Internet/Bitnet gateways. First, change the @ in the address to a %, so that you get username%site.bitnet. Then add either @vm.marist.edu or @cunyvm.cuny.edu, so that, with the above example, you would get izzy%indyvms.bitnet@vm.marist.edu or izzy%indvyvms.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu Bitnet users have it a little easier: They can usually send mail directly to your e-mail address without fooling around with it at all. So send them your address and they should be OK.
CompuServe
CompuServe users have numerical addresses in this form: 73727,545. To send mail to a CompuServe user, change the comma to a period and add "@compuserve.com"; for example: 73727.545@compuserve.com. Note that some CompuServe users must pay extra to receive mail from the Internet. If you know CompuServe users who want to send you mail, tell them to GO MAIL and create a mail message. In the address area, instead of typing in a CompuServe number, have them type your address in this form:
>INTERNET:YourID@YourAddress.
For example, >INTERNET:adamg@world.std.com. Note that both the ">" and the ":" are required.
Delphi
To send mail to a Delphi user, the form is username@delphi.com.
Fidonet
To send mail to people using a Fidonet BBS, you need the name they use to log onto that system and its "node number.'' Fidonet node numbers or addresses consist of three numbers, in this form: 1:322/190. The first number tells which of several broad geographic zones the BBS is in (1 represents the U.S. and Canada, 2 Europe and Israel, 3 Pacific Asia, 4 South America). The second number represents the BBS's network, while the final number is the BBS's "FidoNode'' number in that network. If your correspondent only gives you two numbers (for example, 322/190), it means the system is in zone 1. Now comes the tricky part. You have to reverse the numbers and add to them the letters f, n and z (which stand for "FidoNode,''"network,'' and "zone'). For example, the address above would become
f190.n322.z1.
Now add "fidonet.org'' at the end, to get f190.n322.z1.fidonet.org. Then add "FirstName.LastName@', to get
FirstName.LastName@f190.n322.z1.fidonet.org
Note the period between the first and last names. Also, some countries now have their own Fidonet "backbone" systems, which might affect addressing. For example, were the above address in Germany, you would end it with "fido.de" instead of "fidonet.org." Whew! The reverse process is totally different. First, the person has to have access to his or her BBS's "net mail" area and know the Fidonet address of his or her local Fidonet/UUCP gateway (often their system operator will know it). Your Fidonet correspondent should address a net-mail message to UUCP (not your name) in the "to:" field. In the node-number field, they should type in the node number of the Fidonet/UUCP gateway (if the gateway system is in the same regional network as their system, they need only type the last number, for example, 390 instead of 322/390). Then, the first line of the message has to be your Internet address, followed by a blank line. After that, the person can write the message and send it. Because of the way Fidonet moves mail, it could take a day or two for a message to be delivered in either direction. Also, because many Fidonet systems are run as hobbies, it is considered good form to ask the gateway sysop's permission if you intend to pass large amounts of mail back and forth. Messages of a commercial nature are strictly forbidden (even if it's something the other person asked for). Also, consider it very likely that somebody other than the recipient will read your messages.
GEnie
To send mail to a GEnie user, add "@genie.com" to the end of the GEnie user name, for example: walt@genie.com.
MCIMail
To send mail to somebody with an MCIMail account, add "@mcimail.com to the end of their name or numerical address. For example:
555-1212@mcimail.com
or
jsmith@mcimail.com
Note that if there is more than one MCIMail subscriber with that name, you will get a mail message back from MCI giving you their names and numerical addresses. You'll then have to figure out which one you want and re-send the message.
From MCI, a user would type
Your Name (EMS)
at the "To:" prompt. At the EMS prompt, he or she would type
internet
followed by your Net address at the "Mbx:" prompt.
Peacenet
To send mail to a Peacenet user, use this form:
username@igc.org
Peacenet subscribers can use your regular address to send you mail.
Prodigy
UserID@prodigy.com. Note that Prodigy users must pay extra forInternet e-mail.
