OSX Panther

August 17, 2004 10:12 AM

Looking for command line tools, scripts, whatever, to allow me to check for mail messages on OS X Panther [more inside]

I've got Postfix running on my home computer, and have set up email addresses for my kids. They access mail from a secondary machine while I use the server machine as my primary computer.

The only people who write the kids are other family members; they get 2-3 message per week. I would like to be able to querry their mail accounts through the terminal to see if they have any new messages so I can remind them to go check their mail. A simple output would be date sent, sender, and subject.

I have root access to the system, but my command line skills are lacking. Any help with simple apps, quick commands to use, scripts to write, etc would be appreciated.

posted by jazon to computers & internet (3 comments total)

You are looking for mail(1).

Assuming that OSX has that. Just type 'mail' in a shell.
posted by cmonkey at 10:20 AM on August 17, 2004

Actually, you'll probably need to do 'mail -f /var/mail/[USER NAME]' or wherever the mailspools are stored.
posted by cmonkey at 10:47 AM on August 17, 2004

OS X does have mail(1) and the command works great.

Thanks cmonkey!
posted by jazon at 4:23 PM on August 17, 2004