[gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Sean Lester]

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Greetings,
     I've installed Postfix.  But when I try to use Pine as a mail
client, I can't seem to read an inbox.  It looks like Pine is trying to
use an "inbox" which is a file, and Postfix delivers things as
individual messages to a folder.  Can I configure Pine to read messages
from a folder?  Or, does pine require messages appended as one file?
Or, is there something I can change in Posfix?  I'm flexable :-)
 
Thank you for your time
Sean
 

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RE: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Dave Nebinger]

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You're looking at the difference between an mbox-based tool (pine) and a
maildir-based tool (postfix).

 

I'm not sure if the mbox/maildir USE flags can override the default
behaviour, but you could try "-mbox maildir" in your USE flags and re-emerge
both.

 

Personally rather than trying to get pine to work I switched to mutt.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Lester [mailto:SFLester@sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:00 PM
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

 

Greetings,

     I've installed Postfix.  But when I try to use Pine as a mail client, I
can't seem to read an inbox.  It looks like Pine is trying to use an "inbox"
which is a file, and Postfix delivers things as individual messages to a
folder.  Can I configure Pine to read messages from a folder?  Or, does pine
require messages appended as one file?  Or, is there something I can change
in Posfix?  I'm flexable :-)

 

Thank you for your time

Sean

 


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Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Willie Wong]

The official pine distribution doesn't support maildir. Since I don't
run pine myself, I don't know if the maildir USE flag would provide
the maildir patch for pine. 

If not: you can use another client (mutt comes to mind), or you can
modify the configuration in /etc/postfix/main.cf

You are looking for the variables

home_mailbox 
  and/or
mail_spool_directory

If you want the mails to be delivered to "one file" (a.k.a. mbox
format), you want those variables to NOT end in "/". If the variables
end in "/", the mail will be delivered to it as a qmail-style maildir. 

home_mailbox overrules mail_spool_directory, just in case you are
wondering. 

http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html

W

On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 04:00:27PM -0400, Sean Lester wrote:
> Greetings,
>      I've installed Postfix.  But when I try to use Pine as a mail
> client, I can't seem to read an inbox.  It looks like Pine is trying to
> use an "inbox" which is a file, and Postfix delivers things as
> individual messages to a folder.  Can I configure Pine to read messages
> from a folder?  Or, does pine require messages appended as one file?
> Or, is there something I can change in Posfix?  I'm flexable :-)
>  
> Thank you for your time
> Sean
>  

-- 
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earth's orbit a little bit. Personally, I'm not too keen to carry out this 
experiment quite yet."
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Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:17:32 -0400
Dave Nebinger wrote:

> You're looking at the difference between an mbox-based tool (pine) and a
> maildir-based tool (postfix).
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not sure if the mbox/maildir USE flags can override the default
> behaviour, but you could try "-mbox maildir" in your USE flags and re-emerge
> both.
> 

Where do you get the idea that pine has a mbox or maildir USE flag? It
doesn't:

nick@www ~/Brother/UK-ENG $ emerge -pv pine

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] app-misc/mime-types-3  5 kB
[ebuild  N    ] mail-client/pine-4.63-r2  -debug -kerberos -largeterminal -ldap +pam -passfile +ssl 3,173 kB

Total size of downloads: 3,178 kB

However pine does have maildir built in,  If you look at the ebuild (or read as it flashes past the screen) you will see:

maildir_warn() {
    einfo
    einfo "This build of Pine has Maildir support built in as"
    einfo "part of the chappa-all patch."
    einfo
    einfo "If you have a maildir at ~/Maildir it will be your"
    einfo "default INBOX. The path may be changed with the"
    einfo "\"maildir-location\" setting in Pine."
    einfo
    einfo "To use /var/spool/mail INBOX again, set"
    einfo "\"disable-these-drivers=md\" in your .pinerc file."
    einfo
    einfo "Alternately, you might want to read following webpage, which explains how to"
    einfo "use multiple mailboxes simultaneously:"
    echo
    echo "http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/pine-info/collections/incoming-folders/"
    echo
:


>  
> 
> Personally rather than trying to get pine to work I switched to mutt.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Lester [mailto:SFLester@sbcglobal.net] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:00 PM
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability
> 
>  
> 
> Greetings,
> 
>      I've installed Postfix.  But when I try to use Pine as a mail client, I
> can't seem to read an inbox.  It looks like Pine is trying to use an "inbox"
> which is a file, and Postfix delivers things as individual messages to a
> folder.  Can I configure Pine to read messages from a folder?  Or, does pine
> require messages appended as one file?  Or, is there something I can change
> in Posfix?  I'm flexable :-)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for your time
> 
> Sean
> 
>  
> 

-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:43:05 -0400
Willie Wong wrote:

> The official pine distribution doesn't support maildir. Since I don't
> run pine myself, I don't know if the maildir USE flag would provide
> the maildir patch for pine. 


