RMSG(1) General Commands Manual RMSG(1) NAME rmsg - A client program for an intermachine messaging system SYNOPSIS rmsg [ -r ] [ -d ] [ user[@machine] ... ] DESCRIPTION Rmsg is used to send short (max. 4096 characters), asynchronous messages to users on the system or other systems connected via TCP/IP. Rmsg uses the SUNRPC protocol. It reads input from standard input until EOF or 4096 characters, whichever comes first, and sends it to the recipient(s) specified in the command line. Rmsg is similar to write but differs from write in that it can cross machine boundaries. Also, its communication is asynchronous, so normally the user writes a message to the rmsg program, then the program delivers the message in the background and reports possible error conditions to the user. For rmsg to work, the recipient's host must be running the rmsgd program. OPTIONS Rmsg accepts the following options : -r re-send previous message. Rmsg stores the last message it sends in the file ~/.msgout if not otherwise specified. Here `~' means the user's home directory from the file /etc/passwd. -d Turn on debugging. CONFIGURATION The behaviour of the rmsg system can be controlled in many ways by creating a file called .msgconf in the user's home directory. Both the rmsg program and the rmsgd read the configuration file to decide for example where to log the message for later use, if anywhere. The configuration file can include comments, which start with `#'-signs on any place on the line. In the configuration file you can use escape characters much like the csh conventions for escaping and the escape characters in the C language. The escape conventions understood include : \001 where 001 is the octal code for the wanted character. \n where \n may be any of the \ escapes known by the C language. Any text in double or single quotes is left uniterpreted. In addition, the following printf -style escapes can be used with the commands away, outheader, exec, and header. Note that with the command outheader the fields correspond to information about the receiver, not the sender of the message. %d time of day when a message was transmitted / received. %f user name of the sender of the message in the form user@machine %h home phone of the sender as got from the gecos field of /etc/passwd %n real name of the sender %o office %p office phone The following configuration commands can be used : alias nickname username By using alias, you don't have to type in long and cryptic user names like x53124z every time. Instead, you can include the command alias joe x53124z in your .msgconf file and just send rsmgs to joe. Aliases can't be nested, neither can you define 'message groups'. away commandline Using away you can arrange for the rmsg service to answer messages for you, or pipe incoming messages to a program when you're not logged on. Commandline is a single string, generally in double quotes. Example: `away "echo Back at 6 pm | /usr/local/bin/rmsg %f"' will answer all messages while you are away. Commandline is passed to /bin/sh. Note that the user's .cshrc or .profile file will not be read, so the environment has to be explicitly set if necessary. bitnetserver hostname If your network has a bitnet host which is willing to relay messages for you between you and bitnet, you may set this to the hostname of that host. header formatline Header line for incoming messages written to tty. formatline is parsed like in the exec command. Default: `header "\007\nMessage from %n <%f>:\n"' inappend If inappend is included, incoming messages are appended to file specified by inlast, otherwise the file is overwritten by each message. inlast filename Incoming messages are logged to file filename, which is interpreted relative to the user's home directory. If specified, logging is done even if the user is not logged on. Example: `inlast .msglast'. Default: no logging done. outheader formatline Header for logging outgoing messages to the file specified by outlog. Parsed as in headerline. Default: no header. outlog filename Filename to log outgoing messages to. Interpreted relative to the user's home directory. Default: no file. outlast filename Filename to log the last outgoing messages to. The -r option of rmsg uses this file. Interpreted relative to the user's home directory. If filename is not given, the last message is not stored anywhere. Default: .msgout. single If single is included, the message is sent only to one tty, the one which has the smallest idle time. Otherwise the message is sent to all ttys the receiver is logged on. AUTHOR Jyrki Kuoppala <jkp@hutcs.hut.fi>, Helsinki University of Technology FILES ~/.msgconf the rmsg configuration file ~/.msgout last sent message SEE ALSO rmsgd(8), write(1) 4.2 Berkeley Distribution May 13, 1988 RMSG(1)