First, you need to get premail. The source code is available from
an
export-control
Web server. You may also be able to find a copy on the
Hacktic FTP
site in the Netherlands. In either case, you want to get the file
premail-0.44.tar.gz
.
After you've gotten the file, unpack it. This command should do it:
gzip -dc premail-0.44.tar.gz | tar xvf -
The unpacking process will create a subdirectory called
premail-0.44
, containing the following files:
README
A short
description of the contents
premail
The premail program itself
preferences
A skeletal
preferences file
Test to see if you can run premail. These commands should print a usage summary:
cd premail-0.44
./premail
If you get an error message reading ``command not found,'' then you
will have to edit the first line of premail
to refer to the
actual pathname of the perl5 interpreter. One good way to find out the
pathname is to do ``which perl5
'' or ``which perl
''.
On the other hand, if you get a string of syntax errors, then the problem is that you are running perl4, while premail needs perl5. Try to see if you can find perl5 on your machine. Otherwise, you may need to install perl5 yourself.
If you will be using premail from the command line frequently,
then you may want to copy (or symlink) the premail program into a
location in your $PATH
. For example, if you have permission
to add files into /usr/local/bin
, then you may consider
running this command:
cp -p premail /usr/local/bin
At this point, you are ready to test whether premail actually works. We are assuming that you already have PGP installed and have generated your own public key. Type this command, substituting in your own e-mail address:
./premail -t
To: your@own.email.addr ((encrypt-pgp))
Subject: Test
Does this really work?
.
If all goes well, you should be back at the command line within a couple of seconds. If it seems to hang without any disk or net activity, try typing randomly for a minute, under the assumption that PGP needs random keystrokes. This shouldn't happen if PGP is already set up correctly (including having generated your own public key), but on the chance that it isn't, hanging while waiting for random keystrokes is one of the more common failure modes.
This is also the point at which you may get a PGP error. Two common problems are that premail can't find the PGP program, in which case you will want to add a line to your preferences file (see section Preferences below), or that it can't find the public key corresponding to your e-mail address.
If the test was successful you now have a PGP-encrypted message in your mailbox, then you should now have a PGP-encrypted message in your mailbox.