If you connect to the Net through a Unix system, eventually you'll have to come to terms with Unix. For better or worse, most Unix systems do NOT shield you from their inner workings — if you want to copy a Usenet posting to a file, for example, you'll have to use some Unix commands if you ever want to do anything with that file. Like MS-DOS, Unix is an operating system - it tells the computer how to do things. Now while Unix may have a reputation as being even more complex than MS-DOS, in most cases, a few basic, and simple, commands should be all you'll ever need. If your own computer uses MS-DOS or PC-DOS, the basic concepts will seem very familiar — but watch out for the cd command, which works differently enough from the similarly named DOS command that it will drive you crazy. Also, unlike MS-DOS, Unix is case sensitive — if you type commands or directory names in the wrong case, you'll get an error message. If you're used to working on a Mac, you'll have to remember that Unix stores files in "directories" rather than "folders." Unix directories are organized like branches on a tree. At the bottom is the "root" directory, with sub-directories branching off that (and sub-directories in turn can have sub-directories). The Mac equivalent of a Unix sub-directory is a folder within another folder.
cat Equivalent to the MS-DOS "type" command. To pause a file every screen, type
cat file |more
where "file" is the name of the file you want to see. Hitting control-C will stop the display. Alternately, you could type
more file
to achieve the same result. You can also use cat for writing or uploading text files to your name or home directory (similar to the MS-DOS "copy con" command). If you type
cat>test
you start a file called "test." You can either write something simple (no editing once you've finished a line and you have to hit return at the end of each line) or upload something into that file using your communications software's ASCII protocol). To close the file, hit control-D.
cd The "change directory" command. To change from your present directory to another, type
cd directory
and hit enter. Unlike MS-DOS, which uses a \ to denote sub- directories (for example: \stuff\text), Unix uses a / (for example: /stuff/text). So to change from your present directory to the stuff/text sub-directory, you would type
cd stuff/text
and then hit enter. As in MS-DOS, you do not need the first backslash if the subdirectory comes off the directory you're already in. To move back up a directory tree, you would type
cd ..
followed by enter. Note the space between the cd and the two periods — this is where MS-DOS users will really go nuts.
cp Copies a file. The syntax is
cp file1 file2
which would copy file1 to file2 (or overwrite file2 with file1).
ls This command, when followed by enter, tells you what's in the directory, similar to the DOS dir command, except in alphabetical order.
ls | more
will stop the listing every 24 lines — handy if there are a lot of things in the directory. The basic ls command does not list "hidden" files, such as the .login file that controls how your system interacts with Unix. To see these files, type
ls -a or ls -a | more
ls -l will tell you the size of each file in bytes and tell you when each was created or modified.
mv Similar to the MS-DOS rename command.
mv file1 file2
will rename file1 as file2, The command can also be used to move files between directories.
mv file1 News
would move file1 to your News directory.
rm Deletes a file. Type
rm filename
and hit enter (but beware: when you hit enter, it's gone for good).
WILDCARDS: When searching for, copying or deleting files, you canuse "wildcards" if you are not sure of the file's exact name.
ls man*
would find the following files:
manual, manual.txt, man-o-man.
Use a question mark when you're sure about all but one or two characters.For example,
ls man?
would find a file called mane, but not one called manual.
* You send a message but get back an ominous looking message from MAILER-DAEMON containing up to several dozen lines of computerese followed by your message. Somewhere in those lines you can often find a clue to what went wrong. You might have made a mistake in spelling the e-mail address. The site to which you're sending mail might have been down for maintenance or a problem. You may have used the wrong "translation" for mail to a non-Internet network. * You call up your host system's text editor to write a message or reply to one and can't seem to get out. If it's emacs, try control-X, control-C (in other words, hit your control key and your X key at the same time, followed by control and C). If worse comes to worse, you can hang up. * In elm, you accidentally hit the D key for a message you want to save. Type the number of the message, hit enter and then U, which will "un-delete" the message. This works only before you exit Elm; once you quit, the message is gone. * You try to upload an ASCII message you've written on your own computer into a message you're preparing in Elm or Pine and you get a lot of left brackets, capital Ms, Ks and Ls and some funny-looking characters. Believe it or not, your message will actually wind up looking fine; all that garbage is temporary and reflects the problems some Unix text processors have with ASCII uploads. But it will take much longer for your upload to finish. One way to deal with this is to call up the simple mail program, which will not produce any weird characters when you upload a text file into a message. Another way (which is better if your prepared message is a response to somebody's mail), is to create a text file on your host system with cat, for example,
cat>file
and then upload your text into that. Then, in elm or pine, you can insert the message with a simple command (control-R in pine, for example); only this time you won't see all that extraneous stuff. * You haven't cleared out your Elm mailbox in awhile, and you accidentally hit "y" when you meant to hit "n" (or vice-versa) when exiting and now all your messages have disappeared. Look in your News directory (at the command line, type: cd News) for a file called recieved. Those are all your messages. Unfortunately, there's no way to get them back into your Elm mailbox — you'll have to download the file or read it online.
Imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days, as if people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board. Or imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold. Unlike e-mail, which is usually "one-to-one," Usenet is "many-to- many." Usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or talk about whatever's on their mind. Jumping into a Usenet discussion can be a liberating experience. Nobody knows what you look or sound like, how old you are, what your background is. You're judged solely on your words, your ability to make a point. To many people, Usenet IS the Net. In fact, it is often confused with Internet. But it is a totally separate system. All Internet sites CAN carry Usenet, but so do many non-Internet sites, from sophisticated Unix machines to old XT clones and Apple IIs. Technically, Usenet messages are shipped around the world, from host system to host system, using one of several specific Net protocols. Your host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one place, which everybody with an account on the system can access. That way, no matter how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk" with several others regularly in case one or another of their links goes down for some reason. When two host systems connect, they basically compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have. Any that one is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. Because they are computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of these comparisons every day. Yes, millions. For Usenet is huge. Every day, Usenet users pump upwards of 40 million characters a day into the system — roughly the equivalent of volumes A-G of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up with this immense flow of messages. Let's look at how to find conferences and discussions of interest to you. The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest groups). There are now more than 5,000 of these newsgroups, in several diferent languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from science fiction to South Africa. Some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through menus, try to make it easier by dividing Usenet into several broad categories. Choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in that category. Then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start reading. Other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you only see messages in conferences you want. In both cases, conferences are arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early 1980s. Newsgroup names start with one of a series of broad topic names. For example, newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about particular computer- related topics. These broad topics are followed by a series of more focused topics (so that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion about Unix). The main hierarchies are:
bionet Research biology bit.listserv Conferences originating as Bitnet mailing lists biz Business comp Computers and related subjects misc Discussions that don't fit anywhere else news News about Usenet itself rec Hobbies, games and recreation sci Science other than research biology soc "Social" groups, often ethnically related talk Politics and related topics alt Controversial or unusual topics; not carried by all sites
In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular city, state or region. For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where New Englanders look for apartments. A growing number also carry K12 newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and students. And a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and a unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 10).
3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn
How do you dive right in? As mentioned, on some systems, it's all done through menus — you just keep choosing from a list of choices until you get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. On Unix systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. Two of the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no news" — because it's supposed to be simpler to use). For beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with menus — you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you choose which ones you want to see. To try it out, connect to your host system and, at the command line, type
nn news.announce.newusers
and hit enter. After a few seconds, you should see something like this:
Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW
a Gene Spafford 776 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions b Gene Spafford 362 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community c Gene Spafford 387 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette d Gene Spafford 101 Hints on writing style for Usenet e Gene Spafford 74 Introduction to news.announce f Gene Spafford 367 USENET Software: History and Sources g Gene Spafford 353 What is Usenet? h taylor 241 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists i Gene Spafford 585 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I j Gene Spafford 455 >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II k David C Lawrenc 151 How to Create a New Newsgroup l Gene Spafford 106 How to Get Information about Networks m Gene Spafford 888 List of Active Newsgroups n Gene Spafford 504 List of Moderators o Gene Spafford 1051 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I p Gene Spafford 1123 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II q Gene Spafford 1193 >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III r Jonathan Kamens 644 How to become a USENET site s Jonathan Kamen 1344 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I
— 15:52 — SELECT — help:? ——-Top 85%——- Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)
Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of Usenet! Here's what all this means: The first letter on each line is the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense that a "newsgroup" would have "articles"). Next comes the name of the person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what the article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your access site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles), which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post messages to it. This is generally limited to groups such as this, which contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are basically online magazines (more on them in a bit). Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to say about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and the line will light up. If you want to read something else, hit the key that corresponds to it. And if you want to see what's on the next page of articles, hit return or your space bar. But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that article now. The command for that in nn is a capital Z. Hit it and you'll see something like this:
Gene Spafford: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
**NOTE: this is intended to be satirical. If you do not recognizeit as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. Therecommendations in this article should recognized for whatthey are — admonitions about what NOT to do.
"Dear Emily Postnews"
Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour, gives her advice on how to act on the net.
