Tin FAQ

Note: Because UNIX is a case sensitive language, when commands are given in these FAQs, please type them as is. For example, the word 'pine' would be typed all lower case.

Also, to show that something is a command, it will be surrounded by quotes, i.e. 'pine' but when you type the command, do not type the quotes, only what is inside of them.

Tin is one of a few different news programs for shell accounts.

Getting Started

To get started, type 'tin' (without the quotes) at your main UNIX prompt.

After you get past the welcome screen (only shown the first time you enter tin), you will see line after line of newsgroups.

Note: if you hit a key by accident, depending on which one it was, hitting the key will bring you out of that command without executing it.

For some ungodly reason, when you first use tin, you are subscribed to all the newsgroups your ISP (Internet Service Provider) carries. You can deal with this in one of two ways. One: you can unsubscribe to all the groups and then susbscribe to only those you wish to read on a regular basis. Two: you can move those groups you wish to read on a regular basis to the begining of the list so you don't have to search for them each time.

I suggest unsubscribing to all the groups so that it will take less time to load up tin the next time you go in.

To do this, type 'U' then '*' then hit enter.

It will take some time for tin to unsubscribe you from all 20,000 or so groups, during which time you will get the message: Unsubscribing...

Searching for newsgroups

Now that you're not subscribed to anything, lets do a search for newsgroups that interest you and you may wish to read on a regular basis.

The first thing you need to do is, if you don't see the names of the newsgroups, to hit 'y' which will yank in all the unsubscribed newsgroups so that you can search through them. Don't worry, doing this will not subscribe you to them all again.

Let's say you want to find a newsgroup for people interested in maintaining or improving the condition of their houses. You might want to do a search for a few different things to make sure you covered all the possibilities, i.e. both 'home' and 'house'

On the other hand, you do not want to type in 'computers' because that will be a really general subject since this is a computer environment that we're in. For something in the computer field, you want to be more specific, i.e. 'virus'

So, lets do a search for 'virus'

If you've already hit 'y' and therefore see names of newsgroups, hit '/'

type 'virus'

hit enter

tin will find the first newsgroup with the word 'virus' in the name or description.

If you like the group tin found, hit 's' to subscribe to it. If not, hit '/' then hit enter to search for the next group with the word 'virus' in it. If you wish to search for some other word, hit '/' then type in the new word and hit enter.

Search for and subscribe to as many groups as you like.

When you are done, hit 'y' and it will yank in only your subscribed groups. The list you see after you do this should contain only those groups you subscribed to.

Reading the news - basic commands

Now that you've selected your newsgroups, its time to read through them!

Basic Commands:

A Practice Run:

Move to a group you wish to read using the up and down arrows or 'j' and 'k'

Hit enter or the right arrow to enter the group and you will now see a list of articles.

Move to an article you wish to read using the up and down arrows or 'j' and 'k'

Hit enter or the right arrow to enter the article.

Play with the space bar, tab, and enter keys.

Exit the article by hitting the left arrow or 'q' and you will now be back at the list of articles.

Hit the left arrow or 'q' again and you will be back at the list of newsgroups.

Responding to posts

You can respond to those news "posts" you see in the newsgroups as well as write new ones of your own. To do this for the first time, to test it out, I suggest going to the newsgroup called alt.test which is set up specifically for this purpose.

First, some basic commands (you may also wish to review my FAQ on pico):

To get to the editing stage:

'f' (followup) = reply to the current post to the newsgroup
'r' (respond) = reply directly to the author of the post

Once in the editor:

(note: if you cannot use any of these commands, your default editor is probably listed as 'vi' rather than 'pico.' 'vi' is a real pain in the gadoobers, so please see the Changing your default editor FAQ in order to change the default to 'pico.')

Lets try it....

Enter one of the posts in the group alt.test

hit 'f' which will post a 'follow-up' to the group.

If you wish to receive responses from computers all over the world telling you your post was received by them, type anything you want in the body. If you do not want to receive these messages, type the following: 'ignore - do not respond'

Play with the arrows and above listed commands to see how to move around. Be careful not to change anything above where you typed the body of your test message.

