2 # INSTALL -- installation instructions
8 Please read all of the following instructions before you begin
11 You should check the MACHINES file to see if there are any specific
12 build instructions for your operating system. To build nmh, you will
13 need an ANSI C compiler such as gcc.
15 0) If you have obtained nmh by checking it out of the git repository,
16 you will need to run the GNU autotools to regenerate some files.
17 (If your directory already contains a file 'config.h.in' then this
18 has already been done and you do not need to do it.) You can
19 regenerate the files by running the command
23 (Note that if you're doing nmh development, you should look at
24 docs/README.developers, since there is other developer-friendly
25 advice there as well.)
27 If you have obtained nmh in the form of a tar archive and are
28 trying to unpack it with cpio: due to an apparent bug in cpio, it
29 might fail with "Malformed number" error messages. Try another
30 tool to unpack, such as tar or pax.
32 1) From the top-level source directory, run the command
36 This will check the configuration of your OS, and create the
37 include file config.h, as well as the Makefile.
39 The configure script accepts various options. The options of
40 most interest are listed in a section below. To see the list
41 of all available options, you can run
45 2) Look through the user configuration section at the beginning
46 of the generated include file `config.h'. You may
47 want to customize some #defines for your environment, though
48 that is usually unnecessary. Note the configure options below
49 control some of the #defines.
55 This takes a bit of time, around one minute on a modern machine,
56 but is highly recommended.
60 Note that if you have [n]mh files in your install directories with
61 the same names as the files being installed, the old ones will get
62 overwritten without any warning. The only directory that isn't
63 true for is the `etc' directory -- in that directory, the previous
64 copy of each <file> will be backed up as <file>.prev if it differs
65 from the newly-installed copy. Watch for any diff output while
66 make is processing that directory to see if you need to merge
67 changes from *.prev files into the new versions.
69 6) Edit the file `mts.conf' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory)
70 and make any necessary changes for the mail transport interface
73 The default `mts.conf' file assumes you retrieve new mail from
74 a local (or NFS mounted) maildrop, and send outgoing mail by
75 injecting the message to a mail transfer agent (such as sendmail)
76 on the local machine via SMTP.
78 If, instead, all your mail sending and receiving occurs on a
79 remote POP/SMTP server, you will need to look at the values of the
80 variables "localname", "pophost", and "servers":
82 a) "localname" defines the hostname that nmh considers local.
83 If not set, then nmh queries your OS for this value. You will
84 want to change this if you wish your e-mail to appear as if it
85 originated on the POP server.
87 b) "pophost" defines the server that runs the POP daemon, and to
88 which `inc' and `msgchk' will always query for new mail.
90 c) "servers" defines the server to which you send outgoing SMTP
91 traffic. See the discussion of the --with-smtpserver configure
94 If you compile with POP support, but don't want to use it exclusively,
95 you can use the `-host' and `-user' options to `inc' and `msgchk'
96 rather than hardcoding pophost in `mts.conf'.
98 Check the `mh-tailor' man page for a list of all the available options
99 for this file ("masquerade" may be of particular interest, though its
100 default value allows the most flexibility. See the discussion of the
101 --enable-masquerade configure option below).
103 7) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory).
104 This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command
105 `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script
106 will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to
107 handle various content types (for example, xv to display images).
108 You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may
109 want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to
110 display content. An example of this is:
113 % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults
115 and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory.
117 The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs.
118 If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need
119 to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is
120 described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book
121 "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek,
122 on the Internet at <http://rand-mh.sourceforge.net/book/mh/confmhn.html>.
124 8) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be
125 placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This
126 file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh
127 user, but will not be consulted after that.
