Pine

Introduction
Unix-Pine
PC-Pine in the Department
PC-Pine on a Personal Desktop or Laptop
The Big Picture

Introduction

Pine is an IMAP-compliant email program developed and maintained at the University of Washington. It is available for Windows, UNIX and Linux. The user interface and configuration is standardized across platforms. Messages are composed in a simple editor called Pico, which is integrated into Pine and available as a standalone application. The UW Pine Information Center maintains a user tutorial.

UNIX-Pine is often a convenient alternative from remote sites. From a secure terminal login to server login, UNIX-Pine can be launched from the command line It requires neither local mail client installation nor any particular configuration efforts.

Within the department, PC-Pine is maintained on the network and launched from an icon available on many desktops. Before you can run PC-Pine on the network, you must run a setup program to establish a personal PC-Pine configuration file on the network. Once this is established, Pine runs with the same configuration from any networked PC.

Outside of the department , PC-Pine installation on a personal desktop or laptop is done over the Internet. We outline the install/configure process and provide a suggested configuration.

UNIX-Pine

UNIX-Pine is accessed by opening an ssh terminal session to angst and typing pine at the UNIX prompt. With UNIX-Pine you can have access to your INBOX, your centrally stored folders and a central addressbook.

You do not have direct access to attachments. Urgently needed attachments may be saved to your UNIX home directory and transferred to the PC by a secure copy procedure.

PC-Pine in the Department

To use PC-Pine on the departmental network, you must perform the following procedure once from a departmentally networked PC.

1. Perform a network login on the PC.
2. Open a DOS window from a DOS icon or click the Start button, select the Run... option, type cmd into the command line box and click OK.
3. From the DOS prompt, type setupine (with one "P") and press Enter.
4. A batch script runs. You are prompted twice whether to do further comparisons. These messages are produced by the script. In each case type N and press Enter. The script completes. You are informed that a personal Pine configuration has been completed for you. The configuration assumes that your UNIX userid is the same as your Novell network login id.
5. Type exit to close the DOS window.

Now launching the PC-Pine icon from any networked Sociology computer should result in a prompt for your UNIX password followed by the opening of your INBOX in a Pine application window.

The setup procedure does the following:

• Writes a personal Pine configuration file called pinerc to the network location F:\HOME\PINE. The pinerc allows loading of PC-Pine under your identity from anywhere on the network. Pine uses this directory to write other files. Do not tamper with them.
• Establishes pointers to your INBOX and folders stored on the UNIX system.
• Defines options that control the behavior of Pine. Any of these features can be later modified by you.

PC-Pine on a Personal Desktop or Laptop

The following steps describe how to perform a new or upgrade install of PC-Pine.

1. In a browser navigate to the UW Pine Information Center download site (http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/pcpine.html).
2. Select the Download PC-Pine setup program link.
3. When prompted how to handle the installation program (e.g; setup_pine_4.56.exe), allow it to open.
4. When prompted whether to allow PC-Pine installation to continue, indicate yes.
5. The PC-Pine Setup Wizard opens. Click Next.
6. Indicate license agreement acceptance, then click Next.
7. Reset the destination directory from the default of:

   C:\Program Files\PC-Pine

   to:

   C:\Program Files\PC-Pine 4.xx

   where: xx is the release number you are installing

   Click Next.

8. Accept the Start Menu Folder as PC-Pine and click Next.
9. Decide whether Desktop and Quick Launch icons are desired, then click Next.
10. Review the install specs, then click Install to proceed.
11. The PC-Pine configuration setup phase begins. The personal configuration file is created or a pre-existing one looked for. A dialog box appears. From it, select the local configuration file option. If installing on a Windows XP system, the default setting of:

    C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Pine\pinerc

    where <username> is your login id, is suitable for a new install or to pick up a pre-existing configuration file. This is also an appropriate setting for a Windows 2000 system, but you will need to use the browse button to navigate to this location and select it as the storage location. For other releases of Windows (NT, ME, 98 or 95), this directory does not exist, so you will need to accept the alternative location offered by Pine or specify a location of your choosing. Select the OK button to proceed.
12. In the case of a new install, complete the fields in the dialog box as described and where <Your Name> and <userid> are replaced by your name and UNIX userid respectively:

• Personal name: <Your Name>
• Email Address: <userid>@soc.duke.edu
• Mail Server: mail.soc.duke.edu/user=<userid>/ssl/novalidate-cert
• Select the IMAP server radio button
• Login Name: <userid>
• SMTP Server: smtp.soc.duke.edu/user=<userid>/tls/novalidate-cert
• Select PC-Pine as the default reader, if this is your preference

13. Configuration proceeds. The completion dialog box opens. Select any of the launch or view options desired. Click Finish.
14. PC-Pine and PC-Pico icons will appear on the desktop. Delete the Pico icon, unless direct use of the editor is anticipated, and rename the Pine icon to reflect the version installed (i.e.; Pine 4.56).

