# # INSTALL -- installation instructions # -------------------------------- Installing nmh, guided by script -------------------------------- For routine installation on popular platforms, the shell script in docs/contrib/build_nmh can be used to guide you through configuration. It will then build and optionally (with -i) install in the configured location. ------------------------ Installing nmh, manually ------------------------ Please read all of the following instructions before you begin building nmh. You should check the MACHINES file to see if there are any specific build instructions for your operating system. To build nmh, you will need an ANSI C compiler such as gcc. 0) If you have obtained nmh by checking it out of the git repository, you will need to run the GNU autotools to regenerate some files. (If your directory already contains a file 'config.h.in' then this has already been done and you do not need to do it.) You can regenerate the files by running the command ./autogen.sh (Note that if you're doing nmh development, you should look at docs/README.developers, since there is other developer-friendly advice there as well.) If you have obtained nmh in the form of a tar archive and are trying to unpack it with cpio: due to an apparent bug in cpio, it might fail with "Malformed number" error messages. Try another tool to unpack, such as tar or pax. 1) From the top-level source directory, run the command ./configure [options] This will check the configuration of your OS, and create the include file config.h, as well as the Makefile. The configure script accepts various options. The options of most interest are listed in a section below. To see the list of all available options, you can run ./configure --help 2) make 3) (Optional) make check This takes a bit of time, around one minute on a modern machine, but is highly recommended. test/inc/test-deb359167 uses valgrind, which detects use of an uninitialized variable on older Linux distributions such as Mandriva 2007.0 and CentOS 5.4. That particular failure is beyond the scope of nmh and can be ignored. 4) make install Note that if you have [n]mh files in your install directories with the same names as the files being installed, the old ones will get overwritten without any warning. 5) Edit the file `mts.conf' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory) and make any necessary changes for the mail transport interface you are using. The default `mts.conf' file assumes you retrieve new mail from a local (or NFS mounted) maildrop, and send outgoing mail by injecting the message to a mail transfer agent (such as sendmail) on the local machine via SMTP. If, instead, all your mail sending and receiving occurs on a remote POP/SMTP server, you will need to look at the values of the variables "localname", "pophost", and "servers": a) "localname" defines the hostname that nmh considers local. If not set, then nmh queries your OS for this value. You will want to change this if you wish your e-mail to appear as if it originated on the POP server. b) "pophost" defines the server that runs the POP daemon, and to which `inc' and `msgchk' will always query for new mail. c) "servers" defines the server to which you send outgoing SMTP traffic. See the discussion of the --with-smtpserver configure option below. If you don't want to hardcode pophost in `mts.conf', you can use the `-host' and `-user' options to `inc' and `msgchk'. Check the `mh-tailor' man page for a list of all the available options for this file. 6) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory). This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to handle various content types (for example, xv to display images). You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to display content. An example of this is: % cd support/general % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory. The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs. If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek, on the Internet at . 7) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh user, but will not be consulted after that. ----------------------------------------------- Compiler options, or using a different compiler ----------------------------------------------- By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can use a different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or linking that the "configure" script does not know about, by giving "configure" initial values for these on its command line or in its environment. For example, ./configure CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix If you wish to add options that are only used at compile time instead of link time, you can use the CPPFLAGS variable: ./configure CPPFLAGS='-Wextra -Wno-sign-compare' If you want to add to both compile and link flags at build time without putting them in the configuration, you can use the AM_CFLAGS Makefile macro: make AM_CFLAGS=--coverage ---------------------------------------- Building nmh on additional architectures ---------------------------------------- To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean". This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different build directory for each architecture. --------------------------------- Using a different build directory --------------------------------- You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example, cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh /usr/local/src/nmh-1.5/configure make --------------------- Options for configure --------------------- --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh) This will change the base prefix for the installation location for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man. --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin) nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here. --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib) nmh's support binaries (post, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here. --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc) nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here. --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man) nmh's man pages are installed here. --enable-debug Enable debugging support. --with-editor=EDITOR (DEFAULT is vi) specify the full path of the default editor to use. If this option is not given, then the configuration process will search for the `vi' command and use it as the default. If you wish to specify an interface which is compatible with MH, then use the nmh command `prompter'. If you specify `prompter', then you don't need to give the full pathname. --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot) Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot", "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is locked. In order to be effective, you should contact the site administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot be created. --enable-lockdir=DIR (DEFAULT is disabled) If dot locking is being used, store all dot-lock files in "DIR". The default is to store them in the directory of the file being locked. --with-mts=MTS (DEFAULT is smtp) Specify the default mail transport system you want to use. The two acceptable options are "smtp" (which is the default), and "sendmail". This value will be put into the mts.conf file. You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be there. If you use "smtp", this will enable a direct SMTP (simple mail transport protocol) interface in nmh. When sending mail, instead of passing the message to the mail transport agent, `post' will open a socket connection to the mail port on the machine specified in the `mts.conf' file (default is localhost), and speak SMTP directly. If you use "sendmail", then `post' will send messages by forking a local copy of sendmail. Currently it will still speak SMTP with this local copy of sendmail. If you wish to use a transport agent other than sendmail, you will need to use a `sendmail wrapper'. --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect) --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect) Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or makes the wrong choice. If either of these options is given then the other must also be specified. --with-pager=PAGER (DEFAULT is more) Specify the default pager (file lister) to use. If this option is not given, then the configuration process will search for the command `more' and use it as the default. --with-smtpservers='SMTPSERVER1[ SMTPSERVER2...]' (DEFAULT is localhost) If this option is not specified, the mts.conf file will contain the line "servers: localhost", which may be manually edited later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be there. See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "servers:". --with-cyrus-sasl (DEFAULT is without) Enable SASL support for SMTP and POP via the Cyrus SASL library. This is used for the POP AUTH and SMTP AUTH protocols. This supports a wide variety of security mechanisms, including Kerberos/GSSAPI. Session encryption via SASL is supported for both POP and SMTP (depending on server-side support and the security mechanism in use). --with-tls (DEFAULT is without) Enable TLS session encryption support for SMTP via the STARTTLS command. --with-readline (DEFAULT is to autodetect) Enable support for readline functionality (command history/editing) at the WhatNow? prompt. -- The nmh team nmh-workers@nongnu.org