I would like to have a sh shell script to do the following:
I want to check my email for certain time period, say 60 sec. to see I have received any new mail during that period. I also want to have 3 options :
1. An option that allows me to use the prog to check any user on the same system, to see if this user has received any new mail during that period.
2. An option that allows me to control the length of the time period.
3. An option that allows me to decide how to be informed, by email of message.
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You can do it easiest by checking the size of the mail file and using that as your trigger. So something like this would be a good first step.
#!/bin/sh
cd /var/mail
user=`/usr/ucb/whoami` # or wherever your whoami is
# could use an env vbl
# get your command line options
set -- `getopt u:t:m: $*`
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo $USAGE
exit 2
fi
for ii in $*; do
case $ii in
-u) user=$2; shift;;
-t) time=$2; shift;;
-m) method=$2; shift;;
--) shift; break;;
esac
done
last_size=0 # so you'll know if it has mail
# to start
while true
do
current_size=`ls -l | grep $user | nawk '{print $5}'`
if [ $last_size -lt $current_size ]; then
echo $user " has mail" # or trigger something based on
# $method
else
echo no mail yet
fi
last_size=$current_size
sleep $time
done
This assumes that the fifth field (space separated) from an ls -l command is the file size. This does most of what you wnat. You can put the stuff in to notify yourself however you want. On solaris there's a nifty program called play that plays sounds that can be fun (especially if you rsh it on someone else's machine and have it play a bunch of stuff ;)
Mike
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: clo1Posted on 1997-12-01 at 22:44:04ID: 1295710
Edited text of question