Re: checking pop mail in the background

[Jon Walthour]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 01:25:09AM -0500, Jim Breton wrote:
> Any other ideas?  Is there any way to bind a key directly to a shell
> command, or do I have to use the ! function?

Yes, I use fetchmail. It works very nicely in the background (when
daemon mode is enabled), will fetch from multiple mail server (and not
just the POP3 variety), and sends it all through my local machine's SMTP
port so I can use procmail to process the mail before it gets to mutt.
And, IMHO, it's easy to configure.

-- 
Thanks,

Jon Walthour, BSC
Cincinnati, Ohio
~~~
The 21st century begins on January 1, 2001

Re: lotus notes

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 01:39:36PM +0100, Arnaud De Timmerman wrote:

> does anyone know why an email sent by netscape3 on unix is well received
> on my Lotus Notes client (NT4), and an email sent by mutt on the same
> machine isn't ? 

More details please? "Bloated Goats" isn't really famous for correct
implementation of protocols in general, BTW.

What was the contend of the mail? 
Did you attach something? 
Did you use encryption? 
What exactly went wrong (what was the error, how did you notice)?

-- 
Ralf Hildebrandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www.stahl.bau.tu-bs.de/~hildeb
I'm locked in a maze of little projects, all of which suck. 


 PGP signature

lotus notes

[Arnaud De Timmerman]

hi all,

does anyone know why an email sent by netscape3 on unix is well received on my
Lotus Notes client (NT4), and an email sent by mutt on the same machine isn't ?

thanks,

Happy Little Vegemite

[Chuck Dale]

Dear Mutts,

You've got one happy Mutt convert here. At least for the moment. After
half a day grappling with getting things configured nicely I like it. 

I had two main gripes with getting Mutt going. I'll give some
recommendations for how I see the user experience could be made easier.
Please do not take all too seriously, I've only been using Mutt for a
day and on this list for a day so some of this has probably been
discussed already at length.

1. Sendmail configuration
-

This was one that got me for a while. Having always used web based email
clients or clients with their own SMTP stuff in them, my sendmail has
been badly configured at home for at least a year. The mutt help I found
on this was not very helpful. At first I tried sSMTP but had
difficulties getting it to work correctly especially as I needed to keep
sendmail as an MDA for fetchmail to deliver to. 

The document that helped me most in fixing the masquerading settings in
sendmail was the Sendmail HOWTO at the RedHat support site:
http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/howto/RH-sendmail-HOWTO/book1.html

as well as the FAQ:
http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/faqs/RH-sendmail-FAQ/book1.html

I would definitely recommend putting these links in a few places in the
documentation as they clearly explain the issues involved and what to do
to get things right rather than just giving up and using a simpler MTA.
For the less advanced Mutt user this can be a stumbling block.


2. Mutt configuration and help
--

Is appalling. There are way too many options in the sample config file.
At least the standard ones which users might like to change should be
put at the top of the file and the more esoteric below that.

It would be great to have a tutorial for the new Mutt user to go through
installation and configuration clearly and in detail.

But I hear you - put up or shut up.. Actually I've just been inspired to
write a Mutt new user tutorial. I'll have a quick look for one done
already then have a go... Expect to hear from me soon =)


Thank you very much for your time and an excellent program,

Regards,
Chuck

Réf. : Re: lotus notes

[Arnaud De Timmerman]

>What was the contend of the mail?
>Did you attach something?
>Did you use encryption?
>What exactly went wrong (what was the error, how did you notice)?
We use unix on server, some of our customers and we are using lotus notes on our
desktops (it's not a choice). We have to send text-only (no mime/smime contents
at first...) emails to those platforms. But in an automated manner so we have to
deal with console based agent, this is where mutt comes handy. The error is that
we never receive mail (but our customers who don't use the infamous Lotus get
the mail right).

thanks again,

Re: lotus notes

[Chuck Dale]

Hi Arnaud,

Here we go already, a question about sendmail setup. Or maybe not worth
a try..

The reason Netscape would deliver your mail but Mutt wouldn't is that
Netscape handles all parts of the message sending for
you, where Mutt simply hands your message off to sendmail which is
running on your system. If sendmail is incorrectly configured then your
mail will not get anywhere.

Netscape makes the SMTP connection to the mail server, while Mutt
simply runs sendmail to send the mail.. Spooky coincidence when you
actually get a program that does what it says..

Chuck

Wrote Arnaud De Timmerman on Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 01:39:36PM +0100:
> 
> 
> hi all,
> 
> does anyone know why an email sent by netscape3 on unix is well received on my
> Lotus Notes client (NT4), and an email sent by mutt on the same machine isn't ?
> 
> thanks,

Re: Réf. : Re: lotus notes

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 02:24:53PM +0100, Arnaud De Timmerman wrote:

> We use unix on server, some of our customers and we are using lotus notes on our
> desktops (it's not a choice). We have to send text-only (no mime/smime contents
> at first...) emails to those platforms. But in an automated manner so we have to
> deal with console based agent, this is where mutt comes handy. The error is that

Well, you could try "mailx" or "mail" or even "sendmail" directly.

> we never receive mail (but our customers who don't use the infamous Lotus get
> the mail right).

