rmail -- Command

Receive mail from remote sites
rmail [-LlRr] -q num -u uuxflags address ...

Command rmail receives and processes  mail from remote sites.  It reads and
interprets the address on the mail.   If the mail is addressed to a user on
your local system, it hands the  mail to the local-mail deliverer lmail for
delivery; if the  mail is addressed to a remote  system, it queues the mail
for forwarding to that system.

It is very unusual for a user to invoke rmail from the command line.  rmail
usually is  invoked by  another program;  in particular, the  command uuxqt
invokes it to process mail uploaded from another machine via UUCP.

Options

The command uux  can pass options to rmail to  control its behavior.  rmail
recognizes the following command-line options:

-L Hand  all mail  that whose  address includes  a UUCP  path to  the local
   mailer lmail  for processing, presumably to make  use of other transport
   mechanisms  (e.g., Ethernet).   This option, and  option -l,  defers all
   routing  until lmail  has  re-forwarded the  mail to  smail for  further
   processing.

-l Hand all mail  whose address includes a domain name  to the local mailer
   lmail for processing, so they can be processed for non-UUCP domains.

-q number
   Set the queuing threshold to number.  When routing mail to a given host,
   rmail checks the ``cost'' of contacting  the host; this cost set in file
   /usr/lib/mail/paths. If  the cost is  less the queueing  threshold, then
   rmail  sends the  mail immediately;  otherwise, it  queues the  mail for
   later shipment.  Under COHERENT, default queueing threshold is 100.

-R Reroute UUCP paths, trying successively larger righthand substrings of a
   path until a component is recognized.

-r Route the  first component of a UUCP path  (host!address) in addition to
   routing domain addresses (user@domain).

-u uuxflags
   Pass all  uuxflags to the  command uux for inclusion  in the remote-mail
   command.  This  overrides any of  the default values  and other queueing
   strategies.

Files

/usr/lib/mail/aliases -- File from which aliases data base is built
/usr/lib/mail/paths -- File from which paths data base is built
/usr/spool/uucp/.Log/mail/mail -- Log of mail
/bin/lmail -- Local mailer
/bin/mail -- Mail user agent

See Also

aliases,
commands,
lmail,
mail [overview],
paths,
smail

Notes

rmail  is a  link to  command smail.  For information  on how  rmail parses
addresses and constructs headers, see the Lexicon entry for smail.

Because rmail  is a link  to smail, it  actually recognizes all  of smail's
command-line options; however, it ignores all except those listed above.

Copyright © 1987, 1988 Ronald S. Karr and Landon Curt Noll.  Copyright
© 1992 Ronald S. Karr.

For  details on  the distribution rights  and restrictions  associated with
this software, see file COPYING, which  is included with the source code to
the smail system; or type the command: smail -bc.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness