NAME

mail.local — store mail in a mailbox

SYNOPSIS

mail.local

[-l] [-f from] user ...

DESCRIPTION

mail.local reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it to each user's mail file. The user must be a valid user name.

The options are as follows:

-f from

Specify the sender's name.

-l

Request that username.lock files be used for locking.

Individual mail messages in the mailbox are delimited by an empty line followed by a line beginning with the string ``From ''. A line containing the string ``From '', the sender's name and a time stamp is prepended to each delivered mail message. A blank line is appended to each message. A greater-than character (``>'') is prepended to any line in the message which could be mistaken for a ``From '' delimiter line.

If the [-l] flag is specified mailbox locking is done with username.lock files. Otherwise, the mailbox is exclusively locked with flock(2) while mail is appended.

If the ``biff'' service is returned by getservbyname(3), the biff server is notified of delivered mail.

The mail.local utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT

TZ

Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp.

FILES

/tmp/local.XXXXXX

temporary files

/var/mail/user

user's mailbox directory

SEE ALSO

mail(1), flock(2), getservbyname(3), comsat(8), sendmail(8)

HISTORY

A superset of mail.local (handling mailbox reading as well as mail delivery) appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX as the program mail(1).