From that error it VERY hard to say what the problem is. I recommend having
a look at the server logs to see IF and TO WHERE the mail actually was
delivered.

Also try sending mail using mailx and mail (where you can be sure that no
attachments and other dirty stuff is involved :))
-- 
Ralf Hildebrandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www.stahl.bau.tu-bs.de/~hildeb
The Microsoft Torque Wrench: what do you want to shear today? 


 PGP signature

macro not working?

[Richard Hakim]

This is a dumb question.  I *know* this is dumb.  But I can't figure it out.

Can someone tell me what is wrong with this macro?


macro index i "|./snort-stat daily | mail kokoro" [Run this msg through 
snort-stat]



Thanks.

Richard

Folder Behaviour

[Chuck Dale]

Hi again,

The folder interface is annoying me a little in Mutt and am looking for
help in configuring it further.

At the moment I use this macro to switch between folders:
macro index M "c?\t"
macro pager M "c?\t"

1. Is is possible to remove the roughly half-second wait while "Mailbox
is unchanged" flashes in the status line when moving to a different
mailbox?

2. In the mailbox selection screen, there is no quick way to jump to one
of the folders that is not right near the top of the list. I can use
[down] or press the number of the mailbox I want. However either
requires a number of keypresses. If I press the number of a mailbox I
want to go directly to that mailbox and open it, not have to press enter
twice. With the current functionality, to go to mailbox 9 you have to
press 9 [enter] [enter] to get into the mailbox. While not normally a
problem this is annoying when you are switching between mailboxes a few
times in a session.

3. Folders with new mail are not always marked as such in the Mailbox
selection screen. It is useless having a feature that only works half
the time. There is another thread on this so I'll keep track of what's
happening there.

4. Is there much overhead in having Mutt watch a folder for new mail? I have a
number of folders that I would like to come up in the mailbox selection
screen but that don't actually have a procmail recipe sending anything
to them other than when I move a message there. At the moment my
mailboxes line is: "mailboxes ! `echo ~/Mail/*`". But this seems rather
kludgy. Any recommendations?

Thanks for your time!
Chuck

Folder Switching

[Chuck Dale]

Oh and another thing I forgot to ask:

5. Would it possible to have a next-folder and previous-folder command in Mutt 
somewhere so I
could move back and forward between folders with a single key? Also
next-new-folder would be good, to go to the next folder with new mail. 

Actually a command to go to the next new message anywhere would be
useful as well. Because at the moment when reading new mail I have to
manually find the folders which have new mail and change into them. 

I hate redundancy - "the computer should do that". i.e. I'm lazy.

Thanks,
Chuck

Off topic: Fake bounce

[Wouter Hanegraaff]

Hi,

I want to be able to send fake bounces. Although faking a bounce is not
really what you are supposed to do with mail, there are enough cases in
which this is perfectly appropriate.

I guess all that is needed is a small script which reads a mail from
standard input and generates a fake bounce accordingly. It could use the
sendmail command to send the mail, or do talk to the smtp port.

Has anyone done anything like this yet? If not, I will start working on
this.  I don't really have much time for it so it could take a while
before I have something usable.

Wouter.

-- 
Wat voor een paperclip geldt, geldt in wezen ook voor een server.
- Compaq over de nieuwste ProLiant servers

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Lars Hecking]

Wouter Hanegraaff writes:
> Hi,
> 
> I want to be able to send fake bounces. Although faking a bounce is not
> really what you are supposed to do with mail, there are enough cases in
> which this is perfectly appropriate.
> 
> I guess all that is needed is a small script which reads a mail from
> standard input and generates a fake bounce accordingly. It could use the
> sendmail command to send the mail, or do talk to the smtp port.
> 
> Has anyone done anything like this yet? If not, I will start working on
> this.  I don't really have much time for it so it could take a while
> before I have something usable.

 You mean, "fake bounce" as in: created by yourself, not by the MTA?

 http://www.procmail.org/

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS]

Wouter Hanegraaff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> I want to be able to send fake bounces. Although faking a bounce is not
> really what you are supposed to do with mail, there are enough cases in
> which this is perfectly appropriate.

You could edit a message as if you were going to send it, then from
the compose menu save it (with 'w') then bounce the saved message to
another address that has nothing to do with the headers.

Edmund

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Wouter Hanegraaff]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 04:02:32PM +, Lars Hecking wrote:
> 
>  You mean, "fake bounce" as in: created by yourself, not by the MTA?

Yes. So I don't want any automatic bouncing. I don't get that much spam.
But when I do, it will end up in my inbox. I want to be able to just
pipe it to a fake bounce script and let the sender think he spammed an
e-mail address that doesn't exist. If I'm lucky, he'll remove my e-mail
address from his spam list.

Procmail is for filtering mail, but filtering is not the problem here.

I've seen some procmail scripts that do filtering and bouncing, but I
don't want that. I just want a tiny little script that only generates
the fake bounce and feeds it to sendmail, nothing more, nothing less.

Wouter

-- 
Wat voor een paperclip geldt, geldt in wezen ook voor een server.
