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 directory,
              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)