Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
hello, thanks to you all for the lots of help, which came. I always work on different free software topics in parallel, so it is usual that my responses can take a lot of time. But they eventually come... Am 07.02.2018 um 22:37 schrieb kalle: > hello, > > In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says > > "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start > Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened > mailbox." > > The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox > of mine open and I don't know how to do this. > > > It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no > mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how > to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting > to a point. > > I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with > e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing > for me. > > > greetings, > > kalle > Am 08.02.2018 um 19:27 schrieb Wim: > the manual is an excellent resource but difficult for new users. The > Arch wiki might be a better place to start. > > https://wiki/archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt > > Or > https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mutt/ your 2 hints helped me (the second one is in german). But I think, that they don't make me really understand things, they only help me fix the configuration problem somehow. But it disturbs me, that every distribution community make their own documentation. It would be much more efficient, if there would be one reference manual and then at most some different tutorials or alike, which are specialized in their didactical way. Doing the same work several times is a waste of resources for the user community. Therefore I will look thoroughly, what went wrong when I tried or what could be done better. @yubin, erik: this is my muttrc NOW. and now it works. set imap_user=ka...@projektwerkstatt.de set spoolfile=imaps://mail.netzguerilla.net:993/ set folder=imaps://mail.netzguerilla.net:993/ set editor=ed I didn't have a .muttrc-file before. That's why it didn't work. It was only that when I started mutt, the program told me that I didn't have any mailbox and if didn't want any, if I remember right. But I didn't know what to answer. As you see, I have a spoolfile now.My mutt-version is 1.5.21. Am 08.02.2018 um 03:19 schrieb Erik Christiansen: > As you are using linux on your host, try: > > $ ls /var/spool/mail/ > > to see what is there. (And go from there.) The directory was empty. How should it, since I didn't have any MailRetrievalAgent to put it there and didn't configure mutt to use it's imap-feature. And now, while I started using fetchmail I also got some mails in /var/mail. @Cameron: Am 08.02.2018 um 05:39 schrieb Cameron Simpson: > > Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on > your system. > > If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox > is an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail. > > Is this the case? > > Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail > system. It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal > machine such as a laptop, so you have no local mail. You were exactly right. my conclusion at this state of reflection, at which I am: i suppose that if in the manual.txt it would've been clearly referenced/explained the different functions of Mail exchange and that Mutt is generally only the MUA-part while it can also have some MRA-features, which are in chapter 6 - Optional Features (e.g. 6.4 IMAP Support) I would've found the IMAP-configuration there. But as I started from the beginning of the document, where the it is not talked about the necessary configuration, I could not follow, and continued the chapters, passing the "Configuration"-chapter until reaching the "Advanced Features"-chapter and there at latest abandoning, without having found a good hint about it. kalle
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
Hi kalle, My mistake. The Arch wiki page should be: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt Regards Wim -- |\ _,,,---,,_ ZZZzz /,`.-'`'-. ;-;;,_ |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_)
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On Wednesday, 07 February at 22:37, kalle wrote: Hi kalle, the manual is an excellent resource but difficult for new users. The Arch wiki might be a better place to start. https://wiki/archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt Or https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mutt/ My set up is a combination of neomutt, msmtp to send mail, getmail to get mail and vim to write mail. Mutt can of course send and get mail itself. It's your choice how you organise your email. Start off simply, send yourself an email and see if things work. Other good resources are listed in the Arch wiki. By the way Thunderbird uses another email format than Mutt. mb2md can be used to convert to the Maildir format. -- Good luck Wim hello, In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox." The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of mine open and I don't know how to do this. It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point. I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me. greetings, kalle -- All the best Wim
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 08:46:09AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote: > On 2018-02-08 05:04, Ken Moffat wrote: > > > A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu > > version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird. > > But isn't that just a cache analogous to mutt's header cache? > > Even if it does store the full content, is it likely to be in a format > that mutt can read (unix mbox or maildir)? Not very, I think; much more > likely to be an indexed binary format specific to Thunderbird. > from http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_and_exporting_your_mail Thunderbird, Netscape, Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey use mbox files to store the messages for a folder. The ImportExportTools extension can import and export mbox and .EML files. Many email clients use mbox files (regardless of whether they use no file extension, .mbx or .mbox as the file extension) to store messages or provide a way to export folders as mbox or .EML files due to the popularity of Eudora and Outlook Express. Sometimes email clients use "Unix format" to refer to a mbox file since the format was originally developed for Unix systems. ĸen -- Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth. - Unseen Academicals
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On 2018-02-08 05:04, Ken Moffat wrote: > A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu > version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird. But isn't that just a cache analogous to mutt's header cache? Even if it does store the full content, is it likely to be in a format that mutt can read (unix mbox or maildir)? Not very, I think; much more likely to be an indexed binary format specific to Thunderbird. -- Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet, if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup. To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the domain.
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
kalle wrote: > hello, > > In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says > > "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. > It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox." > > The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox > of mine open and I don't know how to do this. > > > It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no > mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to > administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a > point. > > I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with > e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me. sorry for your troubles and frustration, but there are things we'd need to know to help you further. what type of set up do you have? how are you running mutt? do you get your mail through your ISP or through some other provider? in my case i run linux and use mutt from a terminal aka text type screen. to get my e-mail from the remote place where it is stored for me i have to use a program which goes and gets it and puts it on my local machine for my own reading. to send e-mail i also had to configure mutt to do that too. it can take some time to get through the various steps but some tools can help there. the debug option when running mutt is one of them. songbird
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 03:39:55PM +1100, Cameron Simpson wrote: > On 07Feb2018 22:37, kalle wrote: > > > > I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with > > e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for > > me. > > Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your > system. > > If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is > an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail. > > Is this the case? > A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird. > Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system. > It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as > a laptop, so you have no local mail. > I've used mutt for many years, but before that I used pine - and before that I read my mail in netscape. And that was all local mail held somewhere in /home. So I suspect that Kalle also has past mail stored in ~/. As an aside, for a single user system, particularly where /home might be shared by multiple linux systems (or in my case by older/current systems), keeping mail in /var is unpleasant. To fix that with new incoming mail I use fetchmail and procmail. But yes, configuration is needed if mail is not kept in /var. ĸen -- Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth. - Unseen Academicals
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On 07Feb2018 22:37, kalle wrote: In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox." The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of mine open and I don't know how to do this. It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point. I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me. Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your system. If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail. Is this the case? Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system. It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as a laptop, so you have no local mail. Instead, you'll need to configure mutt to access your ISP-hosted mail server, if that is what you are using. Could you please elaborate on your Thunderbird setup (obviously omitting account passwords, and if you like using placeholder names like "my-login-name" instead of you actual mail login name)? It seems likely that we need to guide you through a basic setup to use the same mail arrangements as your Thunderbird. Cheers, Cameron Simpson (formerly c...@zip.com.au)
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On 07.02.18 22:37, kalle wrote: > In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says > > "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It > gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox." > > The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of > mine open and I don't know how to do this. Then mutt is failing to find your spoolfile: » 3.299. spoolfile Type: path Default: (empty) If your spool mailbox is in a non-default place where Mutt cannot find it, you can specify its location with this variable. Mutt will initially set this variable to the value of the environment variable $MAIL or $MAILDIR if either is defined. « If further diagnosis is needed, it might be useful to post your mutt version number. (From mutt -v) Although I have neither $MAIL nor $MAILDIR defined in the environment, mutt has always found the mail spool, as is the case for most mutt users, I expect. In the index view, press y for the mailboxes view, which in my case presents: 1 -rw--- 1 erik erik 6.1M Feb 05 15:41 =avr_chat_u 2 -rw--- 1 erik erik 12M Jan 17 13:23 =avr_gcc_u ... 16 -rw-rw 1 erik mail 9.4M Feb 08 12:05 /var/spool/mail/erik If your spoolfile is in some unusual place, then you now have three ways to tell mutt where it is located. As you are using linux on your host, try: $ ls /var/spool/mail/ to see what is there. (And go from there.) For later: If you use some utility to fetch and sort mail into multiple inboxes, e.g. one per mailing list, then the "mailboxes" command can be used in ~/.muttrc to configure those as well. > > It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to > start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate > it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point. The manual does discuss mailboxes, describing both mbox and maildir formats. Once you've found your spoolfile, then you can inform yourself: $ file /var/spool/mail/erik /var/spool/mail/erik: UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines $ view /var/spool/mail/erik to see what the mbox format looks like. Your persistence is admirable, and with the help of a few answered questions, I'm sure you'll succeed. It'll be interesting to hear how the spoolfile managed to hide. Erik
Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt
On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:37:14PM +0100, kalle wrote: > hello, > > In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says > > "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It > gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox." > > The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of > mine open and I don't know how to do this. Have you set up the default mailbox, like this: set mbox=+INBOX It would be better to attach your .muttrc so that others can see what is going wrong with your mutt configuration. > It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to > start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate > it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point. > > I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with e-mail, > but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me. -- Yubin