- Compaq over de nieuwste ProLiant servers

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Charles Cazabon]

Wouter Hanegraaff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 04:02:32PM +, Lars Hecking wrote:
> > 
> >  You mean, "fake bounce" as in: created by yourself, not by the MTA?
 
> Yes. So I don't want any automatic bouncing. I don't get that much spam.
> But when I do, it will end up in my inbox. I want to be able to just
> pipe it to a fake bounce script and let the sender think he spammed an
> e-mail address that doesn't exist. If I'm lucky, he'll remove my e-mail
> address from his spam list.

Except that spammers virtually never use their real address as the
envelope sender or From: header.  So your bounce will either be delivered
to an innocent bystander, or will double-bounce.  Some spam comes in with 
a null envelope sender, so you can't even get that far.

Charles
-- 

Charles Cazabon  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Any opinions expressed are just that -- my opinions.

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Rich Lafferty]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 06:42:38PM +0100, Wouter Hanegraaff ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 04:02:32PM +, Lars Hecking wrote:
> > 
> >  You mean, "fake bounce" as in: created by yourself, not by the MTA?
> 
> Yes. So I don't want any automatic bouncing. I don't get that much spam.
> But when I do, it will end up in my inbox. I want to be able to just
> pipe it to a fake bounce script and let the sender think he spammed an
> e-mail address that doesn't exist. If I'm lucky, he'll remove my e-mail
> address from his spam list.
> 
> Procmail is for filtering mail, but filtering is not the problem here.

Procmail is for processing mail, otherwise it'd be called
filtmail. :-) Although, it's for processing mail automatically, so I'm
not sure you'll get it to do what you want -- but it's certainly
capable of doing much more than filtering mail. :-)

In any case, I wouldn't put a whole lot of trouble into what you're
doing. The spammers don't care about bounces; whether an address
bounces or just isn't read is just another "non-sale" to them. Taking
addresses out of their list because it bounces is work that doesn't
produce results.

  -Rich

-- 
-- Rich Lafferty ---
 Sysadmin/Programmer, Instructional and Information Technology Services
   Concordia University, Montreal, QC (514) 848-7625
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --

Re: macro not working?

[Mikko Hänninen]

Richard Hakim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Tue, 29 Feb 2000:
> This is a dumb question.  I *know* this is dumb.  But I can't figure it out.
> Can someone tell me what is wrong with this macro?

Perhaps, but you could've given us more details about what
happens/doesn't happen the way you expect with it?

I'll take a guess though...

> macro index i "|./snort-stat daily | mail kokoro" [Run this msg through 
>snort-stat]

First problem: You want to put the comments inside quotes,
"[Run this msg through snort-stat]".  I didn't try but I suspect it
might not even parse without that.

Second problem: This may not be a problem, but there is no \n in the end
so the command will not get automatically executed, rather you'll get
the pipe-to-program prompt with all of that text pre-typed in and just
waiting for you to press enter.  This may be what you want (so you can
edit the line before you press enter), but if you want it auto-execute,
add the \n.


Hope this helps,
Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
I try to handle one day at a time, but lately several have attacked me at once!

Re: Off topic: Fake bounce

[Mikko Hänninen]

Wouter Hanegraaff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Tue, 29 Feb 2000:
> But when I do, it will end up in my inbox. I want to be able to just
> pipe it to a fake bounce script and let the sender think he spammed an
> e-mail address that doesn't exist. If I'm lucky, he'll remove my e-mail
> address from his spam list.

Won't happen.  99 times out of 100 the sender information will be fake,
and even if it's not, it won't be read/processed.

> Procmail is for filtering mail, but filtering is not the problem here.

Actually, it can do more than that.  I've seen automatic file-servers
by mail, set up with procmail.  Look in the man page, there should be
something about creating an automatic reply header or something like
that.  I think the example they give is a vacation-type of behaviour.

> I just want a tiny little script that only generates
> the fake bounce and feeds it to sendmail, nothing more, nothing less.

I personally would write it in perl myself, but procmail may be easier
if you're not proficient in perl, or lack time to write it all in perl.


Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
I know Karate, Kung Fu, and 47 other dangerous words.

Re: checking pop mail in the background

[Mikko Hänninen]

Jim Breton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Tue, 29 Feb 2000:
> There are a few solutions I can think of and I'm wondering if anyone
> could advise me on which one might be best, or hopefully suggest a
> better one.

First of all, I'd recommend the approach to getting fetchmail.  In the
daemon mode, it'll automatically fetch email in the background and you
won't notice anything (except that the line is busy with some traffic...).

> but that didn't work too well.  Apparently macros only work for
> stringing Mutt keystrokes?

Yes.  If you want to invoke a shell command, you need to do it with the
!-command, which you can easily include in a macro, and which is fully
supported.  Like you thought.

> I could suppress the output by redirecting it to /dev/null but
> that seems awfully kludgey (sp?) to me.

It isn't...  I think it's standard behaviour anywhere in little scripts
and such in unix to redirect output to /dev/null if it shouldn't be
displayed. :-)  I think that's the most common use for /dev/null, so I
could even say that "that's what /dev/null is for!" (even if the point
is arguable...).  You shouldn't be scared of doing it like that.

If you want to save the output in case there are some errors or
something, save it to a temporary file instead.

