CHECKMAIL(1)

📦 version 1.9.5, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💌 CHECKMAIL — bestie, your mail is calling 💖

okay so real talk, this one is a tiny little legend and you're gonna love her. it's checkmail, from the General Commands Manual section of your friendly neighbourhood Unix box. she plays a sound file when the user receives mail 🎀 yes. that's the whole job. and she ate. ✨

✨ NAME ✨

checkmail — plays a sound file when the user receives mail 🔔🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

checkmail

that's it. no flags. no args. no drama. she simply is. 💅

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

so what does she actually do? checkmail peeks at the status of the user's mail drop 👀 like a lil vibe check for your inbox.

  • if new mail is waiting, checkmail runs playbucket to play a sound 🎵 and then returns an exit status of 0 🥳
  • if mail has been cleared, it returns an exit status of 2 😭
  • if there has been no change at all, it returns an exit status of 1 🙈
ngl the exit statuses are the whole personality here, so memorize them: 0 = new mail, 2 = cleared, 1 = no change. periodt. 💖

and why does this exist? because checkmail is intended to be used with the checkCommand resource of xbiff 🧚 it's giving "little helper, big main character energy". to set that resource, you just add this line to your .Xdefaults file:

xbiff*checkCommand: checkmail

slay. that's it. that's the setup. 🌈

🎀 FILES 🎀

these are the paths she cares about, bestie:

  • /usr/spool/mail/$USER — the user's mail drop 📬
  • $HOME/.mailstat — holds the previous mail drop size 👑 (this is how she knows if anything changed)
  • $HOME/.mailsound — audio file to play when there's new mail 🎶

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read these next, iykyk:

Copyright 1994 Network Computing Devices, Inc.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Greg Renda, Network Computing Devices, Inc. — legend behavior, honestly. 🙌

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this version is 1.9.5, straight out of the CHECKMAIL(1) era, and we're obsessed. mwah. 💅✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from