Communicating With Other Users Under UNIX

This chapter explains how to interact with other users on our systems and on computer systems around the world using electronic mail and news.

Finding Other Users

Good starting places are the w, who, and finger commands. These will tell you who is logged in on the same login server as you and potentially give you lots of other interesting information. Additionally, our web site has a list of people in the department at http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/people/.

The finger command is useful because it allows you to find someone's UNIX username even if you only know a person's first or last name. It can be used in the other direction as well, showing the real name of the user assigned a given username. Entering

finger bob
would provide information on all CSE users with Bob as either their first or last names, or as their user name.

The finger command also provides information the system knows about that user, such as their real name and last login time. It can also show additional information provided by the user. To do this, the user must have created a file called .plan. This file needs no specific format, it is just a normal text file. It usually contains home and office phone numbers, office hours and schedule information. The .plan file must be found in the user's home directory, or the finger program will not find it. You will probably want to set up a .plan file so that people who run finger against your account will know how to get in touch with you.

Be sure that your .plan file is readable by everyone. This can easily be accomplished with chmod, with which we have become close personal friends:

% chmod 644 .plan

You can even use finger to get information on users at other sites. Simply enter the user's last name, first name, or username, followed by @ and the user's machine name. If you get an error message, then the other machine does not provide finger information to other sites.

Electronic Mail

UNIX provides an environment for sending and receiving electronic messages called electronic mail, or email. The UNIX program PINE provides commands to browse, to display, to save, to organize, to delete and to respond to messages. New mail can also be sent with PINE. Other mailers are available and if you are already familiar with a particular mailer, you might want to start out using that mailer. Note that there are two supported mailers for our department: PINE and Netscape Mail. Problems with other mailers might not be fixed in a timely fashion, so unless you know what you're doing, we strongly encourage you to use one of our supported mailers.

Reading Mail

To read your mail with Netscape, you can click on the mail icon in the bottom-right corner of the Netscape window, or you can pull down the Communicator menu and select Messenger item. Additional help is available through the Help menu in the top-right corner of the Netscape window.

To read your mail with PINE, simply type the command pine. There is plenty of online help that should provide you everything you need to know in order to read and to send mail.

To read email in your ``INBOX'', that is, something not saved into a special folder, use the I command from the main menu in order to bring you to the index for the folder. You should be able to move around in the summary using arrow keys. Try selecting items with Return or with Space bar.

Take a few moments to see what options PINE will offer.

If you have a large number of messages, you may have more headers in your index than will fit in the window at a time. When this happens, your index is broken into two or more pages. You can move to another page by changing the current message to one on the other page either by entering the message number, or by using the arrow keys. You can move to the next page itself by typing the ``+'' sign (not on the numeric keyboard), or by using the right arrow on the keyboard. Typing the ``-'' (not on the numeric keyboard) or using the left arrow will move you to the previous page of the index.

If you need help using PINE enter ? at the command prompt in the default window and you will then be prompted to enter the key command with which you need help.

Sending Mail

Sending New Mail

To mail a message to someone when you are not in PINE, simply type pine accountname. You will be prompted for a subject for your message. The subject of your message should accurately describe your message. Once you have entered your subject, hit Return. You can find your way to the text area by using Return or Tab.

If you are already in PINE, you can originate a new message using the C option from the main page (``Compose message'').

Replying to a Message

If want to reply to someone else's message, you can do that as well. If you are looking at the index, make the message you want to respond to the current message and type r. If you are reading the message, type r instead of reading the next message or returning to the index.

The process is basically the same as above. The major difference is that PINE automatically knows to send your message to whoever mailed you the current message, and assumes you want the subject to be based on the subject of the original message.

Deleting Old Mail

Normally, once you have read a mail message, you do not need to look at it again. You can delete mail messages that you do not want to read by typing d instead of Space. This will mark the message you have just read for deletion and bring up the next message in your mailbox. When you return to the index, you will notice that all of the deleted messages are still there; however, each is marked with the letter ``D.'' If you accidentally mark a message you want to save as one that should be deleted, you can make that message the current message, and type u for undelete.

When you quit PINE, it will ask you if you want to remove the messages marked for deletion. The default will be n, for ``no''. If you want to delete the message, type y.

Saving Old Mail

Most people find they have a few mail messages that they would like to save. PINE supports storing old mail in special mail files it refers to as ``folders.'' The ``received'' folder is intended as the place to store miscellaneous old messages. You can move a message to the ``received'' folder after reading it by typing s, which is the save command. PINE will ask you to name the folder to which the message will be saved. Messages that have been saved to other files are marked as deleted because it is assumed that you no longer need the message in your incoming mail file.

If you want to separate your old mail more finely than this, you can create other mail folders. For example, you might want to keep personal messages in your ``received'' folder, but keep course-related messages in a ``course'' folder. PINE makes it easy to store all your old mail in a special subdirectory of your account, ~/mail.

Email Etiquette

Note that Appendix C covers what is considered appropriate usage of email. In addition to the official policies, we ask that you show common courtesy to others in your email. In particular,

Usenet News

The UNIX mail facility provides a way for individuals using the system to communicate with each other, but it is not an efficient way to communicate the same message to a large number of people. Instead, you need something that is more like a bulletin board, where messages can be posted and read by any interested user. To provide this, a set of newsgroups has been established. The name of the newsgroup usually describes its content. The term Usenet refers to a specific network of computer sites all over the world that exchange news.