> The other idea was to bind a key to a shell command (!) that ran a shell
> script that did the output suppression, etc. for me but that's
> essentially the same as above, just a little fancier.

That's what I'd do.  I don't think it's a kludgey solution either.  It's
just a question of setting up your environment so that it works the way
you want; adding a simple shell script that will get you there is
something I certainly consider normal in the unix environment.

If you added a shell script, you could do some post-processing on the
log (if you saved it to a temp file) and then do whatever was needed if
there were some errors or whatnot.  Or you could even just mail the log
to yourself...

> Any other ideas?  Is there any way to bind a key directly to a shell
> command, or do I have to use the ! function?

No, you really have to use the ! function.  That's the way it was
intended to be done.

I really recommend you try fetchmail though, in the daemon mode.


Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
2 + 2 = 4 (for the time being)

Re: Happy Little Vegemite

[Mikko Hänninen]

Chuck Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> 1. Sendmail configuration
> This was one that got me for a while. Having always used web based email
> clients or clients with their own SMTP stuff in them, my sendmail has
> been badly configured at home for at least a year. The mutt help I found
> on this was not very helpful.

This would probably benefit from having more explanation of the mail
sending process in the Mutt docs.  I don't agree that Mutt should give
specific pointers to sendmail documentation, because even though
sendmail is the currently most prominent MTA, it's by far not the only
one.  And Mutt documentation should be about using Mutt, not about how
to configure any number of other MTA programs...  But, explaining the
process clearly and then saying that for help configuring the MTA you
should refer to the documentation about that MTA is probably the right
thing to do.

If you ask me, I wouldn't use sendmail as a newbie's MTA, the beast is
not for the faint at heart.


> At first I tried sSMTP but had
> difficulties getting it to work correctly especially as I needed to keep
> sendmail as an MDA for fetchmail to deliver to. 

Actually, you don't need sendmail.  You can have fetchmail deliver
directly to some mailbox, or you can make it invoke any program (eg.
procmail) to do the mail delivery and/or mail filtering.  It's just
that having it talk to the local MTA is the default (and probably a
good default, too).


> There are way too many options in the sample config file.
> At least the standard ones which users might like to change should be
> put at the top of the file and the more esoteric below that.

There are some really good example .muttrc-files on the web (Telsa's
example comes to mind *grin*).  You can find links to these on the Mutt
web page.  However, I don't think the documentation even tells that
there are more (and better) examples available on the website, so unless
the user thinks for themselves to look there, they're left with the
default example .muttrc.  I'm not sure, but it can be that anyone has
put significant effort into that file.

> It would be great to have a tutorial for the new Mutt user to go through
> installation and configuration clearly and in detail.

Yes, it would be great to have one. :-)


Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
"OK, who stopped the payment on my reality check?"

Re: Folder Behaviour

[Mikko Hänninen]

Hello Chuck,

Chuck Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> 1. Is is possible to remove the roughly half-second wait while "Mailbox
> is unchanged" flashes in the status line when moving to a different
> mailbox?

I don't think it's possible to remove this.  Why do you want it gone?
I think it's useful to know if the mailbox was changed (and how many
messages were deleted etc.) or not.

> 2. In the mailbox selection screen, there is no quick way to jump to one
> of the folders that is not right near the top of the list. I can use
> [down] or press the number of the mailbox I want. However either
> requires a number of keypresses. If I press the number of a mailbox I
> want to go directly to that mailbox and open it, not have to press enter
> twice. With the current functionality, to go to mailbox 9 you have to
> press 9 [enter] [enter] to get into the mailbox. While not normally a
> problem this is annoying when you are switching between mailboxes a few
> times in a session.

Hmm.  I'm not sure if this is feasible, but I can see a solution such
as whenever you're in the change-folder menu, you bind  in the
editor (the line editor) to something like "",
which will finish the current line and then do a select-entry function.
I'm not sure if this would have some adverse effects though, because
then Mutt would *always* do a select-entry after line editing, not just
if you started with numbers.  And then you'd also need to have some kind
of hook or something to re-bind  in the editor to it's normal
functionality, once you're out of the menu selection.

I don't think it should be just changed in the code to behave like what
you want, because I can see that people (me included) would want to type
in the folder number to jump to that folder, and then see if he/she got
it right -- if the folder entry was off-screen, you might've remembered
the number wrong, or even have no idea which folder that number was.

> 3. Folders with new mail are not always marked as such in the Mailbox
> selection screen. It is useless having a feature that only works half
> the time.

Do you have external mailbox new mail checking?  A "biff" program, or
maybe your shell checking the folders?  These kind of things can mess
up the folder access times.

Since you didn't say, I assume you're using mbox-style folders (yes,
there are alternatives which aren't so prone to having this check fail).

> 4. Is there much overhead in having Mutt watch a folder for new mail?

It depends on the folder type, but for mbox folders, not really I think.

> At the moment my
> mailboxes line is: "mailboxes ! `echo ~/Mail/*`". But this seems rather
> kludgy. Any recommendations?

I would only list the real incoming mail folders with the "mailboxes"
command.  I prefix all my incoming mail folders with IN. so I could (but
don't) do: mailboxes ! `echo ~/Mail/IN.*`

> 5. Would it possible to have a next-folder and previous-folder command in Mutt 
>somewhere so I
> could move back and forward between folders with a single key?

