Subject: No messages in or out.

From: Norman Morra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 19:13:10 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Pine: Your system has been great but I can't seem to get through to
other people via e-mail. Is there some sort of virus in pine or what? What
causes this shutdown? Thanks, Norman.

Norman Morra
Department of Sociology
York University
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Annelise Anderson)
Date: 23 Aug 1996 08:32:55 GMT

Norman Morra ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Dear Pine: Your system has been great but I can't seem to get through to
: other people via e-mail. Is there some sort of virus in pine or what? What
: causes this shutdown? Thanks, Norman.

: Norman Morra
: Department of Sociology
: York University
: [email-masked]

Well Norman, pine doesn't actually send e-mail.  It just lets you read
it and write it.  It's a "user agent."  So there is nothing wrong with
pine.  You will notice there's a configuration line called
smtp-server= 
at least in the unix version; I'm not sure how dos/windows handles this.
The smtp-server is the transport agent that actually sends the mail and
receives it.  To talk to the smtp server you need to be connected to the
Internet in some way; or if your own machine is the smtp server (in which
you put localhost after the = above) your machine has to have a route to
other machines on the Internet.

So pine could be compared to writing the letter and putting a stamp on it;
or getting it out of the mailbox and reading it.  What happens between
the rest of the world and the mailbox is not a concern of pine's, except
to the extent that it will accept an instruction to put the mail in a 
particular outgoing box (e.g., the mail transport agent at your ISP).

				Annelise