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Re: Mutt and KMail harmony?



On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 10:25:25AM -0400, Jason Rashaad Jackson wrote:
> Hello all:
> 
>   I presently use both KMail and Mutt to check my e-mail.  Fetchmail grabs my 
> e-mail from an IMAP server and stores it locally in /var/mail/jrashaad.  If 
> KMail isn't running, I use Mutt remotely to check my mail (leaving it in 
> /var/mail/jrashaad).  If KMail is running it picks it up, filters it, and 
> sticks it in various folders.
> 
>   The problem comes when I try to view one of those folders in Mutt.  I have 
> no problem viewing the folder and reading the e-mail, however when I try to 
> look at the same folder in KMail, suddenly the headers are wrecked, and KMail 
> switches the subject to 'No Subject' and the sender to 'Unknown'.  Checking 
> the folder again in Mutt, everything looks fine, but KMail refuses to touch 
> them from that point on.
> 
>   I think my solution might be stop using KMail, and just set up procmail to 
> do the filtering that KMail is doing now, but I'd rather keep using it.  Any 
> advice?  Here's my info:
> 
> Debian v.2.2r3 (Kernel 2.4.5)
> Qt v.2.3.0
> KDE v.2.1.2
> KMail v.1.2
> Fetchmail-SSL v.5.8.3
> 

I considered using the pair KMail/mutt as well, using procmail for
sorting. However, I decided against using that after reading in the
KMail docs that other programs must not touch the mboxes that KMail
use while KMail is running -- I think it said there would be
consistency problems or some such. And that would happen, since I've
set fetchmail to deliver mail every 15 seconds.

If you take a look at your ~/Mail directory, you'll see that for every
mbox file foo, KMail has created a .foo.index file (or something like
that). It doesn't seem too far-fetched to assume that KMail uses those
files to store headers and such for quick retrieval, and if that's the
case, editing only foo with another program is sure to make the info
in .foo.index invalid. But KMail doesn't know that ...

This is all just speculation, but if I'm right, you simply can't use
KMail in parallel with another mail program. Unless you store all your
mail on an IMAP server; IMAP was designed with something like this
situation in mind. Mutt has IMAP support, and KMail will have very
soon (just wait for KDE 2.2). If you don't want to or can't store all
your mail on the IMAP server you already mentioned, you could always
run your own.

However, using fetchmail+procmail+mutt is a very good solution. That's
what I use, and I'm very happy with it. But I want KMail too, so I
might just set up an IMAP server myself.

   // Kalle Hasselström

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