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 CVS, you will
16 need to run the GNU autotools to regenerate some files.
17 (If your directory already contains a file 'config.h.in'
18 then this has already been done and you do not need to do it.)
19 You can 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 various Makefiles.
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.
53 Note that if you have [n]mh files in your install directories with
54 the same names as the files being installed, the old ones will get
55 overwritten without any warning. The only directory that isn't
56 true for is the `etc' directory -- in that directory, the previous
57 copy of each <file> will be backed up as <file>.prev if it differs
58 from the newly-installed copy. Watch for any diff output while
59 make is processing that directory to see if you need to merge
60 changes from *.prev files into the new versions.
62 5) Edit the file `mts.conf' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory)
63 and make any necessary changes for the mail transport interface
66 The default `mts.conf' file assumes you retrieve new mail from
67 a local (or NFS mounted) maildrop, and send outgoing mail by
68 injecting the message to a mail transfer agent (such as sendmail)
69 on the local machine via SMTP.
71 If, instead, all your mail sending and receiving occurs on a
72 remote POP/SMTP server, you will need to look at the values of the
73 variables "localname", "pophost", and "servers":
75 a) "localname" defines the hostname that nmh considers local.
76 If not set, then nmh queries your OS for this value. You will
77 want to change this if you wish your e-mail to appear as if it
78 originated on the POP server.
80 b) "pophost" defines the server that runs the POP daemon, and to
81 which `inc' and `msgchk' will always query for new mail.
83 c) "servers" defines the server to which you send outgoing SMTP
86 If you compile with POP support, but don't want to use it exclusively,
87 you can use the `-host' and `-user' options to `inc' and `msgchk'
88 rather than hardcoding pophost in `mts.conf'.
90 Check the `mh-tailor' man page for a list of all the available options
91 for this file ("masquerade" may be of particular interest).
93 6) If you have enabled POP support, make sure that `pop3' (or more
94 precisely the value of the define POPSERVICE in config.h) is defined
95 in the /etc/services file (or its NIS/NIS+ equivalent) on the client
96 machine. It should be something equivalent to "110/tcp". This might
97 have already been done when the POP daemon was installed.
99 7) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory).
100 This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command
101 `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script
102 will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to
103 handle various content types (for example, xv to display images).
104 You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may
105 want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to
106 display content. An example of this is:
109 % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults
111 and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory.
113 The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs.
114 If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need
115 to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is
116 described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book
117 "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek,
118 on the Internet at <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/mh/confmhn.htm>.
120 9) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be
121 placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This
122 file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh
123 user, but will not be consulted after that.
125 -----------------------------------------------
126 Compiler options, or using a different compiler
127 -----------------------------------------------
128 By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can use a
129 different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or linking that
130 the "configure" script does not know about, by either editing the user
131 configuration section of the top level Makefile (after running configure)
132 or giving "configure" initial values for these variables by setting them
133 in the environment. Using a Bourne-compatible shell (such as sh,ksh,zsh),
135 you can do that on the command line like this:
136 CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix ./configure
138 Or on systems that have the "env" program, you can do it like this:
139 env CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include LDFLAGS=-s ./configure
141 ----------------------------------------
142 Building nmh on additional architectures
143 ----------------------------------------
144 To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean".
145 This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original
146 state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in
147 which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different
148 build directory for each architecture.
150 ---------------------------------
151 Using a different build directory
152 ---------------------------------
153 You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing
154 the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one
155 architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of
156 "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to
157 the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and
158 run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the
159 source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example,
161 cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh
162 /usr/local/src/nmh-1.0/configure
165 ---------------------
166 Options for configure
167 ---------------------
168 --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh)
169 This will change the base prefix for the installation location
170 for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed
171 in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man.
173 --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin)
174 nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here.
176 --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib)
177 nmh's support binaries (post, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here.
179 --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc)
180 nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here.
182 --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man)
183 nmh's man pages are installed here.
186 Enable debugging support.
188 --enable-masquerade[='draft_from mmailid username_extension']
189 If this option is disabled, the mts.conf file will contain the
190 line "masquerade: " (with no value), which may be manually edited
191 later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at
192 configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled,
193 the right value will be there. By default, it is enabled.
195 The above usage shows the default, with all three masquerade
196 options being specified. Any subset of the three may be
199 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "masquerade:".
201 --enable-mhe (DEFAULT)
202 Add support for the Emacs front-end `mhe'.
205 Enable client-side support for pop.
208 Enable client-side support for apop (Authenticated POP).
210 --with-editor=EDITOR (DEFAULT is vi)
211 specify the full path of the default editor to use. If this
212 option is not given, then the configuration process will search
213 for the `vi' command and use it as the default. If you wish to
214 specify an interface which is compatible with MH, then use the
215 nmh command `prompter'. If you specify `prompter', then you don't
216 need to give the full pathname.
219 Specify the location of Hesiod.
222 Specify the location of Kerberos V4 for KPOP support. After
223 running configure, you will need to change the POPSERVICE #define in
224 config.h if you want to use KPOP exclusively (rather than being able
225 to switch between KPOP and normal POP3). See the comments inside
226 config.h for details.
228 --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot)
229 Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or
230 "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot",
231 "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking
232 requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply
233 creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is
236 In order to be effective, you should contact the site
237 administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other
238 mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common
239 reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory
240 is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot
243 --with-mts=MTS (DEFAULT is smtp)
244 Specify the default mail transport system you want to use. The two
245 acceptable options are "smtp" (which is the default), and
246 "sendmail". This value will be put into the mts.conf file. You
247 may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
248 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will
251 If you use "smtp", this will enable a direct SMTP (simple mail
252 transport protocol) interface in nmh. When sending mail, instead
253 of passing the message to the mail transport agent, `post' will
254 open a socket connection to the mail port on the machine specified
255 in the `mts.conf' file (default is localhost), and speak SMTP
258 If you use "sendmail", then `post' will send messages by forking a
259 local copy of sendmail. Currently it will still speak SMTP with
260 this local copy of sendmail.
262 If you wish to use a transport agent other than sendmail, you will
263 need to use a `sendmail wrapper'.
265 --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
266 --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
267 Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use
268 to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure
269 will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this
270 option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or
271 makes the wrong choice.
273 If either of these options is given then the other must also be
276 --with-pager=PAGER (DEFAULT is more)
277 Specify the default pager (file lister) to use. If this option
278 is not given, then the configuration process will search for the
279 command `more' and use it as the default.
281 --with-smtpservers='SMTPSERVER1[ SMTPSERVER2...]' (DEFAULT is localhost)
282 If this option is not specified, the mts.conf file will contain
283 the line "servers: localhost", which may be manually edited later.
284 You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
285 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be
288 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "servers:".
292 nmh-workers@nongnu.org