IBM Certification Guide AIX V4.3 System Administration

15.6 Mail Addressing

Mail is sent to a user's address. How you address mail to an other user depends upon the user's location with respect to your system. How you address mail depends on whether you are sending the mail:

To users on your local system.
To users on your network.
To users on a different network.
Over a BNU or UUCP link.

15.6.1 To Address Mail to Users on Your Local System

To send a message to a user on your local system (to someone whose login name is listed in your /etc/passwd file), use the login name for the address. At your system command line prompt, you can use the mail command in the way shown in the following example:

mail LoginName

If smith is on your system and has the login name smith, use the command:

mail smith

15.6.2 To Address Mail to Users on Your Network

To send a message through a local network to a user on another system, at the command line enter:

mail LoginName@SystemName

For example, if john is on system sv1051c, use the following command to create and send a message to him:

mail john@sv1051c

15.6.3 To Address Mail to Users on a Different Network

If your network is connected to other networks, you can send mail to users on the other networks. The address parameters differ depending on how your network and the other networks address each other and how they are connected.

15.6.3.1 Using a Central Database of Names and Addresses:

Use the mail command in the way shown in the following example:

mail LoginName@SystemName

15.6.3.2 Using Domain Name Addressing

Use the mail command in the ways shown in the following examples:

mail LoginName@SystemName.DomainName

For example, to send mail to a user john, who resides in a remote network with a domain name in.ibm.com, use the following command:

mail john@in.ibm.com

15.6.4 To Address Mail over a BNU or UUCP Link

To send a message to a user on another system connected to your system by the Basic Networking Utilities (BNU) or another version of UNIX-to-UNIX Copy Program (UUCP), you must know the login name, the name of the other system, and the physical route to that other system.

When your computer has a BNU or UUCP link, at your system command line prompt you can use the command in the ways shown in the following examples.

mail UUCPRoute!LoginName

When the BNU or UUCP link is on another computer, use the mail command as shown below:

mail @InternetSystem:UUCPSystem!username

Notice that, in this format, you are not sending mail to a user at any of the intermediate systems; so, no login name precedes the @ in the domain address.

15.7 Storing Mail