Where can an ordinary person learn about (al)Pine?

[Nikki]

Hi out there,

please be gentle, this is my first post, and I apologise in advance if
folks are offended by the simplicity of my questions.

I trying to learn how to use Alpine (amongst other things) on a Mac and
also on a Debian machine. I'm trying to do as much as I can from the
command line.

I managed to persuade Alpine to send an email to one of my accounts,
arriving successfully at Mac Mail. I was pleased with that, but what
arrived didn't include my email address for a reply. In fact what it
did say (about the originator of the email) was unhelpful, in that the
program constructed an email address that doesn't exist.

In Setup/Configuration I entered in my "Personal Name" without too much
of a challenge = Nikki

and for "User Domain" I put what would occur after the @ in my email
addresses, i.e. that of my ISP.

The result was that the experimental email appeared to have come from
***@this.com, concocting an email address that doesn't exist. Nowhere
does Alpine ask for information a supplicant like myself could respond
to, something like "what's your email address?". No doubt it DOES ask
that question somewhere, but in terms which I don't understand. Nor can
I find (Duck-Ducking) anywhere that gives that sort of explanation.

alPine for Dummies?

Anyway, I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't know this particular jargon,
speak the language, thus nor can I make sense of the man pages.

As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the
direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My
current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply
to ... "

I've been toying with Linux for years now, and with modest success, but
it seems there's a missing 'intermediate' entry level.

As I said: "don't hit me" ...

TIA

Nikki

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Nikki
As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the
direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My
current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply to
... "

Dear Nikki,

what you need to learn is how to change the From: field in a message.
There is a guide written by Nancy McGough that explains how to do this.
The page was written for Pine, but it applies perfectly to Alpine. This is
the address

http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/changing_from/

I hope this helps!

[Roderick]

what you need to learn is how to change the From: field in a message. There
is a guide written by Nancy McGough that explains how to do this. The page
was written for Pine, but it applies perfectly to Alpine. This is the address
http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/changing_from/
I hope this helps!

I also thank you for the page and your mail always help.

In that page we read:

"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config
screen."

But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix
username.

Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?

Best regards
Rodrigo

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Roderick
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config
screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix
username.
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?

Dear Rodrigo,

no, the variable is not used in Unix Aline. The source code says "for
security reasons". I have not modified that. Maybe you are using a version
of Alpine that has been modified?

I tried to add the user-id variable to my .pinerc, and it had no effect
(I tried it with an unmodified version, and new .pinerc file without any
special configurations)

If it works in your version, that is great. Which "version" are your
running (I am really asking for Debian? Ubuntu? etc.)

Thank you.

[Roderick]

I see, it is gmail that fills the "From:" header. Indeed the
variable "user-id" has no effect when I use the local mailer
instead of gmail-smtp and as you said sure also beyond that.

I have no idea why I have "user-id=" in my .pinerc, it is a very
old configuration file.

# alpine -v
Alpine 2.23 (BSF 453 2020-06-18) built Mon Jan 11 10:13:32 UTC 2021 on

It is a self compiled version, hence unmodified.

Thanks
Rodrigo

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Roderick
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config
screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix username.
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?

Dear Rodrigo,
no, the variable is not used in Unix Aline. The source code says "for
security reasons". I have not modified that. Maybe you are using a version of
Alpine that has been modified?
I tried to add the user-id variable to my .pinerc, and it had no effect (I
tried it with an unmodified version, and new .pinerc file without any special
configurations)
If it works in your version, that is great. Which "version" are your
running (I am really asking for Debian? Ubuntu? etc.)
Thank you.
--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)

[Eduardo Chappa]

As far as I understand Gmail rewrites the from field if it does not match
the one you are allowed to send from.

Alpine was designed to be used for students/faculty/staff at the
University of Washington, not for people in their personal computers. At
that time everyone had an email addres given by
${LOGNAME}@u.washington.edu, and this made it easy to set up Pine in
computers at the University. This decision shows the age of Alpine, and it
does not apply to the current needs of users.

Alpine needs to be updated to conform to more modern needs, and the use of
a user-id might change because of this.
--
Eduardo

Post by Roderick
I see, it is gmail that fills the "From:" header. Indeed the
variable "user-id" has no effect when I use the local mailer
instead of gmail-smtp and as you said sure also beyond that.
I have no idea why I have "user-id=" in my .pinerc, it is a very
old configuration file.
# alpine -v
Alpine 2.23 (BSF 453 2020-06-18) built Mon Jan 11 10:13:32 UTC 2021 on
It is a self compiled version, hence unmodified.
Thanks
Rodrigo

Post by Eduardo Chappa

Post by Roderick
"In Unix Pine, your Pine user-id variable defaults to be your Unix login
name and it is not possible to change it on Pine's Main > Setup > Config
screen."
But I set that variable in .pinerc and it did substitute the unix username.
Is that a new behaviour of (al)pine?

