Re: How the average guy gets mail...

[Viktor Lakics <lakicsv@usa.net>]

On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 05:58:19PM +0200, sentiniate@libero.it wrote:
> > 600 for 10 minutes and add the line to your .xsession profile (name 
> depends
> > on what window manager you use, mines xdm).
>  the correct way is to put a script 
> in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ directory which would be activated as soon as you 
> start a connession to your isp (see another today's answer under the 
> same subject).

Good point, Aldo. A small correction to this: just putting the
fetchmail script to the /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ directory will not
download your mail under Debian. See you also have to put your
.fetchmailrc to /etc as /etc/fetchmailrc (and this is not there by a
standard install...)

So Cameron, here you go:

Basically as you can see from the thread, there are at least two
ways to do what you want, using a fetchmail-mutt combo (I will only
spell out what other people have already said here :-))

1. Use mutt's in-built capabilities to read your mail, use POP3 or
IMAP, whatever float your (and your ISP's) boat. As to the setup,
check whether Debian's mutt was compiled with these features or not.
And RTFM. The mutt manual is great.

2. Mail in the UNIX way

That means you use fetchmail (if you are a dialup user) to simulate
a continous connection. You've  already set up your .fetchmailrc, so
this is easy from here. You just want to automate this thing, so
your mail will be downloaded whenever you make a connection (you do
not have to open mutt to initiate this!). 

So become root and :

Create the following scripts (make them executable!):

/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/fetchmail-up
______________________________________________
#!/bin/sh
test -r /etc/fetchmailrc && \
fetchmail -d 900  --syslog --invisible --fetchmailrc /etc/fetchmailrc
______________________________________________

This will automatically download your mail at every 15 min while
your connection is up...

/etc/ppp/ip-down.d/fetchmail-down

_________________________________
#!/bin/sh

test -x /usr/bin/fetchmail && \
fetchmail --quit
_______________________________________
This will shutdown your fetchmail when you disconnect.

And finally you do:

# mv ~/.fetchmailrc /etc/fetchmailrc 

Apparently this has a significance under Debian (in order to run
fetchmail from /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/, you have to have fetchmairc
(without the "." ) in /etc.

Hope this helps... -- Viktor