>From the manual:

  4.7.  Mailbox Shortcuts



  ·  - -- refers to the file you've last visited

Just set up a macro that does "c-" and pressing that key will
take you to the previous mail folder.

> Also
> next-new-folder would be good, to go to the next folder with new mail. 

When you press c, the default prompt is the first mail folder with new
mail listed in your mailboxes line.  So a macro doing "c" should
work.  (Only problem here is that it will always start from the
beginning of the mailboxes listing, so you probably want to list the
mailboxes in the order of prioririty and preference then.)

This does rely on Mutt being able to detect which folders have new mail
though, if that's broken then that will affect things here too.

> Actually a command to go to the next new message anywhere would be
> useful as well.

When I open a folder, Mutt starts at the first new message in that
folder.  So by using the above macro, you'd get that behaviour.


Regards,
Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
 Dyslexics of the world, untie!

rfc 2368 style mailto: links in urlview

[Bruno Postle]

I was briefly inspired by the O'Reily book 'Practical Internet
Groupware' and a mail oriented project I'm working on, to write this
script. It handles rfc 2368 mailto: links in urlview and passes them on
to the mutt command line.

This sort of stuff:


or 


Gets rewritten (most of the time) to:

mutt  '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' -s 'What a dumb RFC'
and
mutt  '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' -s 'Hi There!'

There's a fairly remote possibility that someone else might find this
useful and want to add it to their web of mutt helpers, so I'm posting 
it here.. 

It doesn't do extra headers like 'In-Reply-To:' or body text. This
wouldn't have been too hard to add.

Change the line in url_handler.sh that calls mutt:

mutt `echo $url | sed 's;^[^:]*:\(.*\);\1;'`
to
mutt-rfc2368 $url

Bruno
-- 
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://bruno.postle.net


#!/bin/sh
# Rewrites RFC2368-style URI's to mutt command-line format
# [EMAIL PROTECTED] 20-feb-2000

URI=`echo $1 | tr '%20' ' '`

TO=`echo $URI | egrep '^mailto:[^@\?&]+@[^@]+' | sed 's;^[^:]*:\([^\?]*\).*;\1;'`

CC=`echo $URI | egrep '[\?&]cc=[^@\?&]+@[^@]+' | sed 's;^.*[\?&]cc=\([^&>]*\).*$;\1;'`

SUBJECT=`echo $URI | egrep '[\?&]subject=[^&]' | sed 
's;^.*[\?&]subject=\([^&>]*\).*$;\1;'`

ARGS=""

if [ -n "$TO" ] ; then
   ARGS="$ARGS '$TO'"
fi

if [ -n "$CC" ] ; then
   ARGS="$ARGS -c '$CC'"
fi

if [ -n "$SUBJECT" ] ; then
   ARGS="$ARGS -s '$SUBJECT'"
fi

eval "mutt $ARGS"


 PGP signature

Re: Happy Little Vegemite

[Chuck Dale]

Wrote Mikko Hänninen on Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:34:37PM +0200:
> This would probably benefit from having more explanation of the mail
> sending process in the Mutt docs.  I don't agree that Mutt should give
> specific pointers to sendmail documentation, because even though
> sendmail is the currently most prominent MTA, it's by far not the only
> one.  And Mutt documentation should be about using Mutt, not about how
> to configure any number of other MTA programs...  But, explaining the
> process clearly and then saying that for help configuring the MTA you
> should refer to the documentation about that MTA is probably the right
> thing to do.

Sure, keep the software modular, but that doesn't mean you have to have
really mean documentation. As sendmail is the default with all
distributions I can think of, include links for it and for qmail and
Postfix and you should be about done. People running other MTAs will
probably already know how to do it. 

> If you ask me, I wouldn't use sendmail as a newbie's MTA, the beast is
> not for the faint at heart.

And the ironic thing is that sendmail is pretty much the newbie's MTA.
Think how many RedHat installs are running sendmail without the user
knowing what it is..

But that's no reason to not explain things better. If I read less
"sendmail is extremely complex" and "it is very difficult to get a hold
of" and more actual sendmail documentation I'm sure it wouldn't seem so
complex.

[..] 
> > There are way too many options in the sample config file.
> > At least the standard ones which users might like to change should be
> > put at the top of the file and the more esoteric below that.
> 
> There are some really good example .muttrc-files on the web (Telsa's
> example comes to mind *grin*).  You can find links to these on the Mutt
> web page.  However, I don't think the documentation even tells that
> there are more (and better) examples available on the website, so unless
> the user thinks for themselves to look there, they're left with the
> default example .muttrc.  I'm not sure, but it can be that anyone has
> put significant effort into that file.

I did actually read a number of these (Telsa's was first), but they are
very long files to try and fit into your head. I'd much prefer lots of
those settings to also be settable within the interface where I actually
want the change rather than reading a config file.

Regards,
Chuck

[Announce] mutt-1.1.6i is out.

[Thomas Roessler]

Mutt 1.1.6i is on it's way to the public FTP archive under
.  For a list of mirrors, please see
.

