Re: ProcMail, WAS: Re: Fetchmail and Gmail
On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 05:51:49 -0400
Paul Cartwright <ale@pcartwright.com> wrote:
> On Tue August 25 2009, Micha wrote:
> > > what benefit would I get from procmail?
> >
> > 1. The ability to move from kmail to something else if you want without
> > rewriting your rules.
>
> good idea.. I like that, especially when testing different email programs.
>
> > 2. The ability to pull mail without having kmail running (via a cron job or
> > fetchmail daemon)
> I do that now with fetchmail, it brings it all in to my /var/mail/user
>
> > 3. Text file with regular expression based rules that you know where it
> > resides and can back it up and human read it
>
> this I DO like ! the ability to use filters across email programs.
> >
> > If you don't care about these three than nothing (some consider the third a
> > downside, not an improvement but that's personal preference not an
> > absolute)
> >
> > On the downside, if you want to explicitly pull mail now, pulling mail from
> > kmail doesn't pull the mail off your accounts, you need to do that
> > explicitly from the command line
> >
> > It's all down to personal preferences.
> >
> > I played around a lot at the time looking for a mail client I'd be happy
> > with (Still haven't found one) and worked quite a bit with mutt (I'm not
> > sure if it even supports pulling mail itself) so fetchmail + procmail was
> > the best option for me.
>
> right now, on my system I have icedove, evolution, kmail, and claws, all setup
> for my local user. procmail seems to move the mail into an mbox file, and I
> haven't figured out how to get any email program to read an mbox folder.
you can put it in other formats as well such as maildir, although mail programs
should support mbox is it is the traditional unix format. If I recall correctly
though kmail, icedove and evolution are all notorious for storing mail in their
own hidden folder and they don't work with a different directory (I think that
there are hacks to do it though). I need to test again. One of the reasons I
use claws mail
another option is to setup a local imap server and contact that (an option a
lot of people use)
> >
> > If this is a remotely accessible machine, you also have the advantage of
> > being able to use a gui mail client locally and a text one remotely or
> > serve your folders via an imap server and then you are not limited at all.
>
> tell me about this " text one remotely".. I can ssh into my box, but this
> file, being mbox, isn't easily readable, or is this where mutt comes in?
> actually it is a folder of mbox files.. when I checked yesterday, there were
> 250 files..
>
use mutt or pine or webmail
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