Winter 1998 Computers and Society
GST 2710, Section 90571
AGS 3360, Section 95198
Last updated: 3/31/98
Link back to course Welcome...

These directions will show you how to use your WSU email account from the Macintosh lab, using the Internet utility program Telnet. Telnet is an Internet client/server system that enables a Telnet client (your computer) to run programs on a Telnet server (the remote computer). The Telnet client software takes keystrokes from the client keyboard and sends them to the Telnet server computer, which treats them as if they came from its own keyboard. The server's screen information is sent back to the client, which displays the information as its own screen information. In this way, the client computer can run programs on the server computer. Note that this works only for a keyboard or command line user interface, not for a GUI interface.

Now, the program that you will be running on the remote computer (the Telnet server) is Pine, an email client. You will be using Pine to read and send your email on the WSU email server. The Telnet part is very simple. All you have to do is log in to the Telnet server, and after that it seems as if the software that is running on the Telnet server is actually running on your computer, the Telnet client. The directions below are on how to run the email client, Pine.

All Telnet software is very similar, because what Telnet does is so simple and basic. Log in, and run the remote software as if it were on your computer. No GUI stuff; command line or keyboard control only. However, email clients are very different from each other. While they all provide some very similar basic functions (compose and send email message, receive and read email message, reply to email message, etc.), they do it in very different ways. There are command-line and GUI interfaces. And there are additional functions on some email clients, like being able to sort your email into folders, being able to filter your email, which means to reject email from specified sources, and being able to set up address lists. In fact, the computers in the Mac lab have a GUI email client in Netscape. Using the Netscape email client, you would connect directly to the email server, without going through Telnet. Normally we would do this. There is one problem that arises because this is a computer lab, and the computers are used by many different people. Here is the problem: with the Netscape email client, you read your email by downloading it from the email server to the email client, your computer, and reading the email there. All downloaded email gets treated as if it came to the same email account. But there will be people with different email accounts using these computers. All of their email would get mixed together. This would, at best, be very confusing. At worst, it would let others read your deep, dark secrets. In contrast, using Pine, your email is kept on the email server and read directly from the server, so that different accounts are kept separate even though the same computer is used. Basically, this is the difference between the POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) email protocols. POP, used by Netscape, downloads messages to the email client, while IMAP, used by Pine, keeps the messages on the email server. The newest version of Netscape, Netscape Communicator, can use either the POP or IMAP protocol, and it would be a good candidate for this lab, except that it requires more RAM (24MB) than we currently have on these computers (they will be upgraded).

So, you will be using a command line interface rather than a GUI interface. However, this particular command-line interface is relatively user-friendly, and it will give you some experience with these. And there is one other advantage. Every computer connected to the Internet has a Telnet client. So you will be able to use Telnet and Pine from anywhere to access your WSU email.

These directions assume that you are in the Macintosh system. If you are in the PC system (DOS, Windows or Works), switch to the Macintosh system by typing <Apple><Return>.

These directions will tell you how to connect to the WSU mail client computer, mail.wayne.edu. This is a computer that maintains your WSU email account. This is full Internet email service; you can use this account to send email to any other Internet email address. Internet email addresses have the form UserID@EmailServerID, where

• EmailServerID identifies the email server computer using the Domain Name system, and consists of fields separated by periods, as in cll.wayne.edu, and
• UserID identifies the individual user with an email account on the email server.

Your email address on the WSU email server is UserID@wayne.edu. Other people can use this address to send email to you.

NOTE: If you have another Internet connection, and the Telnet program (available free from WSU), you can use that Internet connection, starting from step . Your WSU email account also allows you free Internet access, and free software from the University to access the Internet. You supply the hardware.

Log In to the WSU email Telnet server. This is the first step in using all of the email functions.

1. Start Telnet client
   1. Find the "Telnet 2.6" folder icon and double-click on it.
   2. The "Telnet 2.6" window will open up. Find the "NCSA Telnet 2.6" icon and double-click on it. This will start the Telnet client. The menu items will change, but you will not at this time see a window open up.
2. Connect to the WSU mail server
   1. Click on the File menu item.
      NOTE: on the Macintosh, you may have to hold the mouse button down in order to keep the menu visible.
   2. With the File menu items visible, and holding the mouse button down, pull the mouse down to the Open Connection item and release the mouse button.
   3. In the New Connection dialog, type in the Domain Name of the WSU email client, mail.wayne.edu and click OK.
   4. If your connection is successful, you will see the login screen of the WSU email system. You have successfully connected to the right system if the top line of the login screen reads (more or less)
      
      UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0 (mail2.wayne.edu)
      