This version is considered BETA, and is supposed to be very close to
what will eventually be released as 1.2.  Most of the code is pretty
mature, however, there may be still some hidden crashes.  You are
encouraged to try this version of mutt taking appropriate care.

For a list of changes against 1.0, see the file README.UPGRADE.

   PLEASE READ THAT FILE!

Against 1.1.5, most changes concern the IMAP code.  It's even more
ugly now, but is supposed to work nicely.

-- 
http://www.guug.de/~roessler/

 PGP signature

Re: Folder Behaviour

[Chuck Dale]

Hi Mikko,

Wrote Mikko Hänninen on Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:56:12PM +0200:
> Hello Chuck,
> 
> Chuck Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> > 1. Is is possible to remove the roughly half-second wait while "Mailbox
> > is unchanged" flashes in the status line when moving to a different
> > mailbox?
> 
> I don't think it's possible to remove this.  Why do you want it gone?
> I think it's useful to know if the mailbox was changed (and how many
> messages were deleted etc.) or not.

Yeah I agree it can be useful but most of the time the mailbox is
unchanged. So it would be nice to go immediately if the mailbox is
unchanged but otherwise not pause at all.

> > 2. In the mailbox selection screen, there is no quick way to jump to one
> > of the folders that is not right near the top of the list. I can use
[..]
> 
> Hmm.  I'm not sure if this is feasible, but I can see a solution such
> as whenever you're in the change-folder menu, you bind  in the
> editor (the line editor) to something like "",
> which will finish the current line and then do a select-entry function.
> I'm not sure if this would have some adverse effects though, because
> then Mutt would *always* do a select-entry after line editing, not just
> if you started with numbers.  And then you'd also need to have some kind
> of hook or something to re-bind  in the editor to it's normal
> functionality, once you're out of the menu selection.

Hmm, could work. I'll give it a try.

> I don't think it should be just changed in the code to behave like what
> you want, because I can see that people (me included) would want to type
> in the folder number to jump to that folder, and then see if he/she got
> it right -- if the folder entry was off-screen, you might've remembered
> the number wrong, or even have no idea which folder that number was.

Agreed - and it seems difficult to find an option that would make sense
to control this behaviour. set noconfirmfolderselection...

> > 3. Folders with new mail are not always marked as such in the Mailbox
> > selection screen. It is useless having a feature that only works half
> > the time.
> 
> Do you have external mailbox new mail checking?  A "biff" program, or
> maybe your shell checking the folders?  These kind of things can mess
> up the folder access times.
> 
> Since you didn't say, I assume you're using mbox-style folders (yes,
> there are alternatives which aren't so prone to having this check fail).

Sorry yeah I'm using mbox style folders which fetchmail deliver to
every 3 minutes. I don't have any other external mail checking. 



Of course my shell is checking the folders. I'll turn that off and see
how I go.

[...]

> > 5. Would it possible to have a next-folder and previous-folder command in Mutt 
>somewhere so I
> > could move back and forward between folders with a single key?
> 
> Just set up a macro that does "c-" and pressing that key will
> take you to the previous mail folder.
> > Also
> > next-new-folder would be good, to go to the next folder with new mail. 
> 
> When you press c, the default prompt is the first mail folder with new
> mail listed in your mailboxes line.  So a macro doing "c" should
> work.  (Only problem here is that it will always start from the
> beginning of the mailboxes listing, so you probably want to list the
> mailboxes in the order of prioririty and preference then.)
> 
> This does rely on Mutt being able to detect which folders have new mail
> though, if that's broken then that will affect things here too.

Aha! Bonza!

> > Actually a command to go to the next new message anywhere would be
> > useful as well.
> 
> When I open a folder, Mutt starts at the first new message in that
> folder.  So by using the above macro, you'd get that behaviour.

Excellent..

Thank you!

Chuck

Re: Happy Little Vegemite

[Mikko Hänninen]

Chuck Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> Sure, keep the software modular, but that doesn't mean you have to have
> really mean documentation. As sendmail is the default with all
> distributions I can think of,

Debian uses Exim. :-)

> include links for it and for qmail and
> Postfix and you should be about done. People running other MTAs will
> probably already know how to do it. 

Hmm, okay, true.

> And the ironic thing is that sendmail is pretty much the newbie's MTA.
> Think how many RedHat installs are running sendmail without the user
> knowing what it is..

Indeed.

> I did actually read a number of these (Telsa's was first), but they are
> very long files to try and fit into your head. I'd much prefer lots of
> those settings to also be settable within the interface where I actually
> want the change rather than reading a config file.

They *are* settable within the interface.  Just type ":set "
(and keep repeating pressing tab until you get to the setting you want
to change). :-)  Of course it won't save the settings

Anyway, all silliness aside, what's different from doing the changes
"within the interface" as compared to editing a .muttrc file?  And you
say that the example .muttrc's are too long and complain too many
options -- that problem won't go away with having an interface?

You can actually get by with *no* .muttrc, pretty much everything in
Mutt has reasonable defaults.


There is not that much difference in having an interactive interface
where you can change settings, than having a config file.  Both will
contain the same settings if you use an example .muttrc, and if the
example .muttrc has good comments then it's equal to having
context-sensitive help.