Dear Rodrigo,
no, the variable is not used in Unix Aline. The source code says "for
security reasons". I have not modified that. Maybe you are using a version
of Alpine that has been modified?
I tried to add the user-id variable to my .pinerc, and it had no effect (I
tried it with an unmodified version, and new .pinerc file without any
special configurations)
If it works in your version, that is great. Which "version" are your
running (I am really asking for Debian? Ubuntu? etc.)
Thank you.
--
Eduardo
https://tinyurl.com/yc377wlh (web)
http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git (Git)

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Eduardo Chappa
As far as I understand Gmail rewrites the from field if it does not match
the one you are allowed to send from.
Alpine was designed to be used for students/faculty/staff at the
University of Washington, not for people in their personal computers. At
that time everyone had an email addres given by
computers at the University. This decision shows the age of Alpine, and it
does not apply to the current needs of users.
Alpine needs to be updated to conform to more modern needs, and the use of
a user-id might change because of this.

My account originated as dialup to a Unix host. pine 2.X was one of the
mailers offered. I now SSH to the host; alpine is one of the mailers
offered. Lots of linux distributions with alpine packages have been compiled
with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days as well.

If you finally remove the restriction by default, you should probably
have a configuration option in there in case some system administrator
thinks it's a better way to manage corporate or institutional mail
accounts. There must be some corporate email that isn't using [spit]
Microsoft Outlook.

I would still leave the user name (left of @) equivalent to the account
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.

[Roderick]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days as well.

I have that, and also in pinerc:

customized-hdrs=From: xx x <***@gmail.com>

But I think, what Eduardo wrote is not related to this.

R.

[Eduardo Chappa]

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Eduardo Chappa
As far as I understand Gmail rewrites the from field if it does not match
the one you are allowed to send from.
Alpine was designed to be used for students/faculty/staff at the
University of Washington, not for people in their personal computers. At
that time everyone had an email addres given by
computers at the University. This decision shows the age of Alpine, and it
does not apply to the current needs of users.
Alpine needs to be updated to conform to more modern needs, and the use of
a user-id might change because of this.

My account originated as dialup to a Unix host. pine 2.X was one of the
mailers offered. I now SSH to the host; alpine is one of the mailers
offered. Lots of linux distributions with alpine packages have been
compiled with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days
as well.

Yes, but that is not the point here. It is reasonable to assume that your
version of Alpine was compiled with that option, and in that case, using
Customizied-hdrs and roles is the way to change the from field from the
default which uses your user-id.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
If you finally remove the restriction by default, you should probably
have a configuration option in there in case some system administrator
thinks it's a better way to manage corporate or institutional mail
accounts. There must be some corporate email that isn't using [spit]
Microsoft Outlook.

No, there is no way I will be removing any option from Alpine, less this
one which is the one that allows you to configure your other email
accounts.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.

That is not going to go, but will probably become obsolete. It is very
unlikely that your login name is the same as your user name in any of your
accounts (I am not talking about you, I am talking about a generic you).
For example, at work my user name is "chappa", but in my personal laptop
is "echappa". Only the second one is used as the username for my work
account, but none of them match my gmail, gmx, outlook and yahoo accounts.
In other words, the user-id as a way to create an email address is not
correct for most needs of users today, and has a limited value.

I will make some changes to Alpine to make the user-id obsolete while not
eliminating it and preserving its full functionality.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Eduardo Chappa
. . .
I will make some changes to Alpine to make the user-id obsolete while not
eliminating it and preserving its full functionality.

That is perfectly reasonable. Thank you.

[Henning Hucke]

On 2021-06-22, Adam H. Kerman <***@chinet.com> wrote:

Hi Adam,

Post by Adam H. Kerman
[...]
My account originated as dialup to a Unix host. pine 2.X was one of the
mailers offered. I now SSH to the host; alpine is one of the mailers
offered. Lots of linux distributions with alpine packages have been compiled
with ALLOW CHANGING FROM for decades, going back to pine days as well.

what I like with (al)pine is its configurabilty. So if you change
things, Eduardo (might it be as /the/ maintainer of the alpine git
repository), please keep it configurable in the sense that the "old"
behaviour can still be enforced.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
If you finally remove the restriction by default, you should probably
have a configuration option in there in case some system administrator
thinks it's a better way to manage corporate or institutional mail
accounts. There must be some corporate email that isn't using [spit]
Microsoft Outlook.

Possibly indeed some directory based restrictions to the usable from
e-mail addresses should be implemented as an option.

But be aware! There are in the meantime MTAs and (L)MDAs which allow
diverse kinds of "plused" users (pattern "<localpart><separator><free \
extension>@<maildomain>" where "<separator>" usually is a character
out of the set "+-." which always delivers to the maildrop of
"<localpart>"). So it would be nice to combine this feature with
generally restricted from addresses.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.

Agreed. Btw Adam, this is the "localpart" of an e-mail address :-).

Best regards,
Henning
--
Forecast, n:
A prediction of the future, based on the past, for
which the forecaster demands payment in the present.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Henning Hucke

Post by Adam H. Kerman
name by default, with the user able to change it with an environment
variable or within .pinerc. It's tradition.

Agreed. Btw Adam, this is the "localpart" of an e-mail address :-).

Yes. Username is the account name.

