NAME
mailleds - blink keyboard LED lights when mail arrives
SYNOPSIS
mailleds [ -ahkqtxM ] [ -l [ cnspX ] ] [ -d dpyname ] [ -m filename ] [ -u user
] [ -i interval ]
DESCRIPTION
mailleds is an unobtrusive mail notifier daemon. mailleds runs in the
background and monitors your mailbox. If the mailbox file does not
exist, mailleds will wait until it does. (Some programs, such as mailx,
remove the mailbox when it is empty) When new mail arrives, it will
flash LED lights, which can be any of the three standard LEDs on a
keyboard, or LEDs hooked up to a parallel port as outlined in led-
stat.txt. The LEDs blink until you read your mail. mailleds does not
interfere with the current status of the keyboard settings: though the
Num Lock LED may blink, the actual state of Num Lock will remain
whatever it was.
Due to limitations of the ioctl system call, mailleds must be run
setuid root.
OPTIONS
-a, --answering-machine
Runs mailleds in ‘answering-machine’ mode, which, instead of
blinking the scroll lock LED off and on, blinks out the number
of new messages, pauses, and repeats.
-i, --interval <msec>
sets blink-time-on and blink-time-off to 50.000ms and time
between on and off to <msec>ms
-d, --display dpyname
Specifies the name of an X display whose leds are to be flashed.
Implies -x.
-l, --leds [ cnspX ]
Specifies which LEDs to blink. cnspX is a string consisting of
any combination of c, n, s, and pX. c, n and s indicate that
caps lock, num lock and scroll lock, respectively, are to be
blinked. pX indicates a led hooked up to a parallel port to be
blinked, where X is a number from 1 to 8 that indicates the led
to be blinked. For more information on this type of led, see
led-stat.txt in mailleds source directory.
-h, --help
Displays a synopsis of options.
-k, --kill
Kills off the currently running mailleds daemon.
-q, --quiet
Makes mailleds die silently when there is already a mailleds
process running for the user. This is useful for running
mailleds out of .profile, .cshrc, etc.
-m, --mailbox filename
Uses filename as the user’s mailbox.
-M, --maildir
Specifies that the mailbox is a maildir.
-t, --ttys
Specifies that mailleds is to blink virtual console leds.
mailleds reads login information from utmp to figure out which
vt’s must be blinked. This is the default option.
-u, --user user
Runs mailleds "as if you were" user. This option causes
mailleds to ignore the environment variable "MAIL". Mailleds
will never exit of its own accord when this option is specified,
and is therefore useful for running mailleds on system-boot.
You must be the superuser to specify this option.
-x Tells mailleds to latch on to the current X display and flash
those keyboard leds. This is the same as calling mailleds as
"xmailleds".
ENVIRONMENT
MAIL specifies a default mailbox.
BUGS
mailleds shouldn’t interfere with screen blanking.
xmailleds and mailleds will interfere with each other (if the X server
is run from the console via xinit(1x) or similar.)
AUTHOR
Benjamin Osheroff (mtr@ratbert.bagel.org) on 27 Mar 1996 Adjusted by
Dennis Stampfer (seppy@debian.org)
SEE ALSO
setleds(1), newmail(1), tty(4), portato(1)