It would be nice if Mutt did have some sort of configuration tool like
the Linux kernel "make menuconfig" -- but that shouldn't necessarily be
part of the Mutt program itself, just an additional tool.  Even with
that you wouldn't be able to (easily?) create hooks and such, at least
no complex hooks, so at some point you will have to resort to config
file editing if you'd want a really complex configuration.

Mutt has a lot of configuration directives, that's part of the reason
why it is so powerful.  No matter how hard you try, you can't make that
"dead easy".  Sure good documentation helps, but even that won't get
over the fact that the user does need to learn things in order to use
the configuration effectively.

So you think it would be nice to learn things "little by little"?  Sure,
that's possible too, start with no .muttrc at all.  Then when you run
into something you'd like to change, read the manual and add the
relevant sections to your .muttrc.


In my opinion the best way to help newbies create their first .muttrc's
would be a tool like the linux "make menuconfig" that could have
different sections (basic settings, POP setup, IMAP setup, mailboxes,
mailing lists, misc advanced settings, ...) and then have
context-sensitive help for each setting, direct from the Mutt manual
SGML file.  However, doing something like that is a fair bit of work,
and I know I don't have the time to do it.

I remember hearing about something like "dotconfig" that can be used to
create a multitude of various different "dot-files".  I've never tried
or seen that myself, so I don't know how easy or difficult it would be
to add Mutt support to that.


Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

Re: [Announce] mutt-1.1.6i is out.

[Christopher Smith]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 12:00:07AM +0100, Thomas Roessler wrote:
> Mutt 1.1.6i is on it's way to the public FTP archive under
> .  For a list of mirrors, please see
> .

I can't build this. I think the problem is because it's looking for
auth-gss.c which isn't there.

--Chris
 PGP signature

Re: Folder Behaviour

[Mikko Hänninen]

Chuck Dale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> Yeah I agree it can be useful but most of the time the mailbox is
> unchanged.

For you.  For me, I'd say the most common case for me is I've changed
something in the folder when I change to another.

> So it would be nice to go immediately if the mailbox is
> unchanged but otherwise not pause at all.

Is the one-second pause really that irritating?

BTW, there's no pause if the mailbox is read-only, I think...  So you
could (in theory) make c into a macro of "$%".  But
that's just a work-around, not a fix.

> Of course my shell is checking the folders. I'll turn that off and see
> how I go.

Another thing you could try would be to run configure when building Mutt
with --enable-buffy-size.  But with that option, you'd very likely to
need to use "set save_empty" or Mutt wouldn't report new mail in newly
created folder.


Regards,
Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

Re: [Announce] mutt-1.1.6i is out.

[Vincent Lefevre]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 15:48:14 -0800, Christopher Smith wrote:

> I can't build this. I think the problem is because it's looking for
> auth-gss.c which isn't there.

I have the same problem:

[snip]
Making all in po
make[2]: Entering directory `/users/vlefevre/mutt-1.1.6/mutt-1.1.6/po'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `../imap/auth_gss.c', needed by `mutt.pot'.  Stop.
[snip]

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Web:  - 100%
validated HTML - Acorn Risc PC, Yellow Pig 17, Championnat International des
Jeux Mathématiques et Logiques, TETRHEX, etc.
Computer science / computer arithmetic / Arénaire project at LIP, ENS-Lyon

Re: mutt-1.1.6i is out.

[Mikko Hänninen]

Vincent Lefevre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> I have the same problem:

Me too.

wizard@chamber:~/src/mutt/mutt-1.1.6.orig> ./configure --enable-flock --disable-fcntl 
--with-homespool=Maildir

wizard@chamber:~/src/mutt/mutt-1.1.6.orig> make

Making all in po
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/wizard/src/mutt/mutt-1.1.6.orig/po'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `../imap/auth_gss.c', needed by `mutt.pot'.  Stop.


Platform: Linux old Slackware 3.1-based.  Mutt has always compiled clean
before.


Regards,
Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!

It's called 1.1.7 now, and it has auth_gss.c.

[Thomas Roessler]

This was a snafu in imap/Makefile.am.

A "1.1.7" tar-ball is on it's way to the FTP archive right now.

Additionally, I've dropped auth_gss.c under
ftp://ftp.guug.de/pub/mutt/devel/auth_gss.c; you can download it
from there.

Note that this file is not added by diff-1.1.6i-1.1.7i, since the
diffs are based on the CVS repository, and there were no changes to
that file in the repository.

Hope this helps, and have a good night.

-- 
http://www.guug.de/~roessler/

 PGP signature

Re: checking pop mail in the background

[Bevan Broun]

on Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:21:51PM +0200, Mikko Hänninen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jim Breton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Tue, 29 Feb 2000:
> > There are a few solutions I can think of and I'm wondering if anyone
> > could advise me on which one might be best, or hopefully suggest a
> > better one.
> 
> First of all, I'd recommend the approach to getting fetchmail.  In the
> daemon mode, it'll automatically fetch email in the background and you
> won't notice anything (except that the line is busy with some traffic...).

