A program called fetchmail is used to retrieve your e-mail from your ISP, here's how to set it up.

- 1 -

Enter:

pico ~/.fetchmailrc

- 2 -

Enter:

poll mail.globalnet.co.uk proto POP3 pass xyz123 fetchall

...replacing mail.globalnet.co.uk with your incoming POP3 account address and xyz123 with your dial-up account password.

You don't have to include pass password if you're worried about others logging-in as root and discovering your dial-up password, but for most people this isn't an issue, since it saves you having to enter your password every time you fetch your mail.

- 3 -

Press Ctrl+O to save the file and Ctrl+X to exit Pico.

- 4 -

So that only you can view and modify your .fetchmailrc file, enter:

chmod 600 ~/.fetchmailrc

Enter:

startx

...to start X.

- 2 -

Select Programs > Networking > Usernet and select the 'ppp0' button to make a dial-up connection.

- 3 -

Bring up a terminal window and enter:

fetchmail -u thebits

...replacing thebits with your dial-up username.

Enter:

pine

Pine (Program for Internet News and E-mail) was created by the University of Washington (who also created the excellent Pico, used throughout this manual). Just in case you ever get confused, there's no such software title as Pico. It's part of Pine, as is Pilot. Pico is Pine's e-mail editor, and Pilot is used to browse for files to attach to e-mails. To give Pilot a whirl simply enter pilot at the command line.

- 2 -

Press s to set-up Pine, then press c to configure your mail account.

- 3 -

Using the up and down cursor keys and the a key, enter the following information:

personal-name    = Put your dial-up username here
user-domain      = The part after @ in your e-mail address
smtp-server      = Your SMTP mail address
nntp-server      = Your news server address

Here's what my configuration looks like:

personal-name    = thebits
user-domain      = globalnet.co.uk
smtp-server      = smtpmail.globalnet.co.uk
nntp-server      = news.globalnet.co.uk

With all this set-up, reading and sending e-mails is now a piece of cake.