      Differences that you might see:
      1. There are actually several mail servers, named mail1, mail2, etc., so you might see a different number than mail2
      2. If the Unix operating system is upgraded, you might see a higher number than 4.0
   5. To have the Telnet client remember this connection,
      1. Choose the menu item Edit / Preferences / Sessions
      2. Click the "New" button
      3. In the Alias text box, type a name for the connection that you will remember, like "WSU email"
      4. In the Hostname text box, type "mail.wayne.edu"
      5. Click the OK button
      6. In the future to do this automatically
         1. Start the Telnet client
         2. Choose the menu item File / Open Special
         3. Click on the name that you typed in the Alias text box
3. Log in to the Telnet server (that is, connect to your Telnet account). To log in, you enter your UserID and Password, as below.
   1. Enter UserID. On the login screen (you checked the top line of this screen above), there is a login prompt with a blinking cursor. Type your UserID from your WSU email notice, followed by the <Return> key. The UserID has six characters: two letters followed by four numbers. Figure 1 below shows the top part of the screen after typing the UserID but before typing <Return>. What the user types is underlined in the figure.
      NOTE: your UserID will be different than the one shown in Figure 1.
      
      Figure 1: login screen after typing UserID
      
   2. Enter Password. After you type the <Return> key, a prompt appears for your Password, as shown in Figure 2 below. Your Password is usually eight characters long, consisting of numbers and letters. Enter your Password and type <Return>.
      
      Figure2: Login screen, ready for entering Password
   3. If your login is successful, you will see the WSU Mail Server menu shown below in Figure 3.  Note that the version number may change if the mail system is upgraded. In the figure below, we have added brief italicized explanations to each item; you will not see these italicized explanations on your computer screen.

Figure3: WSU Mail Menu with italicized explanations added

NOTE: Once you have reached the Mail Menu screen shown in Figure 3, the software does not require you to type <Return> after a menu choice. This completes the Telnet login. Below we will cover the menu option "m" or mail, using the Pine email client.

Using your email account

Type "m" on the screen above to start the Pine email client. You use an email client for all email functions, such as send, receive and reply. The menu shown in Figure 4 below will appear. NOTE: There may be some minor deviations from the menu as shown. For example, one item may be highlighted (shown in reverse colors). Also, if you have mail waiting to be read, there will usually be a menu item for reading new mail. Pine is an email client running on a remote computer that you are controlling using Telnet.

Figure4: Typical menu for the Pine mail reader

The Pine screens all say "PINE" with a version number at the top, and also identify the screen that you are seeing. This can be a big help in finding your way around.

Below we will run though the primary email functions:

• send an email message to someone else
• read an email message from someone else
• reply to an email message
• forward an email message from someone else to a third person

All email clients have these functions.

1. Send an email message. Type c to compose and send an email message. You will see the email form shown below in Figure 5. We have added descriptions in italics; you will not see these descriptions on your screen.
   
   Figure5: email form for composing and sending email messages, with descriptions in italics.
2. Fill in the fields on the message form as follows: (pay particular attention to "F"):
   1. "To" field. To use this form, you must know the Internet email address that you want to send the message to. Type the Internet email address here, and hit <Return>. In this form, you will use <Return> to go to the next item. (Internet email addresses have the form UserID@SystemID, where UserID identifies the individual email user, and SystemID identifies the local email system, and consists of fields separated by periods, as in drbowen@cll.wayne.edu.)
   2. "Cc" field. If you want to send a copy of the message to another address, type that address here and hit <Return>. Otherwise, just hit <Return>.
      (NOTE: Cc stands for Carbon Copy.)
   3. "Attchmnt" field. If you want to attach a file to the message, type the file name here and hit <Return>. Otherwise, just hit <Return>.
      NOTE: The file must already be on the mail server computer, mail.wayne.edu. To send a file to this computer, or retrieve a file that somebody else has emailed to you, use Fetch or any other FTP Client. The mail.wayne.edu computer is an FTP Server. Future upgrades to these screens will let you attach files more simply.
   4. "Subject" field. Type a subject for the email message and hit <Return>.
      NOTE: When you go to read your email messages, you will see them listed by sender, date/time and subject.
   5. Body or Content of the message. Type the content of the message here. Use <Return> to start a new paragraph.
   6. Information: Bottom Two Lines. The bottom two lines of the email form have a number of menu items. For example, the first one is ^G Get Help. The "^" is a standard abbreviation for the <Ctrl> key, so to select a menu item,
      1. Hold down the <Ctrl> key
      2. Tap the second key, which is "G" in the ^G Get Help example above.
3. Send the Message.
   1. When you have filled out the email form according to the steps above, use the ^X menu item to send the message.
   2. NOTE: Confirming actions. Usually when you take an action such as sending a message, or canceling a message, PINE ask you to confirm the action. PINE will display a dialog at the bottom of the screen, asking you to hit y to confirm and execute the action, or n to cancel the action. The dialog is shown in Figure 6 below. On most screens, the Y [Yes] will be highlighted (e.g., shown in white on black).
      
