mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[kalle]

hello,

In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says

"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt.
It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."

The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.


It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to
administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a
point.

I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.


greetings,

kalle

[Yubin Ruan]

Post by kalle
hello,
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It
gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of
mine open and I don't know how to do this.

Have you set up the default mailbox, like this:

set mbox=+INBOX

It would be better to attach your .muttrc so that others can see what is going
wrong with your mutt configuration.

Post by kalle
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to
start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate
it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point.
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with e-mail,
but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.

--
Yubin

[Erik Christiansen]

Post by kalle
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It
gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of
mine open and I don't know how to do this.

Then mutt is failing to find your spoolfile:

»
3.299. spoolfile

Type: path
Default: (empty)

If your spool mailbox is in a non-default place where Mutt cannot find it, you
can specify its location with this variable. Mutt will initially set this
variable to the value of the environment variable $MAIL or $MAILDIR if either
is defined.
«

If further diagnosis is needed, it might be useful to post your mutt
version number. (From mutt -v)

Although I have neither $MAIL nor $MAILDIR defined in the environment,
mutt has always found the mail spool, as is the case for most mutt users,
I expect.

In the index view, press y for the mailboxes view, which in my case
presents:

1 -rw------- 1 erik erik 6.1M Feb 05 15:41 =avr_chat_u
2 -rw------- 1 erik erik 12M Jan 17 13:23 =avr_gcc_u
...
16 -rw-rw---- 1 erik mail 9.4M Feb 08 12:05 /var/spool/mail/erik

If your spoolfile is in some unusual place, then you now have three ways
to tell mutt where it is located.

As you are using linux on your host, try:

$ ls /var/spool/mail/

to see what is there. (And go from there.)

For later: If you use some utility to fetch and sort mail into multiple
inboxes, e.g. one per mailing list, then the "mailboxes" command can be
used in ~/.muttrc to configure those as well.

Post by kalle
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to
start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate
it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point.

The <F1> manual does discuss mailboxes, describing both mbox and maildir
formats. Once you've found your spoolfile, then you can inform yourself:

$ file /var/spool/mail/erik
/var/spool/mail/erik: UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines

$ view /var/spool/mail/erik

to see what the mbox format looks like.

Your persistence is admirable, and with the help of a few answered
questions, I'm sure you'll succeed. It'll be interesting to hear how the
spoolfile managed to hide.

Erik

[Cameron Simpson]

Post by kalle
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start
Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened
mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how
to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting
to a point.
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.

Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your
system.

If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is an
IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail.

Is this the case?

Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system. It
is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as a
laptop, so you have no local mail.

Instead, you'll need to configure mutt to access your ISP-hosted mail server,
if that is what you are using.

Could you please elaborate on your Thunderbird setup (obviously omitting
account passwords, and if you like using placeholder names like "my-login-name"
instead of you actual mail login name)?

It seems likely that we need to guide you through a basic setup to use the same
mail arrangements as your Thunderbird.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <***@cskk.id.au> (formerly ***@zip.com.au)

[Ken Moffat]

Post by Cameron Simpson

Post by kalle
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.

Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your
system.
If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is
an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail.
Is this the case?

A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu
version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird.

Post by Cameron Simpson
Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system.
It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as
a laptop, so you have no local mail.

I've used mutt for many years, but before that I used pine - and
before that I read my mail in netscape. And that was all local mail
held somewhere in /home. So I suspect that Kalle also has past mail
stored in ~/.

As an aside, for a single user system, particularly where /home
might be shared by multiple linux systems (or in my case by
older/current systems), keeping mail in /var is unpleasant. To fix
that with new incoming mail I use fetchmail and procmail.

But yes, configuration is needed if mail is not kept in /var.

ĸen

[Ian Zimmerman]

Post by Ken Moffat
A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu
version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird.

But isn't that just a cache analogous to mutt's header cache?

Even if it does store the full content, is it likely to be in a format
that mutt can read (unix mbox or maildir)? Not very, I think; much more
likely to be an indexed binary format specific to Thunderbird.

[Ken Moffat]

Post by Ian Zimmerman

Post by Ken Moffat
A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu
version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird.