Im using a perl program called pop_perl5, which doesnt require
sendmail running on the local machine and has a daemon mode. I make an
ssh tunnel first:

ssh -f -L 1110:popserver:110 localhost 'sleep 7d /dev/null'

and then configure pop_perl5 to use localhost:1110 as the pop server.
This keeps my mail arriving all week to my localhard drive.

Then I use rsync to sync my mailboxes to a network share that is
backed up. Im very happy with the speed of mutt with local mail spool
and folders.


BB
-- 
Bevan Broun   ph (08) 9380 1587
Computer Systems Officer fax (08) 9380 1065
Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering  
University of Western Australia rm. G70

Re: checking pop mail in the background

[Mikko Hänninen]

Bevan Broun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Wed, 01 Mar 2000:
> Im using a perl program called pop_perl5, which doesnt require
> sendmail running on the local machine and has a daemon mode. I make an
> ssh tunnel first:

fetchmail doesn't require that either (I'm not sure if you were implying
that it did, or not).  And it can also be configured to use an
ssh-tunnel for the pop-retrieval.

I'm not saying using pop_perl5 is bad or that it shouldn't be used (in
favour of fetchmail), it's good to have choice. :-)  Just wanted to
clarify that the above is possible with fetchmail too.  I'd be happy to
share my .fetchmailrc entries for that if anyone is interested in it,
mail me privately for that as it's a bit off-topic for this list.


Regards,
Mikko
-- 
// Mikko Hänninen, aka. Wizzu  //  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  //  http://www.iki.fi/wiz/
// The Corrs list maintainer  //   net.freak  //   DALnet IRC operator /
// Interests: roleplaying, Linux, the Net, fantasy & scifi, the Corrs /
   Dyslexia rules KO!

Re: checking pop mail in the background

[Bevan Broun]

on Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 03:18:31AM +0200, Mikko Hänninen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> fetchmail doesn't require that either (I'm not sure if you were implying
> that it did, or not).  And it can also be configured to use an
> ssh-tunnel for the pop-retrieval.

Yes I did think fetchmail required a local smtp, glad Im wrong. I
might give it another look as it seems to be what most people are
using.

BB
-- 
Bevan Broun   ph (08) 9380 1587
Computer Systems Officer fax (08) 9380 1065
Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering  
University of Western Australia rm. G70

Search Question

[Stewart V. Wright]

Hi all,

I have a question involving searching in the "index".  I have
reverse_alias set, so I see "John Smith" rather than whatever they
have as their name in the from field (as I would imagine many people
would do).  However I have noticed that search does not use
reverse_alias.  So, as an example, if I get mail from my friend "John
Smith", but the email comes from his work: 
   "Cars and Stuff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

I will see "John Smith" in the index.  However a search on "john" will
not find this message.

Any suggestions on how to do this (short of remembering the email
address?)


Cheers,

S.

-- 
"Theory!" he said. "Theory!  Damned important, that.  You set a
technician on a problem.  He'll fool around.  Waste lifetimes.
Get nowhere.  Just putter about at random.  A true scientist
works with theory.  Lets math solve his problems."
--  Not Final!  Isaac Asimov

 PGP signature

RE: mutt and mh/procmail

[Conrad Sabatier]

On 28-Feb-00 Phil Staub wrote:
> I would like to open a dialogue with anyone who is using mutt in
> conjunction with procmail and mh-style mailboxes. I've got some
> configuration questions.

I've only been using Mutt for a few days, and still have a lot to learn
about it, but yes, I'm using MH style mailboxes, and filtering mailing
lists and such into them with procmail.  I may be able to answer some of
your questions, just let me know. 

-- 
Conrad Sabatier
http://members.home.net/conrads/
ICQ# 1147270

Re: mutt and mh/procmail

[Phil Staub]

On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:27:11PM -0600, Conrad Sabatier wrote:
> 
> On 28-Feb-00 Phil Staub wrote:
> > I would like to open a dialogue with anyone who is using mutt in
> > conjunction with procmail and mh-style mailboxes. I've got some
> > configuration questions.
> 
> I've only been using Mutt for a few days, and still have a lot to learn
> about it, but yes, I'm using MH style mailboxes, and filtering mailing
> lists and such into them with procmail.  I may be able to answer some of
> your questions, just let me know. 

My major questions relate to getting mutt to properly detect the fact
that mail has been newly deposited into mh folders that I have
designated in my .muttrc as mailboxes. I've been getting new mail
reported in folders that are completely empty, as well as no report
when new mail *is* in the folders.

For the record, I am using rcvstore to insert the mail into the
mailboxes, and I do not have either biff or xbiff running to watch for new
mail.

I've also read most of the man pages on procmail, and scanned through
the mutt manual. I'm aware of the warning in the procmail pages about
file locking being unreliable for MH mailboxes.

Finally, I only recently subscribed to the mailing list, and yet
already I've seen other references to problems with new mail
detection, even for those not using mh mailboxes. Perhaps 1.1.7 will
resolve this? Haven't had time to download it yet, but it might be
worth a try.

Thanks,
Phil


-- 
Phil Staub  Dragonfly Software Consulting Company. 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  8196 SW Hall Blvd, Suite 104
503-641-3440 x33Beaverton, OR 97008   
  "Unix: because reboots are for hardware upgrades!"