SpreadMail V1.0 Copyright ©1996 by Christoph Rickers A POP3-Server "replacement" - Use YAM or any other POP3-Mail Client without a POP3-Server - Introduction: Since I found YAM on the Aminet, I was fascinated by the idea of offline reading and writing mails at home, using my preferred text editor rather than vi oder joe. Unfortunately YAM needs a POP3-Server to fetch mail from my uni-account (I think Voodoo does, too) and our university does not supply a POP3-Server for students. I then started to use YAM to write my mails, since I discovered the scripting facilities of ncftp, the supplied ftp client in the AmiTCP package and started program a work-around to get my mails at home using YAM, even without having a POP3-Server. Disclaimer: This software is provided as is. I am in no way responsible for any damage this program or any part of this archive does to your system or software on your machine. You are allowed to use this program ON YOUR OWN RISK. Installation: Since I have no experience in writing Installer scripts, you'll have to install this by hand. Before starting the procedure, please make sure AmiTCP 4.x and YAM (or your favorite Mail Client) are successfully installed on your machine. To make the installation more fluently, you should already have the following information. - your server IP, - your login name, (you should really know this, eh :-) - your password, - the mail-file and it's path on the remote site. You can find out about this by starting (i.e.) elm on your remote site. Elm displays the mailbox's path and filename in the top line, above the listing of incoming mails. I will now provide a step by step installation, presuming you have all of the above information at hand and YAM and AmiTCP installed. I will explain the procedure for YAM, since I am using this Client. If you use any other client, you will have to find out about their behavior. 1. Make an assign to the directory, where you have installed YAM. assign YAM: the_place_where_yam_is_placed 2. start a shell and change the directory to AmiTCP:bin/ type newshell in the workbench "execute-command requester". Once in the shell, type CD AmiTCP:bin 3. We will now set up a script file for ncftp, wich will be responsable for getting the remote-mailbox to your system... a) start your editor and edit/create a file named .netrc ged .netrc b) enter the following fragment into this file... #unset startup-msg #unset anon-open #unset tips c) Decide, where you would want to place the incoming mailbox. Note that this file will not be processed by YAM and is only of temporary use. Because of this I would suggest that T: is a good place (replace it if you want!). #set local-dir "T:" d) Now we have to create a macro for ncftp, that will be executed every time you start ncftp with the remote-name given. I will give a template and my account and mailboxfile as an example... After the above #-commands leave one line blank and than type machine place_your_server's_name_here user place_your_login_here password place_your_password_here macdef init get place_your_mailbox_with_full_path_in_here del place_your_mailbox_with_full_path_in_here bye It is important that you add a blank line after you finished your macro which starts with "macdef init". If you do not want your mailbox file on your server getting deleted after you got it at home, leave the line starting with del. Note: If you do so, you will perhaps get the same mail twice when you call this script more often without deleting the mail using elm... And as an example, my configuration (of course without pass and login-name :-) machine rz0cosv2.rz.tu-bs.de user blabla password blabla2 macdef init get /import/rzrtr1.var_spool_mail/_user_ del /import/rzrtr1.var_spool_mail/_user_ bye e) Save the file and exit your editor. 4) I suggest that you fetch mail everytime you connect to your remote site, so we will create a user-startup file for AmiTCP, otherwise you'll have to create a script file for random use (place it where you like it!). I will explain the first case. a) Take your editor once again and edit/create the AmiTCP user-startup-file ged AmiTCP:db/User-Startup b) Add the following lines... CD AmiTCP:bin (1) ncftp >NIL: your_server's_name (2) CD directory_where_spreadmail_is_located (3) SpreadMail T: YAM:incoming/ YAM (4) CD HOME: (5) c) Save the file and exit your editor. 5) I will just explain what this script does for you. (1) Change the directory so that ncftp can find the .netrc - file. (2) Start ncftp with your server's name, that will automatically execute the ncftp-script we have added before. For more information refer to AmiTCP:doc/ncftp. I really recommend this. ncftp is a really powerful program (supporting i.e. proxys). (3) Change the directory to the place where SpreadMail is located. (4) Call Spreadmail, let it know that you want filenames for use with YAM. Provide the mailbox with full path and the destination directory. Note that you must provide a pathname ending with "/" or ":". (5) Change the directory to wherever you want, I suggest HOME: 6) That's it. And it sounds more complicated than it really is. Using Spreadmail: Spreadmail is nothing but a parser, which will get a mailbox file and splits it into single mails, understood by your Mail Client. I don't know how Voodoo works, if you discover any problems, please feel free to contact me at the address below or via E-Mail. YAM for example uses special filenames to decode the date (the mail arrived). Because of that you have to supply the YAM keyword. Since I didn't want to spend more time on the program than absolutely necessary you'll have to provide the arguments in exactly this order: SpreadMail from_file dest_path(ending with / or :) [YAM] [YAM] is optionally. Registering: Most of the time SpreadMail will work in the background, so you will forget that you are using it, but please keep the following in mind. I am a student, not only a programmer. If I start programming I spend less time on my studies (which I actually can't really afford). Actually I am working on the best program for statistical procedures on measurement data, including graphical presentation in 2D and 3D. This will become better than any other product on the amiga for that use (which is not very difficult in fact - but it's quite a lot of work, though!). I plan to distribute this product as shareware. Since I found out that a lot of amiga-useres don't register for the products they use, I decided to use this program as a test. The version you use is crippled - it would only extract up to 3 mails from one mailbox file. I would ask you to register for a very low donation and you'll get a key-file which disabled this behavior. Your are allowed to spread this archive, but not the keyfile. I will always be able to figure out, to whom a keyfile belongs. Please remember that this is a test for me. The way I provide further and more powerfull program depends on YOU! Please use the supplied registration form and fill out as much as possible. The data you give will be kept throroughly and only on my machine. Author: Christoph Rickers Karlstraße 30 38106 Braunschweig Deutschland E-Mail: C.Rickers@tu-bs.de rickers@kephalos.physik.uni-bremen.de