But isn't that just a cache analogous to mutt's header cache?
Even if it does store the full content, is it likely to be in a format
that mutt can read (unix mbox or maildir)? Not very, I think; much more
likely to be an indexed binary format specific to Thunderbird.

from http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_and_exporting_your_mail

Thunderbird, Netscape, Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey use mbox files to
store the messages for a folder. The ImportExportTools extension can
import and export mbox and .EML files. Many email clients use mbox
files (regardless of whether they use no file extension, .mbx or .mbox
as the file extension) to store messages or provide a way to export
folders as mbox or .EML files due to the popularity of Eudora and
Outlook Express. Sometimes email clients use "Unix format" to refer
to a mbox file since the format was originally developed for Unix
systems.

ĸen

[ant]

Post by kalle
hello,
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt.
It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to
administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a
point.
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.

sorry for your troubles and frustration, but there are
things we'd need to know to help you further.

what type of set up do you have? how are you
running mutt?

do you get your mail through your ISP or through
some other provider?

in my case i run linux and use mutt from a terminal
aka text type screen.

to get my e-mail from the remote place where it is
stored for me i have to use a program which goes and
gets it and puts it on my local machine for my own
reading.

to send e-mail i also had to configure mutt to do
that too.

it can take some time to get through the various
steps but some tools can help there.

the debug option when running mutt is one of them.


songbird

[Wim]

On Wednesday, 07 February at 22:37, kalle wrote:

Hi kalle,

the manual is an excellent resource but difficult for new users. The
Arch wiki might be a better place to start.

https://wiki/archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt

Or

https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mutt/

My set up is a combination of neomutt, msmtp to send mail, getmail to
get mail and vim to write mail. Mutt can of course send and get mail
itself. It's your choice how you organise your email. Start off simply,
send yourself an email and see if things work. Other good resources are
listed in the Arch wiki.

By the way Thunderbird uses another email format than Mutt. mb2md can be
used to convert to the Maildir format.
--
Good luck
Wim

Post by kalle
hello,
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start
Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened
mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how
to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting
to a point.
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.
greetings,
kalle

[Wim]

Hi kalle,

My mistake. The Arch wiki page should be:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt

Regards Wim

[kalle]

hello,
thanks to you all for the lots of help, which came. I always work on
different free software topics in parallel, so it is usual that my
responses can take a lot of time. But they eventually come...

Post by kalle
hello,
In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start
Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened
mailbox."
The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.
It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how
to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting
to a point.
I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.
greetings,
kalle
the manual is an excellent resource but difficult for new users. The
Arch wiki might be a better place to start.
https://wiki/archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt
Or
https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mutt/

your 2 hints helped me (the second one is in german). But I think, that
they don't make me really understand things, they only help me fix the
configuration problem somehow.
But it disturbs me, that every distribution community make their own
documentation. It would be much more efficient, if there would be one
reference manual and then at most some different tutorials or alike,
which are specialized in their didactical way. Doing the same work
several times is a waste of resources for the user community.

Therefore I will look thoroughly, what went wrong when I tried or what
could be done better.

@yubin, erik: this is my muttrc NOW. and now it works.

set imap_user=***@projektwerkstatt.de
set spoolfile=imaps://mail.netzguerilla.net:993/
set folder=imaps://mail.netzguerilla.net:993/
set editor=ed

I didn't have a .muttrc-file before. That's why it didn't work. It was
only that when I started mutt, the program told me that I didn't have
any mailbox and if didn't want any, if I remember right. But I didn't
know what to answer.

As you see, I have a spoolfile now.My mutt-version is 1.5.21.

Post by kalle
$ ls /var/spool/mail/
to see what is there. (And go from there.)

The directory was empty. How should it, since I didn't have any
MailRetrievalAgent to put it there and didn't configure mutt to use it's
imap-feature. And now, while I started using fetchmail I also got some
mails in /var/mail.

Post by kalle
Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on
your system.
If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox
is an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail.
Is this the case?
Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail
system. It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal
machine such as a laptop, so you have no local mail.

You were exactly right.


my conclusion at this state of reflection, at which I am:
i suppose that if in the manual.txt it would've been clearly
referenced/explained the different functions of Mail exchange and that
Mutt is generally only the MUA-part while it can also have some
MRA-features, which are in chapter 6 - Optional Features (e.g. 6.4 IMAP
Support) I would've found the IMAP-configuration there.
But as I started from the beginning of the document, where the it is not
talked about the necessary configuration, I could not follow, and
continued the chapters, passing the "Configuration"-chapter until
reaching the "Advanced Features"-chapter and there at latest abandoning,
without having found a good hint about it.

kalle