Mail - reasons for trying the fetchmail/procmail/mutt route
Greetings,
Although I'm sure my reasons are not unique, I thought I'd express them so
that perhaps they will explain my frustration at getting adequate mail
processing.
Previous to my current attempts, I (like many others) used mozilla and/or
kmail to read/sort/file/save my mail. Quite frankly, I got tired of having
to fire up mozilla and or use KDE apps (when I'm not using KDE as a wm). I
also found that the storage limit on my ISP mail account forced me to either
receive digested versions of mailing lists or open a my former mail agent(s)
every few hours in order to download the accumulated volume (I average about
10-12M of mail a day --- many lists). This was obviously undoable.
I then discovered that I could "fetch" my mail on regular intervals an have
it available locally, thereby constantly freeing up space at my ISP mail
account. BTW - my ISP doesn't offer direct transmission of mail on anything
other than commercial accounts. I have a DSL line so the regular traffic
to/from my ISP has been no hassle. "Great", thought I, ooops wait ....
mozilla ~can't~ read mail from a a local mailbox. It only offers ISP mail
retrieval. Which left me with unnecessary use of kmail. Additionally, kmail
has had a ~number~ of problems lately, even in the stable (all potato)
system that I am running.
So I thought I'd investigate non GUI (therefore no wm) dependent MUA's. Mutt
seemed like the perfect choice. Not being comfortable yet with configuring
fetchmail, I decided to use 'getmail' (see previous threads). This program
works fine, but I am still ~unable~ to presort my mail in various folders.
Using getmail allows me to schedule retrievals from my ISP; my mail is
happily waiting for me.
The problem with this is that often, I have 300+ emails to then sort through
one by one. I imnagine I could use those nifty 'save/send/folder ...' hooks
for processing of mail ~after~ I've recieved it, but I'd like to be able to
read mail from 'debian-user','blah@yahoogroups.com','xfce@moongroups...' all
in their own folders, which I can then ~delete~ specific messages from.
That's the one thing that GUI mail apps have going for them. ~But~ 'kmail',
'evolution', and 'cronos' are buggy; the ~stable~ version of 'balsa' that I
have has segfaulted since day one; and an exhaustive search for mail clients
on freshmeat resulted in a tone of MUA's for IMAP and/or POP3, but very few
for reading ~local~ mail.
Hence, my doggedness and frustration in getting the combo of
fetchmail/(exim)/procmail/mutt to work as I would like it to and am led to
believe that it can be configured to work. Simply, I want mail to be
retrieved, pre-sorted, and ready for viewing/saving/disposal whenever I log
on to my computer.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks for allowing the possible rant ...
C. Masters
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