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) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory).
94 This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command
95 `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script
96 will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to
97 handle various content types (for example, xv to display images).
98 You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may
99 want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to
100 display content. An example of this is:
103 % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults
105 and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory.
107 The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs.
108 If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need
109 to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is
110 described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book
111 "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek,
112 on the Internet at <http://rand-mh.sourceforge.net/book/mh/confmhn.html>.
114 7) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be
115 placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This
116 file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh
117 user, but will not be consulted after that.
119 -----------------------------------------------
120 Compiler options, or using a different compiler
121 -----------------------------------------------
123 By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can
124 use a different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or
125 linking that the "configure" script does not know about, by giving
126 "configure" initial values for these in its environment. Using a
127 Bourne-compatible shell, such as sh, ksh, zsh, or bash, you can do
128 that on the command line like this:
129 CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix ./configure
131 Or on systems that have the "env" program, you can do it like this:
132 env CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include LDFLAGS=-s ./configure
134 If you want to add to, not replace, compile flags, you can use OURDEFS
135 with env or like this:
136 OURDEFS='-Wextra -Wno-sign-compare' ./configure
138 If you want to add to both compile and link flags at build time
139 without putting them in the configuration, you can use an otherwise
140 unused Makefile macro, like this:
141 make AM_CFLAGS=--coverage
143 That does not include that setting in the configuration, so you will
144 have to repeat it if you re-run "make". One example would be if you
145 build the test suite as a separate step:
146 make test AM_CFLAGS=--coverage
148 Though note that the Makefile test target depends on the default
149 target, so both be can built in one step with "make test".
151 ----------------------------------------
152 Building nmh on additional architectures
153 ----------------------------------------
154 To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean".
155 This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original
156 state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in
157 which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different
158 build directory for each architecture.
160 ---------------------------------
161 Using a different build directory
162 ---------------------------------
163 You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing
164 the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one
165 architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of
166 "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to
167 the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and
168 run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the
169 source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example,
171 cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh
172 /usr/local/src/nmh-1.0/configure
175 ---------------------
176 Options for configure
177 ---------------------
178 --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh)
179 This will change the base prefix for the installation location
180 for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed
181 in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man.
183 --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin)
184 nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here.
186 --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib)
187 nmh's support binaries (post, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here.
189 --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc)
190 nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here.
192 --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man)
193 nmh's man pages are installed here.
196 Enable debugging support.
198 --enable-masquerade[='draft_from mmailid username_extension']
199 If this option is disabled, the mts.conf file will contain the
200 line "masquerade: " (with no value), which may be manually edited
201 later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at
202 configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled,
203 the right value will be there. By default, it is enabled.
205 The above usage shows the default, with all three masquerade
206 options being specified. Any subset of the three may be
209 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "masquerade:".
212 Enable client-side support for pop.
215 Enable client-side support for apop (Authenticated POP).
217 --with-editor=EDITOR (DEFAULT is vi)
218 specify the full path of the default editor to use. If this
219 option is not given, then the configuration process will search
220 for the `vi' command and use it as the default. If you wish to
221 specify an interface which is compatible with MH, then use the
222 nmh command `prompter'. If you specify `prompter', then you don't
223 need to give the full pathname.
226 Specify the location of Hesiod.
229 Specify the location of Kerberos V4 for KPOP support. After
230 running configure, you will need to change the POPSERVICE #define in
231 config.h if you want to use KPOP exclusively (rather than being able
232 to switch between KPOP and normal POP3). See the comments inside
233 config.h for details.
235 --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot)
236 Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or
237 "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot",
238 "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking
239 requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply
240 creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is
243 In order to be effective, you should contact the site
244 administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other
245 mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common
246 reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory
247 is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot
250 --with-mts=MTS (DEFAULT is smtp)
251 Specify the default mail transport system you want to use. The two
252 acceptable options are "smtp" (which is the default), and
253 "sendmail". This value will be put into the mts.conf file. You
254 may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
255 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will
258 If you use "smtp", this will enable a direct SMTP (simple mail
259 transport protocol) interface in nmh. When sending mail, instead
260 of passing the message to the mail transport agent, `post' will
261 open a socket connection to the mail port on the machine specified
262 in the `mts.conf' file (default is localhost), and speak SMTP
265 If you use "sendmail", then `post' will send messages by forking a
266 local copy of sendmail. Currently it will still speak SMTP with
267 this local copy of sendmail.
269 If you wish to use a transport agent other than sendmail, you will
270 need to use a `sendmail wrapper'.
272 --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
273 --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
274 Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use
275 to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure
276 will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this
277 option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or
278 makes the wrong choice.
280 If either of these options is given then the other must also be
283 --with-pager=PAGER (DEFAULT is more)
284 Specify the default pager (file lister) to use. If this option
285 is not given, then the configuration process will search for the
286 command `more' and use it as the default.
288 --with-smtpservers='SMTPSERVER1[ SMTPSERVER2...]' (DEFAULT is localhost)
289 If this option is not specified, the mts.conf file will contain
290 the line "servers: localhost", which may be manually edited later.
291 You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time,
292 however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be
295 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "servers:".
299 nmh-workers@nongnu.org