      Figure 6: PINE confirmation dialog (bottom of screen)
      To send the message, tap "y".
   3. Confirmation. After sending and confirming the send action, the email message will be sent and you will see the following confirmation:
      [Message sent and copied to "sent-mail".]
      NOTE: sent-mail is one of the mail folders that PINE sets up for you at the start.
4. List and Read received email. To read email that you have received
   1. If you are not at the main Pine menu, return to it. The Pine main menu has PINE 3.95     MAIN MENU at the top, and is shown in Figure 4 above. To return to the main menu, use the ^C Cancel menu item if you see it (you will have to confirm this action) or the M Main Menu item if you see that instead (simpler, no confirmation required).
   2. List your email folders. At the Pine main menu, shown in Figure 4 above, type L to list your email folders. PINE sets up certain email folders for you at the start. If you have not set up any additional ones, you will see the screen shown below in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Startup Screen listing PINE email Folders
NOTE: Normally, the INBOX will be highlighted (shown in inverse video or white-on-black).

3. Select the In Box to list your incoming or received email messages. To list your email messages, type I to go to the In Box. You will see a list of your incoming email messages, similar to Figure 8 below. An "N" in the left column indicates a new (unread) message.

Figure 8: Example of a PINE list of incoming email messages.

4. Select and read an incoming email message. One message in the list will be highlighted (e.g. shown white-on-black). Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlight until the message you want to read is highlighted. Then hit <Return>. The message will be displayed in a screen similar to the one in Figure 9 below.

Figure 9: Screen showing the selected email message

4. Navigating your messages. Without going back to the list of all of your incoming messages, you can navigate among your them by using "N" to go to the next message or "P" to go to the previous message. You can also use N and P instead of the arrow keys to select messages in the list of incoming messages in Figure 8.
5. Cleaning up your email folders. To clean up your email folders, delete unwanted messages by typing "D" in the message display screen. You can also use D to delete messages in the list of incoming messages in Figure 8.

1. Reply to an email message.
   1. You can reply to a displayed email message by typing "R" in the message display screen. Before you reply, PINE will ask if you want to include the original message in your reply, or not. There is some etiquette (or "netiquette") involved here: including the original message reminds your correspondent which message you are replying to. This will be a real problem if your correspondent gets a lot of email. On the other hand, if the original message was long, you will be forcing your correspondent to read a lot of old stuff before getting to your reply. A good compromise is to include the original message, but edit it down if it is lengthy. You do this editing in the reply window, shown below in Figure 12. But first, Figure 10 shows the dialog for choosing whether or not to include the original message. This message appears at the bottom of the message display window after you choose to reply by typing "R".
      
      Figure 10: Dialog to include original message in your reply
      
      After you make your choice about including the original message in your reply, PINE asks if you want to reply to all recipients, as shown in Figure 11 below.
      
      Figure 11: Dialog for replying to sender only, or to all recipients
      
      If the original message was sent to more than one recipient, or if it was Cc’d to others, and you choose "y", your reply will go to all; if you choose "N", it will go only to the sender. If you were the only recipient, and there was no Cc list, then you choice here does not matter.
   2. After this choice, PINE displays the COMPOSE / SEND screen that you used to send a message, except that several parts of the screen are partially filled out. This is shown below in Figure 12.

Figure 12: COMPOSE / SEND Screen for Reply

Now, compose and send the message as normally. The whole "Message Text" section is editable. Do not edit out the ">" marks, because they identify the original message. Normally you would add your reply below the ">" marks. (If the original message had multiple parts, you might want to consider an alternative; putting your reply to each part directly below that part, so that the original message and your replies are interspersed. In that case, I like to put a line at the top saying that this is what I am doing.)

6. Forwarding a message to someone else. You can forward a message to another address by typing "F" in the message display screen shown in Figure 9 above. This is very similar to replying, except that the "To" address is not filled in for you.

Saying goodbye to PINE and Telnet. That’s it. There are too many options to go into them all here, but this will get you off to a solid start. When you are done with the email session, you could just shut down Telnet. After a while with no activity, Pine and Telnet server would "time you out" and log you off the system. This, however consumes system resources, and good network citizens (or "netizens") log themselves out. To log out of this system,

1. Return to the main PINE menu using <Ctrl>C if you see it in the menu list (you will have to confirm the cancel action), or M for the Main Menu, if you see that. The PINE main menu is shown above in Figure 4.
2. Type Q to quit PINE. You will have to confirm this quit action.
3. This will return you to the WSU Mail Menu, which is the Telnet server screen, shown above in figure 3. Type Q to quit the WSU Mail System and Telnet server. You will have to confirm this quit action.
4. The close the Telnet client on your computer by choosing the File / Quit menu item.