Subj : Re: New MM/Linux user <???>
To   : James Bradley
From : William McBrine
Date : Sat Feb 21 2004 12:40 am

-=> James Bradley wrote to William McBrine <=-

 JB> I'm resisting the temptation to `dance' just yet. This is the first
 JB> non-distro program I've attempted to install to Linux, so I'll be
 JB> surprised if this sees the echo.

Worked fine. :-)

 >		mm-qnx-i386

 JB> I'm using Mandrake 6. Shouldn't this RedHat port be more
 JB> apropos than the mm-linux-i386elf?

That's not in any way a Red Hat port. Where did you get that idea? It's for
QNX.

RPMs might be more apt, but unfortunately there are none for 0.46 (at
least, none that I know of). I used to have some contributors who built
them, but they haven't shown up lately.

But if you really want a binary that's optimized for your system, you
should build from source. :-)

 JB> After setting execute permission, and trying ./mm-qnx-i386
 JB> while in /root, bash reports the file doesn't exist. I know
 JB> it does, as when I try to execute the file without permission,
 JB> I am denied access. Which leadsme to believe:

 JB> Should I be installing these programs to a /*bin directory?

I'd recommend putting it somewhere in your PATH, yes. The Makefile uses
/usr/local/bin. However, the reason mm-qnx-i386 won't run is that it's not
a Linux executable.

BTW, don't run as root. Create a regular user account, use that, and only
su to root when you have to (which should be almost never; mainly when
installing new programs). But that's just generic Linux advice, nothing to
do with MultiMail. :-)

 >		mm-linux-i386elf

 JB> I'm only able to run the program from a command prompt. When
 JB> I attempt to run it from an X-Windows session, I have to do
 JB> so from inside a terminal emulator,

Yes; it's a terminal-based program. (As it is in Windows; but Windows 
creates a terminal session for it automatically. X doesn't.)

 JB> and then, the alias I've defined seems inactive.

I'm not sure what you mean here. But if you want to make an icon on your
desktop from which to launch it, you can. The target would just have to be
something like "xterm -e mm", instead of only "mm".

 >		Generic

 JB> Where do I find the docs/FAQ/HOWTO/man/info files?

In the source archive. This is how you'd install it:

 [download mmail-0.46.tar.gz]

 tar zxvf mmail-0.46.tar.gz
 cd mmail-0.46
 make
 make install

Then you can read the man page by typing "man mm", and the rest by reading
the various files in mmail-0.46. (This is all pretty standard for Linux.)

If for some reason you can't compile it, you'll still have to get the
documentation from the source archive. Unlike the DOS/Win32/etc. versions,
the binaries for Linux and Unix are distributed without docs. (The
exceptions are the RPM and DEB packages.) My expectation is that most Unix
users will compile it themselves.

Of course, the bulk of the documentation is the same across all platforms.
The man page is "mm.txt" in the Win32 archive you already have. :-)

.... MultiMail: http://multimail.sf.net/
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