Re: Mail - reasons for trying the fetchmail/procmail/mutt route
On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 06:41:01PM -0600, John Patton wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 04:08:34PM -0400, cmasters wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I don't know what getmail does, but fetchmail will gather your mail
> from your ISP and will send it straight to exim (or sendmail, etc) for
> processing. By default, exim will use procmail to sort your mail if
> you have a procmail recipe in your home directory (~/.fetchmailrc).
> It's not too difficult to set up procmail rules to presort your email
> into special "inboxes" in your mail dir. You can then configure mutt to
> recognize those inboxes... once set up it works very efficiently.
>
Yep ... so I hear. Unfortunately, I've been having a little difficulty
(refer to recent previous posts) getting ~that~ configuration to work. I've
been trying to get this sorted out for over a week now.
> Here is a part of my procmail file:
>
> MAIL=/var/spool/mail/john
>
> PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
> MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
> DEFAULT=$MAIL
>
> :0:
> * ^from.*debian-user
> Inboxes/debian-user
>
> :0
> * ^from.*debian-kde
> /dev/null
>
Yep ... tried that, except my folders are slightly different. On the advice
of some other posters (hello Carel), I've managed to determine that the
problem is likely in my exim config. It seems to be interrupting the
advertized seeamless flow between fetchmail and procmail.
> Mail from debian-user get's put into the inbox ~/Mail/Inboxes/debian-user
> while mail from debian-kde get's deleted (for the time being).
>
> Here is part of my muttrc file:
>
> # declare inboxes (! is the default)
> mailboxes ! \
> +Inboxes/debian-user
>
> # refile mailing list email into specific folders after reading
> mbox-hook +Inboxes/debian-user +debian-user
> mbox-hook +Inboxes/debian-kde +debian-kde
>
> # declare mailing lists
> subscribe debian-user
> subscribe debian-kde
>
Also similar to my own setup (although now they have been disabled whilst
trying to track down ~where~ the breakdown in transmission is occurring).
> Just look at the appropriate man pages for further details. It will
> require some work, but once set up will then be much easier to deal
> with.
>
Yet again, man pages, online help, and printing 100+ pages of combined
manuals has led me back to ~here~, this mailing list. The difficulty with
the majority of man pages and ~many~ on-line additions / rewrites is that
they still assume a programmer is reading them. For instance, the copious
pages of Mutt man include a glossary of variable that can be set from either
the command line, or from the config file. YET, nowere in its (or the man's)
preamble does it indicate which of these variable needs to be "set" via the
set prefix in the config file. Some do, some don't, it's up to the reader to
determine which through trial and error.
Sorry about the rant, but manuals aren't terribly useful when they aren't
intuitive or at least give ~cogent and in context~ examples of the usage of
terms and variables that are described.
> > 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.
>
> Most if not all of those programs can read local mail boxes. It's not
> advertised because it's a totally standard feature. Being able to
> directly interact with IMAP and/or POP3, OTOH, is a major selling point,
> especially for people who are used to windows.
>
Not in my experience of having checked the websites and downloading many of
the advertized apps. As I said many of the common GUI's are buggy currently
and the only one that isn't ~mozilla~ does not allow for reading of local
mail. The clever 'Account Setup Wizard' only allows POP3/IMAP and NNTP
accounts to be set up.
> --
> John Patton patton66@home.com
>
Thanks for your input and once again sorry for the rant.
C. Masters
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