As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply to
... "
Hi out there,
please be gentle, this is my first post, and I apologise in advance if
folks are offended by the simplicity of my questions.
I trying to learn how to use Alpine (amongst other things) on a Mac and
also on a Debian machine. I'm trying to do as much as I can from the
command line.
I managed to persuade Alpine to send an email to one of my accounts,
arriving successfully at Mac Mail. I was pleased with that, but what
arrived didn't include my email address for a reply. In fact what it
did say (about the originator of the email) was unhelpful, in that the program constructed an email address that doesn't exist.
In Setup/Configuration I entered in my "Personal Name" without too much
of a challenge = Nikki
and for "User Domain" I put what would occur after the @ in my email addresses, i.e. that of my ISP.
The result was that the experimental email appeared to have come from nikki@this.com, concocting an email address that doesn't exist. Nowhere
does Alpine ask for information a supplicant like myself could respond
to, something like "what's your email address?". No doubt it DOES ask
that question somewhere, but in terms which I don't understand. Nor can
I find (Duck-Ducking) anywhere that gives that sort of explanation.
alPine for Dummies?
Anyway, I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't know this particular jargon,
speak the language, thus nor can I make sense of the man pages.
As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply
to ... "
I've been toying with Linux for years now, and with modest success, but
it seems there's a missing 'intermediate' entry level.
As I said: "don't hit me" ...
TIA
Nikki
On 2021-06-20, Nikki <nikki@thisp.com> wrote:
Hi out there,
please be gentle, this is my first post, and I apologise in advance if
folks are offended by the simplicity of my questions.
Why would anyone be offended. We all started off as ignorant.
There is also the man page
man alpine
which will remind you of options you forgot. It tends to be a bit bare
as a place to learn from.
There is also an introduction at https://umanitoba.ca/computing/ist/software/unix/alpine-howto.html
I trying to learn how to use Alpine (amongst other things) on a Mac and
also on a Debian machine. I'm trying to do as much as I can from the
command line.
I managed to persuade Alpine to send an email to one of my accounts,
arriving successfully at Mac Mail. I was pleased with that, but what
arrived didn't include my email address for a reply. In fact what it
did say (about the originator of the email) was unhelpful, in that the
program constructed an email address that doesn't exist.
In Setup/Configuration I entered in my "Personal Name" without too much
of a challenge = Nikki
and for "User Domain" I put what would occur after the @ in my email
addresses, i.e. that of my ISP.
The result was that the experimental email appeared to have come from
nikki@this.com, concocting an email address that doesn't exist. Nowhere
You presumably have given your machine the name "this.com"
does Alpine ask for information a supplicant like myself could respond
to, something like "what's your email address?". No doubt it DOES ask
that question somewhere, but in terms which I don't understand. Nor can
I find (Duck-Ducking) anywhere that gives that sort of explanation.
It will use your username that you log in with on your machine, and then
tack on you fully qualified domain name for the machine.
If you want a different address, you can ask your mail agent to
translate the name. For example if you use postfix (most Linux systems default to that) go to the file /etc/postfix/main.cf and change the
lines
mydomain=physics.ubc.ca
masquerade_domains = $mydomain
masquerade_exceptions = root
This will change all of the From: addresses to physics.ubc.ca (Pls do
not use that as you will not get your mail) or whatever you make the
variable mydomain be. The exception is so that mail that is supposed to
go to root on your machine does not end up being sent to root on your
ISPs system.
alPine for Dummies?
Anyway, I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't know this particular jargon,
speak the language, thus nor can I make sense of the man pages.
They tend to be reminders of command format rather than HowTo pages.
As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the
direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My
current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply
to ... "
I've been toying with Linux for years now, and with modest success, but
it seems there's a missing 'intermediate' entry level.
As I said: "don't hit me" ...
TIA
Nikki
what you need to learn is how to change the From: field in a message. There is a guide written by Nancy McGough that explains how to do this. The page was written for Pine, but it applies perfectly to Alpine. This is the address
http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/changing_from/
I hope this helps!
In that page we read:
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix
username.
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?