When you are done, hold down the ctrl key while you hit 'x' to save the message.

Hold down the ctrl key while you hit 'x' to save the message.

You will see: Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ?

Hit 'y'

You will see something like: File Name to write : /u1/home/you/.article

Hit the enter key.

Warning: do not change the name of the above or your message will be sent to the dead-letter section and will not be sent.

At the bottom of the screen you will see: q)uit, e)dit, p)ost: p

Hit enter.

You will see a quick 'Article posted' message and then tin will return you to where you left off before you replied to the post.

Composing new Posts

To do this for the first time, to test it out, I suggest going to the newsgroup called alt.test which is set up specifically for this purpose.

First, some basic commands (you may also wish to review my FAQ on pico):

To get to the editing stage:

'w' (write) = compose a new post to the newsgroup

Once in the editor:

(note: if you cannot use any of these commands, your default is probably listed as 'vi' rather than 'pico.' 'vi' is a real pain in the gadoobers, so please see the Changing your default editor FAQ in order to change the default to 'pico.')

Lets try it....

Enter one of the posts in the group alt.test

hit 'w'

You will see: Post subject []>

Type whatever you want for the subject. 'Test' works.

Hit enter.

If you wish to receive responses from computers all over the world telling you your post was received by them, type anything you want in the body. If you do not want to receive these messages, type the following: 'ignore - do not respond'

Play with the arrows and above listed commands to see how to move around. Be careful not to change anything above where you typed the body of your test message.

When you are done, hold down the ctrl key while you hit 'x' to save the message.

You will see: Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ?

Hit 'y'

You will see something like: File Name to write : /u1/home/you/.article

Hit the enter key.

Warning: do not change the name of the above or your message will be sent to the dead letter section and will not be sent.

At the bottom of the screen you will see: q)uit, e)dit, p)ost: p

Hit enter.

You will see a quick 'Article posted' message and then tin will return you to where you left off before you composed the new post.

Viewing Attachments

If you are thinking of viewing a lot of pictures (binaries) from the newsgroup, I suggest you get a slip/ppp account. You can do it with tin, but you'll get sick doing it real fast. Also, because viewing multi-part attachments is much more complicated, I suggest you stick to the '1 of 1' (1/1) types with tin.

To view an attachment, you must first save it to your home directory.

Enter a post which has an attachment.

You will see something like:
BEGIN -- Cut Here -- cut here
begin 644 kitten.jpg

Hit 's'

You will see: Save a)rticle, t)hread, h)ot, p)attern, T)agged articles, q)uit: a

Hit enter

You will see: Save filename []>

Type 'kitten.jpg' and hit enter

You will see: Process n)one, s)har, u)ud, l)ist zoo, e)xt zoo, L)ist zip, E)xt zip, q)uit: n

Hit enter

The file will now be saved in your home directory with the name 'kitten.jpg' and you will see the message: -- 1 Article(s) saved --

Hit 'q' to get back out to the list of articles. Save as many files as you want following the same procedure.

Now comes the downloading part. How you download depends on how you connected to the shell account. If you telneted to the shell account, you need an ftp program in order to download the file(s). If you dialed-in directly, do the following:

Hit '!'

You will see: Enter shell command []>

Hit enter

Type 'ls -a' and hit enter

This shows you all the files and subdirectories in your home directory. The .jpg files you saved will probably not be there.

If they are not, type 'cd News' and hit enter.

If you get the message: News: No such file or directory then type 'cd news' and hit enter.

If you didn't get the above 'no such file or directory' message, you should now be in your news directory.

Type 'ls -a' to see when files are there, and you should see the .jpg files.

Type 'uudecode *.jpg' and hit enter.

This may take a few moments.

Type 'sz *.jpg' and hit enter.

The files should now download into the default download directory you set up in your communications software.

Once the files are done downloading, you will probably want to remove them all. To do this, type 'rm *.jpg'

To return to tin (assuming you used '!' to leave it), type 'exit' then hit enter twice.

Back to Ellen's FAQs page.
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Ellen Savyon Vig ellen_vig@yahoo.com


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