Normally when you first use the news system, you will be given the opportunity to subscribe to a large number of newsgroups. The list of your newsgroups is kept in your .newsrc file. Since there are more than 6,000 newsgroups available and most are not of general interest to our students, you have already been given a .newsrc and been subscribed to a few newsgroups that are generally of interest to our students. The default newsgroups in your .newsrc file are listed below.

Table 4.1: Default Newsgroups
Newsgroup Description
news.announce.newusers A worldwide newsgroup for distributing information to new Usenet users.
cse.general News of interest to the entire CSE community.
cse.undergrads For discussions of interest to undergrads.
cse.cs.announce Announcements from Computing Services.

Reading News with Netscape

For new users, we recommend using Netscape to read news. Those who are familiar with tools like trn or Gnus will find that these are available on the system. These are generally more capable than Netscape, but that comes at the price of being more difficult to learn to use.

Reading a Newsgroup

The first thing you need to do is invoke a Netscape browser-window, most easily done by clicking the Navigator icon on the CDE front panel. If you open the Mozilla subpanel (described in chapter 1), you'll note that it's possible to start Netscape's news client directly.

If Netscape is already running, you can start the news reader by clicking on the Window heading in the menubar and drag down to Netscape News. This will invoke another window which you will use to read and post to Usenet newsgroups. This window is divided into three sections. The upper-left section contains a list of the newsgroups to which you are subscribed. The upper-right section contains the list of all the postings to the newsgroup you have selected in the list of newsgroups to its left. The lower section will contain the actual posting that you select from the list in the upper-right section. Simply select a newsgroup and then scroll through the postings until you see one you are interested in and click on it with the pointer. The posting will appear in the lower section and you can read it at your leisure.

To add newsgroups to the list in the upper-lefthand section you need to click on File in the menu bar and drag down to Subscribe and release. A window will appear like the following:

Netscape newsgroup selection

In this list, each entry lists the prefix associated with anywhere from ten to over 6,000 newsgroups. For example, the newsgroup alt.archery would be found in the list which houses all newsgroups beginning with the alt prefix. You can access that list by clicking on the small plus symbol next to the alt.* entry. You can then scroll through the list to look for other groups which interest you.

For example, if you are interested in sports, you can scroll down until you find the following entry alt.sports.*. Clicking on this entry would then list all the newsgroups which begin with alt.sports. Clicking on the entry alt.sports.college.ivy-league would bring up all the postings for that group in the upper-left section and you can then read whichever postings interest you.

Once you find a group you are interested in note the full name so you can return to it more easily by simply using the Add Newsgroup feature under File in the menu bar at the top of your News window. You should also subscribe to newsgroups you will read regularly. The easiest way to subscribe to a newsgroup is to display all newsgroups (choose Options, then Show All Newsgroups) in the newsgroup window, then locate each newsgroup you want ready access to and check the Subscribe check box beside the newsgroup name.

Important: you may not see the Subscribe check box when looking at the entire list. If this is the case you need to grab the small box at the lower-left corner of the section of the News window that houses the list of newsgroups. Drag the box to the left so the section will be enlarged and you should then be able to see the Subscribe check mark to the far right of the group list.

Posting News

The menu items, toolbar buttons, and clickable icons in the News window let you view and compose news messages in much the same way as you do mail messages. Here are the primary difference:

Organizing Messages
Typically, you'll organize and store your mail messages on your hard disk in folders you create. News messages, on the other hand, are already organized and stored in newsgroups on remote servers. If you want to store news messages on your hard disk, you'll need to explicitly save news messages using the File|Save As menu item. The News window does not offer a mailbox/folder facility.
Multiple News Hosts
You can have multiple news hosts (though most users only need and have one), each host supplying you with a set of newsgroups. Choose the File->Open News Host menu item to display a dialog box for specifying additional news hosts in your newsgroup window.
Replying to Messages
The News window has a unique set of toolbar buttons that include variations on how you can reply to messages (also available through the Message menu). You can reply to news by sending a newsgroup message (Post Reply), an email message (Mail Reply), or both
(Post and Mail Reply).
Threaded Messages
By default, newsgroup messages are threaded (replies are positioned adjacent to original messages). Toolbar buttons allow you to mark a thread or entire newsgroup as read. Like mail, you can click in the message header pane to change the read or flagged status of individual messages.
Quantity and Age of Messages
Newsgroups often contain a large number of messages. Several commands help determine the quantity and age of messages that appear in the message header pane at a time. The default number of messages retrieved from the news server is set as a preference item in the Servers panel (maximum 3500). You can choose the File->Get More Messages menu item to display additional messages that do not exceed the maximum. From the Options menu, you can choose to Add from Newest Messages or Add from Oldest Messages to specify whether a batch of messages should begin with newer or older messages first. By default, newer messages are retrieved first.
Viewing Messages
The Options menu lets you choose whether the message heading pane should
Show All Messages or Show Only Unread Messages (the default). The default choice displays limits the message heading pane to displaying only messages you have not read.
Email Addresses
Like mail, you can choose Message->Add to Address Book to insert the email address of the news message sender into your address book.

For more information about using Netscape to read newsgroups consult the handbook accessible through your browser. In any browser window go to Help and drag down to Handbook.

Usenet Etiquette

In many ways, the same rules of etiquette you should follow when using mail should be followed when posting news. Here are some guidelines for polite usage of the usenet and the various newsgroups: