Hi all, Found cool software today, must share. PREAMBLE: If you already know this because you're some kind of super-dooper emacs/gnus/bbdb user, then I'm sorry I'm not leet enough! ;) lbdb ---- lbdb stands for the Little Brother Database; thusly named because of the original Big Brother Database for gnus and emacs. This is a port to the Linux operating system. :P The idea is that lbdb manages your alias list, and with a little help, does so automagically. First off, install the software. With Debian, you can apt-get install lbdb, but you will have to use the source package for other distributions here: http://www.spinnaker.de/debian/lbdb_0.20.1.tar.gz It's not that big, so won't be much trouble. First off, you need to give it a source of email addresses... You do that by feeding emails to lbdb-fetchaddr. Emails? Aye. This is one part of the "I don't ever have to type aliases in again" cool bit. Tell me you use procmail, please. If you don't, I'll ask you to kindly go to Tom Gilbert's site <URL: http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/> or Telsa Gwynne's site <URL: http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/>. They have well-documented .procmailrc files, which I've mentioned here before. Procmail really, really is your friend. Okay, so it's a pain to write recipes for, but once they're done, yum! Insert the following procmail recipe, near the top: ~/.procmailrc: :0hc | lbdb-fetchaddr That will pipe all of your emails into the lbdb catcher program, which will gather the info it needs. Next you need to configure lbdb: ~/.lbdb/lbdbrc: METHODS="m_gpg m_muttalias m_inmail" MUTTALIAS_FILES=~/.mutt/aliases SORT_OUTPUT=false METHODS defines where lbdb will retrieve addresses from - there are lots of different interfaces lbdb can use, from FidoNet to PalmPilot databases! Look in man lbdbq for more. This is a space-delimited list. MUTTALIAS_FILES tells lbdb where to find my alias file for mutt. You'll need to change this if yours is different. SORT_OUTPUT set to false stops lbdb giving back queries in alphabetical order, instead, it sorts them for newest entry to oldest. I prefer it that way. Finally, you gotta fix up your email client. lbdb was designed for mutt, so I'll describe that here. If you get it going with another mailer, please tell everyone your results! :) To tell mutt that you want to use lbdb as the query program, add this to your .muttrc: ~/.muttrc: (add to!) set query_command = "lbdbq %s" To invoke it, type "Q" on the index screen, or Ctrl-T when you're typing an address into any of the address prompts. You may not like the following setup in mutt, but it appeals to me! :) ~/.muttrc: (add to!) set fast_reply set autoedit set askcc = no set askbcc = no set edit_headers = yes macro index m "<query>" "Mail via Query" Now, I'm going to be slack and tell you to go and look that up in the wonderful mutt documentation at http://www.mutt.org/ so you can see what other stuff you can play with. :P That's right - now you too are being sucked into my little brother database! ;) - Jeff -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------- http://linux.conf.au/ -- Ye shall be cursed to fall in love so easily, and yet be so cold of heart as never to express it. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
