NAME

       mailcheck - Check multiple mailboxes and/or Maildirs for new mail

SYNOPSIS

       mailcheck [-lbcsh] [-f rcfile]

DESCRIPTION

       mailcheck  is  a simple, configurable tool that allows multiple mailboxes to be checked for the existence
       of mail.  For local mail, it supports both the traditional mbox format  and  the  newer  Maildir  format.
       Mail can also be checked for on remote servers using either the POP3 or IMAP protocol.

       Typically,  one  would  invoke mailcheck in /etc/profile or a user-specific login script.  E-mail junkies
       may also find it useful to invoke mailcheck occasionally to check for new mail in alternate mailboxes.

       The author uses mailcheck to keep track of  messages  arriving  in  mailboxes  corresponding  to  several
       mailing lists he subscribes to.

OPTIONS

       -l     Runs  mailcheck in login mode.  If a ~/.hushlogin file exists, mailcheck will exit silently.  This
              option is intended to be used on systems that invoke mailcheck from a global login script such  as
              /etc/profile.

       -b     Brief  mode.  Produces less verbose output.  If mailbox or Maildir is inside user's home direcory,
              only relative path is printed to output.

       -c     Use more advanced counting method.  While  counting  mails,  mailcheck  looks  inside  mboxes  and
              Maildirs  and  count new and unread messages separately.  If mbox/maildir does not contain any new
              or unread mail, it's excluded from report.  Produced output contains  more  valuable  information,
              but this method is more time-consuming.

       -s     Print "no mail" summary.  If no new mail message is found, print at least "no mail message" at the
              end.  Only makes sense in combination with -c.

       -f     Specify alternative rc file location.  If provided, default locations (see FILES) are not checked.

       -h     Print short usage information.

CONFIGURATION

       Configuring  mailcheck  is  simple.   Upon startup, mailcheck looks for a file called .mailcheckrc in the
       user's home directory.  If that file does not exist, the default configuration file  /etc/mailcheckrc  is
       used instead.

       Lines  beginning with a hash sign (#) are treated as comments and will not be processed.  Lines beginning
       with pop3: or imap: are parsed like URLs and used to connect to network mail servers.   All  other  lines
       are treated as pathnames to mailbox files or Maildir directories.

       Environment variables in the format $(NAME) will be expanded inline.  For example:

       /var/spool/mail/$(USER)
              Will check the user's mailbox in /var/spool/mail.

       $(HOME)/Mailbox
              Will check the default mailbox used by qmail installations.

       When  connecting  to  POP3  or  IMAP servers, the account password is not stored in the mailcheckrc file.
       Instead, the .netrc file in the user's home directory is used.  This file, originally  intended  for  use
       with  ftp(1)  and  later  used by fetchmail(1), should be readable only by the user owning it.  It stores
       server/user/password combinations in the form:

       machine servername login username password password

FILES

       /etc/mailcheckrc
              This is the site-default mailcheck  configuration  file.   It  should  be  edited  by  the  system
              administrator to meet the needs of most users on the system.

       ~/.mailcheckrc
              This  is  the user-specific mailcheck configuration file.  If it exists for a particular user, the
              site-default configuration file will not be used.

       ~/.netrc
              This tells mailcheck what password to use for a given server/user combination when  checking  POP3
              or IMAP mail.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, Jefferson E. Noxon.

       Portions Copyright (C) 1996, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       Portions Copyright (C) 1996, Gordon Matzigkeit.

       Portions Copyright (C) 1998, Trent Piepho.

       Other copyrights may apply.

       This  program  is  free  software;  you  can  redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
       General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License,  or
       (at your option) any later version.

       On Debian GNU/Linux see /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL

AUTHOR

       Mailcheck was written for Debian GNU/Linux by Jefferson E. Noxon <jeff@planetfall.com>.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       POP3 and IMAP support was added by Rob Funk <rfunk@funknet.net>.

       Several enhancements by Tomas Hoger <thoger@pobox.sk>.

BUGS

       It is probably not a good idea to store passwords in a .netrc file.

       No SSL/TLS support for POP3 and IMAP.

SEE ALSO

       netrc(5), mbox(5), maildir(5), login(1), fetchmail(1)

                                                   2 July 2005                                      MAILCHECK(1)