============================================================================
Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? — verbose@noisy
A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you — 09:57 —.announce.newusers— LAST —help:?—Top 4%—
The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header you get in e-mail messages. Then comes the beginning of the message. The last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of it, anyway), the position in your message stack that this message occupies, how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen. If you want to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter key!) for the next screen and so on until done. When done, you'll be returned to the newsgroup menu. For now hit Q (upper case this time), which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command line. To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type
nn comp.risks
and hit enter. This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people who run and use them can go wrong. Again, you read articles by selecting their letters. If you're in the middle of an article and decide you want to go onto the next one, hit your n key. Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of particular interest to you. Unix host systems that have nn use a program called nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in English?) that lets you scan newsgroups. Exit nn and at your host system's command line, type
nngrep word
where word is the subject you're interested in. If you use a Macintosh computer, you might try
nngrep mac
You'll get something that looks like this:
alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace alt.religion.emacs comp.binaries.mac comp.emacs comp.lang.forth.mac comp.os.mach comp.sources.mac comp.sys.mac.announce comp.sys.mac.apps comp.sys.mac.comm comp.sys.mac.databases comp.sys.mac.digest comp.sys.mac.games comp.sys.mac.hardware comp.sys.mac.hypercard comp.sys.mac.misc comp.sys.mac.programmer comp.sys.mac.system comp.sys.mac.wanted gnu.emacs.announce gnu.emacs.bug gnu.emacs.gnews gnu.emacs.gnus gnu.emacs.help gnu.emacs.lisp.manual gnu.emacs.sources gnu.emacs.vm.bug gnu.emacs.vm.info gnu.emacs.vms
Note that some of these obviously have something to do withMacintoshes while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system.If you want to get a list of ALL the newsgroups available on your hostsystem, type
nngrep -a |more
or nngrep -a |pg
and hit enter (which one to use depends on the Unix used on your host system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). You don't absolutely need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list will keep scrolling, rather than pausing every 24 lines. If you are in nn, hitting a capital Y will bring up a similar list. Typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring after awhile. When you use nn, your host system looks in a file called .newsrc. This is basically a list of every newsgroup on the host system along with notations on which groups and articles you have read (all maintained by the computer). You can also use this file to create a "reading list" that brings up each newsgroup to which you want to "subscribe." To try it out, type
nn
without any newsgroup name, and hit enter. Unfortunately, you will start out with a .newsrc file that has you "subscribed" to every single newsgroup on your host system! To delete a newsgroup from your reading list, type a capital U while its menu is on the screen. The computer will ask you if you're sure you want to "unsubscribe." If you then hit a Y, you'll be unsubscribed and put in the next group. With many host systems carrying thousands of newsgroups, this will take you forever. Fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this. Both involve calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor. In a .newsrc file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the group's name, an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers. Newsgroups with a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those followed by an exclamation point are "un-subscribed." To start with a clean slate, then, you have to change all those colons to exclamation points. If you know how to use emacs or vi, call up the .newsrc file (you might want to make a copy of .newsrc first, just in case), and use the search-and-replace function to make the change. If you're not comfortable with these text processor, you can download the .newsrc file, make the changes on your own computer and then upload the revised file. Before you download the file, however, you should do a couple of things. One is to type
cp .newsrc temprc
and hit enter. You will actually download this temprc file (note the name does not start with a period — some computers, such as those using MS-DOS, do not allow file names starting with periods). After you download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its search-and-replace function to change the exclamation points to colons. Be careful not to change anything else! Save the document in ASCII or text format. Dial back into your host system. At the command line, type
cp temprc temprc1
and hit enter. This new file will serve as your backup .newsrc file just in case something goes wrong. Upload the temprc file from your computer. This will overwrite the Unix system's old temprc file. Now type
cp temprc .newsrc
and hit enter. You now have a clean slate to start creating a reading list.
3.3 nn COMMANDS
To mark a specific article for reading, type the letter next to it (in lower case). To mark a specific article and all of its responses, type the letter and an asterisk, for example:
a*
To un-select an article, type the letter next to it (again, in lower case).
C Cancels an article (around the world) that you wrote. Every article posted on Usenet has a unique ID number. Hitting a capital C sends out a new message that tells host systems that receive it to find earlier message and delete it.
F To post a public response, or follow-up. If selected while still on a newsgroup "page", asks you which article to follow up. If selected while in a specific article, will follow up that article. In either case, you'll be asked if you want to include the original article in yours. Caution: puts you in whatever text editor is your default.
N Goes to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles.
P Goes to the previous subscribed newsgroup with unreadarticles.
G news.group Goes to a specific newsgroup. Can be used to subscribe tonew newsgroups. Hitting G brings up a sub-menu:
u Goes to the group and shows only un-readarticles.
a Goes to the group and shows all articles,even ones you've already read.
s Will show you only articles with a specificsubject.
n Will show you only articles from a specificperson.
