[svlug] Using mutt

[Dan Copeland]

On Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 03:36:23AM -0700, CB wrote:
> Got all of procmail setup and working including filtering all the
> mailing lists when I run it from the commandline.  A problem is that
> when I hit "G", mutt pops all my mail into /var/spool/mail/_username_. 
> It's not piping it to procmail.  I found somewhere on mutt.org that the
> reason is it has pop built in instead of using fetchmail.  I haven't
> found a way to make it do that, but I'm guessing that I'll create a
> macro to call fetchmail and make the "G" key call that macro.  Am I on
> the right track?  Is there a better way?  

  Well, you have a choice of POP clients.  Mutt is one, but I don't know
of a way to get Mutt to use Procmail, so I don't use it as a POP client
(that is, I don't have it acutally talk to the remote mail server).

  Fetchmail is also a POP client and it's the one I use to retrieve my
mail.  As others have pointed out, once fetchmail gets the messages it
can either pass them directly to Procmail or pass them to Sendmail.
In my opinion the latter makes more sense, since Sendmail should be
set up to deliver local mail with Procmail anyway.


> I can see that fetchmail running in daemon mode would get the email to
> my local harddrive.  The question is, is mutt smart enough to see that
> new mail has been added?  Off to go test...

  Yep.  There's an option in your .muttrc called mailboxes.  Any folders
that might have mail delivered to them should be in this list - if they
are Mutt will watch them for changes and know if new mail is delivered
there.

> I saw another option that was something along the lines of "move read
> email to a folder", I believe it was hooks?  This doesn't seem to use
> procmail though.

  You're confusing a few different concepts.  Mutt can optionally
move read messages out of your inbox and into another mailbox - I find
this annoying.  It has nothing really to do with mail delivery - it's
more of an organizational option.  Hooks are more complicated - they're
places where you can put custom code to be executed when certain actions
are taken by Mutt (if you're a programmer, they're essentially callbacks).


> And I don't see anywhere that tells me that I have new messages in a
> folder.  I recall that I can modify the display.  I gotta work on that
> too.

  When new mail arrives, Mutt will display "New mail in this folder" or
"New mail in folder <name>" on the very bottom line.  When you press
'c' to change folders, a folder with new mail will appear by default.
Also the Tab key will move you to the next New message which is useful
for quickly finding the new mail (or whether there is any).

							- Dan