After completing the installation, load PC-Pine to confirm that access of your inbox is working. Two important configuration tasks remain - defining a remote folder collection and a remote addressbook.

The remote folder collection already exists and may have existing folders. When a UNIX account is created, a Mail directory is defined for the user in which folders are placed. A folder is nothing more than a file stored in the Mail directory that contains zero or more messages. We just need to configure PC-Pine to point at this directory:

1. From the PC-Pine main menu select Setup.
2. From the setup screen select (L) collectionLists.
3. Select Add Cltn (Add Collection).
4. In the Folder Collection Add screen complete the first three fields as follows:

   Nickname	:	SocUNIX
   Server	:	mail.soc.duke.edu/ssl/novalidate-cert
   Path	:	Mail/

   
   

5. Type ^X eXit/Save [Ctrl-X simultaneously] to save the collection specification.
6. Use the $ Shuffle option to move the newly defined collection to the top of the list.
7. Select the E Exit Setup option to return to the main menu.

Now, when selecting the Folder List option from the PC-Pine main menu, SocUNIX should appear as a folder collection option and its contents may be browsed or searched.

Finally, we add a remote addressbook. The addressbook may be new or we may be pointing at a pre-existing one defined in the course of departmental use of PC- or UNIX-Pine.

1. From the PC-Pine main menu select Setup.
2. From the setup screen select (A) Addressbooks.
3. Select Add Pers Abook (Add Personal Addressbook).
4. In the Add Address Book screen complete the fields as follows:

   Server Name	:	mail.soc.duke.edu/ssl/novalidate-cert
   Folder Name	:	addrbook
   Nickname	:	SOC_remote_addressbook

   
   

5. Type ^X eXit/Save [Ctrl-X simultaneously] to save the addressbook specification.
6. Use the $ Shuffle option to move the newly defined addressbook to the top of the list.
7. Select the E Exit Setup option to return to the main menu.

The Big Picture

A virtue of Pine is that several different installations can be done in similar fashion, with the net result that the same inbox, folders and addressbook can be accessed across machines and platforms, making for a very unified, efficient method of handling email across all the different systems you have to use.

All of the configuration information for a PC-Pine installation is stored in a single ASCII text file named pinerc. As we illustrated with our local installation, this file is stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Pine directory. For UNIX-Pine there is an equivalent file called .pinerc stored in your UNIX home directory.

Preferences form regarding how you want Pine to operate. Configuration changes are reflected in the pinerc file. As upgrade versions of Pine are installed, the existing pinerc file can be carried along to ensure the behavior of the new version continues to reflect your preferences. Upgrade versions incorporate new features, the behavior of which is controlled by new options that are added to pinerc.

There are hundreds of features in Pine, most of which are controlled from the Config section of the Setup menu. Based on quite a few years of experience with Pine, provided below is a sample pinerc file named pinerc.sample which can be downloaded and adapted for personal use or just studied. To acquire this file do as follows:

1. Before getting, rename your existing pinerc file as pinerc.save. This ensures that a working config file is available to go back to if you make a mistake or decide that this sample config is not for you.
2. Click on this link to pinerc.sample, which will open in a separate window.
3. In the pinerc display window, select the File menu, then the Save As... option.
4. A save dialog box will open. Depending on your browser the details will vary slightly, but the following general operations apply.
5. Navigate the save location to that of the original pinerc file.
6. Change the name of the save file to pinerc.
7. Make sure that the file type setting is text when available or, in some cases, all files may be the only option. The text setting is particularly important when Internet Explorer is your browser. Otherwise the file will be saved as HTML with extraneous lines of HTML code included.
8. Save the file.
9. In the case of Internet Explorer, the file is saved with the name pinerc.txt. You will need to rename it to pinerc.

Two types of modification to the new pinerc with the Notepad or Pico editor are required to personalize it and make it work for you. Note that pinerc files are heavily-laden with helpful comment lines (starting with #).

1. Change the personal-name field to reflect your name. This is the first field in pinerc. Replace the placeholder <Your Name> with your name.
2. Instances where a specific userid is required are filled with the placeholder <userid>. Find these and replace them with your userid. For example, user mweber replaces:

   inbox-path={mail.soc.duke.edu/user=<userid>/ssl/novalidate-cert}/INBOX

   with:

   inbox-path={mail.soc.duke.edu/user=mweber/ssl/novalidate-cert}/INBOX

Test Pine to make sure it works.