[William Unruh]

Post by Nikki
Hi out there,
please be gentle, this is my first post, and I apologise in advance if
folks are offended by the simplicity of my questions.

Why would anyone be offended. We all started off as ignorant.

There is also the man page
man alpine
which will remind you of options you forgot. It tends to be a bit bare
as a place to learn from.

There is also an introduction at
https://umanitoba.ca/computing/ist/software/unix/alpine-howto.html

Post by Nikki
I trying to learn how to use Alpine (amongst other things) on a Mac and
also on a Debian machine. I'm trying to do as much as I can from the
command line.
I managed to persuade Alpine to send an email to one of my accounts,
arriving successfully at Mac Mail. I was pleased with that, but what
arrived didn't include my email address for a reply. In fact what it
did say (about the originator of the email) was unhelpful, in that the
program constructed an email address that doesn't exist.
In Setup/Configuration I entered in my "Personal Name" without too much
of a challenge = Nikki
addresses, i.e. that of my ISP.
The result was that the experimental email appeared to have come from

You presumably have given your machine the name "this.com"

Post by Nikki
does Alpine ask for information a supplicant like myself could respond
to, something like "what's your email address?". No doubt it DOES ask
that question somewhere, but in terms which I don't understand. Nor can
I find (Duck-Ducking) anywhere that gives that sort of explanation.

It will use your username that you log in with on your machine, and then
tack on you fully qualified domain name for the machine.

If you want a different address, you can ask your mail agent to
translate the name. For example if you use postfix (most Linux systems
default to that) go to the file /etc/postfix/main.cf and change the
lines
mydomain=physics.ubc.ca
masquerade_domains = $mydomain
masquerade_exceptions = root
This will change all of the From: addresses to physics.ubc.ca (Pls do
not use that as you will not get your mail) or whatever you make the
variable mydomain be. The exception is so that mail that is supposed to
go to root on your machine does not end up being sent to root on your
ISPs system.

Post by Nikki
alPine for Dummies?
Anyway, I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't know this particular jargon,
speak the language, thus nor can I make sense of the man pages.

They tend to be reminders of command format rather than HowTo pages.

Post by Nikki
As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the
direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My
current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply
to ... "
I've been toying with Linux for years now, and with modest success, but
it seems there's a missing 'intermediate' entry level.
As I said: "don't hit me" ...
TIA
Nikki

[William Unruh]

Post by William Unruh

Post by Nikki
Hi out there,
please be gentle, this is my first post, and I apologise in advance if
folks are offended by the simplicity of my questions.

Why would anyone be offended. We all started off as ignorant.
There is also the man page
man alpine
which will remind you of options you forgot. It tends to be a bit bare
as a place to learn from.
There is also an introduction at
https://umanitoba.ca/computing/ist/software/unix/alpine-howto.html

Post by Nikki
I trying to learn how to use Alpine (amongst other things) on a Mac and
also on a Debian machine. I'm trying to do as much as I can from the
command line.
I managed to persuade Alpine to send an email to one of my accounts,
arriving successfully at Mac Mail. I was pleased with that, but what
arrived didn't include my email address for a reply. In fact what it
did say (about the originator of the email) was unhelpful, in that the
program constructed an email address that doesn't exist.
In Setup/Configuration I entered in my "Personal Name" without too much
of a challenge = Nikki
addresses, i.e. that of my ISP.
The result was that the experimental email appeared to have come from

You presumably have given your machine the name "this.com"

Post by Nikki
does Alpine ask for information a supplicant like myself could respond
to, something like "what's your email address?". No doubt it DOES ask
that question somewhere, but in terms which I don't understand. Nor can
I find (Duck-Ducking) anywhere that gives that sort of explanation.

It will use your username that you log in with on your machine, and then
tack on you fully qualified domain name for the machine.
If you want a different address, you can ask your mail agent to
translate the name. For example if you use postfix (most Linux systems
default to that) go to the file /etc/postfix/main.cf and change the
lines
mydomain=physics.ubc.ca
masquerade_domains = $mydomain
masquerade_exceptions = root
This will change all of the From: addresses to physics.ubc.ca (Pls do
not use that as you will not get your mail) or whatever you make the
variable mydomain be. The exception is so that mail that is supposed to
go to root on your machine does not end up being sent to root on your
ISPs system.

Alternarively give your machine the hostname
machine.domain.of.your.isp
where machine is the name you gave your machine, and domain.of.your.isp
is the stuff after @ in your mail address.

Then edit .pinerc file and change
use-only-domain-name=yes

Post by William Unruh

Post by Nikki
alPine for Dummies?
Anyway, I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't know this particular jargon,
speak the language, thus nor can I make sense of the man pages.

They tend to be reminders of command format rather than HowTo pages.

Post by Nikki
As I said: apologies - but can some kind patient soul point me in the
direction of somewhere to learn what I don't know. Or at very least how
to edit Configuration so my emails come from an identifiable person. My
current work-round is to provide a signature which says "please reply
to ... "
I've been toying with Linux for years now, and with modest success, but
it seems there's a missing 'intermediate' entry level.
As I said: "don't hit me" ...
TIA
Nikki