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)