pine is used to read email on Linux systems. There are some other options
out there, but I've used pine exclusively for years. It's done everything
that I need in an email client, so that's what I'm sticking with. It's
also fast, easy to use, highly configurable, and stable. It's what I'll
be teaching you to use.
To start pine, simply type 'pine' at the prompt. To see the messages
that you have in your INBOX, hit 'i' to go to the index listing. To move
between messages, you can use the up/down arrow keys. To view a message,
hit [enter]. Once in a message, you use the up/down arrow keys to scroll.
To return to the index listing, hit 'i'.
Here are some common keystrokes that you'll use:
- q: Quit pine.
- ?: Invokes help that is very useful. To exit help, hit 'e'.
- d: While viewing an email, or having an email highlighted in the index listing, it will mark the message for deletion.
- u: While viewing an email, or having an email highlighted in the index listing, it will remove the delete mark.
- x: While viewing the index listing, this will expunge all messages that are marked for deletion. Be careful with this. Once you answer 'y' to the confirmation dialogue, the messages that are marked for deletion are gone forever.
- i: While viewing an email, or in the main menu, you can hit 'i' to take you to the index listing of emails.
- s: While viewing an email, or having an email highlighted in the index listing, it will "save" the message to a separate folder. You must specify the folder name. If the folder does not exist yet, then you will be asked to confirm the folder name. Once a message is saved in a different folder, it will be marked for deletion.
- l: This will take you to the folder list, so that you can view messages that are stored in other folders. Once you choose the other folder, you will be taken to the index listing for that folder. To return to the INBOX, hit 'l', and use the arrow keys to choose 'INBOX', and hit [enter].
- c: This will compose a new message. You've done email before, so this should be fairly simple for you to do. If you are sending a message locally (e.g.: the destination is XXX@kilnar.com, then you just need to type in XXX and the system will append '@kilnar.com' for you. If you want to send a single email to multiple recipients, put a comma between their email addresses
- Once you have your email written, you can hit CTRL-X to send it. It will ask you to confirm. Just hit 'y' to send it.
- If you decide to cancel the message, you can hit CTRL-C. It will ask you to confirm. Just hit 'c' to confirm the canellation.
- If you want to keep the message, but finish it later, you can hit CTRL-O. To pick up later, just hit 'c' again to compose a message. It will ask you if you want to continue the postponed message. You can have multiple postponed messages at once, and they will stay there until you decide to send or cancel them.
- r: When you have a message that is highlighted, or you are viewing a message, 'r' will send a reply.
- f: When you have a message that is highlighted, or you are viewing a message, 'f' will forward the message.
- e: Export message. This will take the message that you have highlighted, or are currently viewing, and dump the contents to a file in your home directory.
- o: There are a list of commands (with their activation keys highlighted) at the bottom of the screen. To see more commands, hit 'o' to cycle through them.
- m: Return to main menu.
- a: Accesses the address book, but you must be in the main menu to do it. You can (@) add a new contact, (d) delete a contact, or ([enter]) view a contact. The commands are all listed at the bottom. When you add a new contact, the "Nickname" is what you would want to type in the 'to' field of an email for that address to show up. If you wanted to email Cameron, you could add a nickname of 'Cam', and to email him, you just type 'Cam' in the To field, and the email will go to him.
Last Modified: 2006-04-19
Copyright © 2006-2019 - John Evans