Re: Mail - reasons for trying the fetchmail/procmail/mutt route
cmasters <cmasters@despamnbnet.nb.ca> writes:
> 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.
<snip>
> 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.
Kmail, or anything KDE-related, is not included with potato. Thus,
you must be using unofficial KDE packages, and there's absolutely no
reason to assume these should be "stable" in any way.
<snip>
> 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.
Um, I personally have never seen a Unix-based MUA that couldn't read
local mail. I'm surprised the mozilla one can't--netscape's mail
reader always could.
> 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.
The fetchmail/exim/procmail/mutt combo is extremely common. Probably
most of the people on this list that have somewhat of a clue use it,
or a variation of it.
Fetchmail, exim, and mutt are normally quite straight-forward to get
working. Procmail is somewhat more tricky as its syntax is peculiar,
but there are many resources available to assist you.
You definitely are on the right track. If needed, I could provide
more assistance in setting up any one of these tools.
--
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>
BigNachos@jabber.org
http://bignachos.com
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