129 -----------------------------------------------
130 Compiler options, or using a different compiler
131 -----------------------------------------------
133 By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can
134 use a different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or
135 linking that the "configure" script does not know about, by giving
136 "configure" initial values for these on its command line or in its
137 environment. For example,
139 ./configure CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix
141 If you wish to add options that are only used at compile time instead of
142 link time, you can use the CPPFLAGS variable:
144 ./configure CPPFLAGS='-Wextra -Wno-sign-compare'
146 If you want to add to both compile and link flags at build time
147 without putting them in the configuration, you can use the AM_CFLAGS
150 make AM_CFLAGS=--coverage
152 ----------------------------------------
153 Building nmh on additional architectures
154 ----------------------------------------
155 To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean".
156 This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original
157 state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in
158 which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different
159 build directory for each architecture.
161 ---------------------------------
162 Using a different build directory
163 ---------------------------------
164 You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing
165 the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one
166 architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of
167 "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to
168 the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and
169 run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the
170 source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example,
172 cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh
173 /usr/local/src/nmh-1.5/configure
176 ---------------------
177 Options for configure
178 ---------------------
179 --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh)
180 This will change the base prefix for the installation location
181 for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed
182 in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man.
184 --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin)
185 nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here.
187 --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib)
188 nmh's support binaries (post, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here.
190 --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc)
191 nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here.
193 --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man)
194 nmh's man pages are installed here.
197 Enable debugging support.
199 --enable-masquerade[='draft_from mmailid username_extension']
200 By default, all three masquerade options are enabled.
202 If this option is disabled, the mts.conf file will contain the
203 line "masquerade: " (with no value), which may be manually edited
204 later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at
205 configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled,
206 the right value will be there.
208 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "masquerade:".
210 This option will likely be removed in a future version of nmh.
213 Enable client-side support for pop.
216 Enable client-side support for apop (Authenticated POP).
218 --with-editor=EDITOR (DEFAULT is vi)
219 specify the full path of the default editor to use. If this
220 option is not given, then the configuration process will search
221 for the `vi' command and use it as the default. If you wish to
222 specify an interface which is compatible with MH, then use the
223 nmh command `prompter'. If you specify `prompter', then you don't
224 need to give the full pathname.
227 Specify the location of Hesiod.
230 Specify the location of Kerberos V4 for KPOP support. After
231 running configure, you will need to change the POPSERVICE #define in
232 config.h if you want to use KPOP exclusively (rather than being able
233 to switch between KPOP and normal POP3). See the comments inside
234 config.h for details.
236 --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot)
237 Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or
238 "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot",
239 "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking
240 requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply
241 creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is
244 In order to be effective, you should contact the site
245 administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other
246 mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common
247 reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory
248 is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot
251 --with-mts=MTS (DEFAULT is smtp)
252 Specify the default mail transport system you want to use. The two
253 acceptable options are "smtp" (which is the default), and
254 "sendmail". This value will be put into the mts.conf file. You
255 may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
256 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will
259 If you use "smtp", this will enable a direct SMTP (simple mail
260 transport protocol) interface in nmh. When sending mail, instead
261 of passing the message to the mail transport agent, `post' will
262 open a socket connection to the mail port on the machine specified
263 in the `mts.conf' file (default is localhost), and speak SMTP
266 If you use "sendmail", then `post' will send messages by forking a
267 local copy of sendmail. Currently it will still speak SMTP with
268 this local copy of sendmail.
270 If you wish to use a transport agent other than sendmail, you will
271 need to use a `sendmail wrapper'.
273 --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
274 --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
275 Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use
276 to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure
277 will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this
278 option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or
279 makes the wrong choice.
281 If either of these options is given then the other must also be
284 --with-pager=PAGER (DEFAULT is more)
285 Specify the default pager (file lister) to use. If this option
286 is not given, then the configuration process will search for the
287 command `more' and use it as the default.
289 --with-smtpservers='SMTPSERVER1[ SMTPSERVER2...]' (DEFAULT is localhost)
290 If this option is not specified, the mts.conf file will contain
291 the line "servers: localhost", which may be manually edited later.
292 You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
293 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be
296 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "servers:".
300 nmh-workers@nongnu.org