M Mails a copy of the current article to somebody. You'll be asked for the recipient's e-mail address and whether you want to add any comments to the article before sending it off. As with F, puts you in the default editor.
:post Post an article. You'll be asked for the name of the group.
Q Quit, or exit, nn.
U Un-subscribe from the current newsgroup.
R Responds to an article via e-mail.
space Hitting the space bar brings up the next page of articles.
X If you have selected articles, this will show them to you and then take you to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. If you don't have any selected articles, it marks all articles as read and takes you to the next unread subscribed newsgroup.
=word Finds and marks all articles in the newsgroup with a specific word in the "subject:" line, for example:
=modem
Z Shows you selected articles immediately and then returns you to the current newsgroup.
? Brings up a help screen.
< Goes to the previous page in the newsgroup.
> Goes to the next page in the newsgroup.
$ Goes to the last page in an article.
^ Goes to the first page in an article.
3.4 USING rn
Some folks prefer this older newsreader.If you type
rn news.announce.newusers
at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this:
******** 21 unread articles in news.announce.newusers—read now? [ynq]
If you hit your Y key, the first article will appear on your screen. If you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your computer's = key and you'll get something like this:
152 Introduction to news.announce153 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community154 What is Usenet?155 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions156 Hints on writing style for Usenet158 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I159 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II160 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette161 USENET Software: History and Sources162 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists163 How to Get Information about Networks164 How to Create a New Newsgroup169 List of Active Newsgroups170 List of Moderators171 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I172 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II173 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III174 How to become a USENET site175 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I176 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part II177 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part IIIEnd of article 158 (of 178)—what next? [npq]
Notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't tell you who sent them. Article 154 looks interesting. To read it, type in 154 and hit enter. You'll see something like this:
Article 154 (20 more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated):From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answersSubject: What is Usenet?Date: 20 Sep 92 04:17:26 GMTFollowup-To: news.newusers.questionsOrganization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.Lines: 353Supersedes:
Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1Original from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)Last-change: 19 July 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely misunderstood. Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant" phenomenon is evident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than from any other source. And consider that such flame wars arise, of necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly understood Usenet must be by those outside!
This time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get in e-mail messages. To keep reading, hit your space bar. If you hit your n key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the numerical order. To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get back to the command line. Now let's set up your reading list. Because rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the search-and-replace methods described above. Or you can do this: Type
rn
and hit enter. When the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit your u key (in lower case). Hit it again, and again, and again. Or just keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a couple of seconds). Eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next. Here's where you begin entering newsgroups. Type
g newsgroup
(for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter. You'll be asked if you want to "subscribe." Hit your y key. Then type
g next newsgroup
(for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter. Repeat until done. This process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you prefer that newsreader. But how do you know which newsgroups to subscribe? Typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a list of all available newsgroups. Again, since there could be more than 2,000 newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to do. Fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in their names, using the l command. Typing
l mac
followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and the like, in addition to groups related to Macintosh computers). Because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet, most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. So if there's a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download). To save a message as a file in rn, type
s filename
where filename is what you want to call the file. Hit enter. You'll be asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format." In most cases, you can answer with an n (which will strip off the header). The message will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access by typing cd News and then hitting enter). Also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly — go away for a couple of days and you'll come back to find hundreds of articles! One way to deal with that is to mark them as "read" so that they no longer appear on your screen. In nn, hit a capital J; in rn, a small c.
3.5 rn COMMANDS
Different commands are available to you in rn depending on whether you are already in a newsgroup or reading a specific article. At any point, typing a lowercase h will bring up a list of available commands and some terse instructions for using them. Here are some of them:
After you've just called up rn, or within a newsgroup:
c Marks every article in a newsgroup as read (or "caught up") so that you don't have to see them again. The system will ask you if you are sure. Can be done either when asked if you want to read a particular newsgroup or once in the newsgroup.
g Goes to a newsgroup, in this form:
g news.group
Use this both for going to groups to which you're alreadysubscribed and subscribing to new groups.
h Provides a list of available commands with terse instructions.
l Gives a list of all available newsgroups.
p Goes to the first previous subscribed newsgroup with un-read articles.
q Quits, or exits, rn if you have not yet gone into a newsgroup. If you are in a newsgroup, it quits that one and brings you to the next subscribed newsgroup.
Only within a newsgroup:
= Gives a list of all available articles in the newsgroup.
m Marks a specific article or series of articles as "un-read" again so that you can come back to them later. Typing