On Mon, 21 Jun 2021, Roderick wrote:
In that page we read:
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config
screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix username. >>
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?
Dear Rodrigo,
no, the variable is not used in Unix Aline. The source code says "for security reasons". I have not modified that. Maybe you are using a version of Alpine that has been modified?
I tried to add the user-id variable to my .pinerc, and it had no effect (I tried it with an unmodified version, and new .pinerc file without any special configurations)
If it works in your version, that is great. Which "version" are your
running (I am really asking for Debian? Ubuntu? etc.)
Thank you.
--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)
I see, it is gmail that fills the "From:" header. Indeed the
variable "user-id" has no effect when I use the local mailer
instead of gmail-smtp and as you said sure also beyond that.
I have no idea why I have "user-id=" in my .pinerc, it is a very
old configuration file.
# alpine -v
Alpine 2.23 (BSF 453 2020-06-18) built Mon Jan 11 10:13:32 UTC 2021 on
It is a self compiled version, hence unmodified.
Thanks
Rodrigo
On Mon, 21 Jun 2021, Eduardo Chappa wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jun 2021, Roderick wrote:
In that page we read:
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login >>> name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config >>> screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix
username.
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?
Dear Rodrigo,
no, the variable is not used in Unix Aline. The source code says "for
security reasons". I have not modified that. Maybe you are using a version >> of Alpine that has been modified?
I tried to add the user-id variable to my .pinerc, and it had no effect (I >> tried it with an unmodified version, and new .pinerc file without any
special configurations)
If it works in your version, that is great. Which "version" are your
running (I am really asking for Debian? Ubuntu? etc.)
Thank you.
--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)
As far as I understand Gmail rewrites the from field if it does not match
the one you are allowed to send from.
Alpine was designed to be used for students/faculty/staff at the
University of Washington, not for people in their personal computers. At
that time everyone had an email addres given by
${LOGNAME}@u.washington.edu, and this made it easy to set up Pine in >computers at the University. This decision shows the age of Alpine, and it >does not apply to the current needs of users.
Alpine needs to be updated to conform to more modern needs, and the use of
a user-id might change because of this.
with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days as well.
Eduardo Chappa <chappa@washington.edu> wrote:
As far as I understand Gmail rewrites the from field if it does not match
the one you are allowed to send from.
Alpine was designed to be used for students/faculty/staff at the
University of Washington, not for people in their personal computers. At
that time everyone had an email addres given by
${LOGNAME}@u.washington.edu, and this made it easy to set up Pine in
computers at the University. This decision shows the age of Alpine, and it >> does not apply to the current needs of users.
Alpine needs to be updated to conform to more modern needs, and the use of >> a user-id might change because of this.
My account originated as dialup to a Unix host. pine 2.X was one of the mailers offered. I now SSH to the host; alpine is one of the mailers
offered. Lots of linux distributions with alpine packages have been
compiled with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days
as well.
If you finally remove the restriction by default, you should probably
have a configuration option in there in case some system administrator
thinks it's a better way to manage corporate or institutional mail
accounts. There must be some corporate email that isn't using [spit] Microsoft Outlook.
I would still leave the user name (left of @) equivalent to the account
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.
. . .
I will make some changes to Alpine to make the user-id obsolete while not >eliminating it and preserving its full functionality.
[...]
My account originated as dialup to a Unix host. pine 2.X was one of the mailers offered. I now SSH to the host; alpine is one of the mailers
offered. Lots of linux distributions with alpine packages have been compiled with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days as well.
If you finally remove the restriction by default, you should probably
have a configuration option in there in case some system administrator
thinks it's a better way to manage corporate or institutional mail
accounts. There must be some corporate email that isn't using [spit] Microsoft Outlook.
I would still leave the user name (left of @) equivalent to the account
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.
On 2021-06-22, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
I would still leave the user name (left of @) equivalent to the account >>name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment >>variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.
Agreed. Btw Adam, this is the "localpart" of an e-mail address :-).
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 296 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 45:12:40 |
| Calls: | 6,648 |
| Files: | 12,197 |
| Messages: | 5,329,773 |