For heaven's sake read the goddamned ebuild! (see the message I just
posted). What is so difficult about:

grep maildir /usr/portage/mail-client/pine/*

We've had two misleading posts on this subject, which basically only
offer a guess to a question that is very easily answered!
-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

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[OT] Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Willie Wong]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 08:56:37AM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:43:05 -0400
> Willie Wong wrote:
> 
> > The official pine distribution doesn't support maildir. Since I don't
> > run pine myself, I don't know if the maildir USE flag would provide
> > the maildir patch for pine. 
> 
> 
> For heaven's sake read the goddamned ebuild! (see the message I just
> posted). What is so difficult about:
> 
> grep maildir /usr/portage/mail-client/pine/*
> 
> We've had two misleading posts on this subject, which basically only
> offer a guess to a question that is very easily answered!

So I made a gross overlook, but why can't you be civil about it? In my
case, yes, it never occurred to me to read the ebuild, and I am
ssh'ing in to my home machine, so I cannot say that I have no access.
But what if someone is trying to help when reading from G-Mail? or at
work and just browsing the e-mail and seeing a question they can
likely answer from a brief search from Google? For some people the
ebuild might not be sitting in an easily acceptable place you know. 

In my case I interpreted the question as basically "the OP doesn't
know what to call the different mailbox formats and hence cannot
search on Google". So I provided that information (maildir vs mbox)
and did a cursory search on Google and saw that the official
distribution of Pine doesn't come with maildir support, though patches
do exist. 

In any case, my post is not "Misleading" as you would have termed it.
I offered common suggestions in the emerge-sense: when a feature may
or may not have been included, check the USE flags. (Sure, I jumped
the gun there and assumed that the OP, when sending the post, has a
copy of Pine without maildir support, instead of just not knowing how
to use the feature, but hopefully after pointing out the fact that
such a thing is called maildir the OP would be able to configure pine
for it.) 

And I did suggest the OP check for maildir support in his local copy
before moving on to anything else. 

And if the OP is used to using pine + mbox, my second suggestion of
configuring postfix to use mbox instead of maildir is an equally
valid, sensible, and perhaps preferable (let's not get into a flamewar
on the relative merits of mbox and maildir here) solution to the
problem. 

Why did you think the profane language you used was called for? The
worst case scenario in these things are the other poster and I making
fools out of ourselves at large when the OP replied that he doesn't
see any USE flags. We only suggested that the OP look into the USE
flags, it is not like we are suggesting a recompile that might
possibly hose the OP's system. 

I have no problem with you correcting our mistakes. I have no problem
with you being arrogant about it. I have no problem with you
double-posting that correction just to get your point across. But I
find it extremely unpleasant that you have to use offensive language
while doing any of the above. 

Best, 

W
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Re: [OT] Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:11:41 -0400
Willie Wong wrote:

> Why did you think the profane language you used was called for? The
> worst case scenario in these things are the other poster and I making
> fools out of ourselves at large when the OP replied that he doesn't
> see any USE flags. We only suggested that the OP look into the USE
> flags, it is not like we are suggesting a recompile that might
> possibly hose the OP's system. 
> 
> I have no problem with you correcting our mistakes. I have no problem
> with you being arrogant about it. I have no problem with you
> double-posting that correction just to get your point across. But I
> find it extremely unpleasant that you have to use offensive language
> while doing any of the above. 
> 
> Best, 

Sorry. My error, I was a intemperate and you didn't deserve it. I hope
we can move on.

> 
-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

-- 
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Re: [OT] Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Dave Nebinger]

>> We've had two misleading posts on this subject, which basically only
>> offer a guess to a question that is very easily answered!
>
> So I made a gross overlook, but why can't you be civil about it?

Sorry, Willy, but for as long as Nick has been posting I would just assume 
he was having a bad moment and not take it so personally.

But Nick, my original position was the assumption that the USE flags 
controlled the builds and enabled/disabled features as indicated.

Up to this point I haven't read a single ebuild, and I wouldn't have thought 
of going there to check pine's maildir compatibility, so I'm glad you 
pointed that out.

That being said, I've got enough on my plate already; how often is it that 
we should be reading ebuilds to find relevant clues to how a package is 
going to work when installed?

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RE: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Sean Lester]

Thank you to all that replied!  I although it isn't resolved, I know
were to turn and I'm sure I'll get it.  

Thank you
Sean



-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Rout [mailto:nick@rout.co.nz] 
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:54 PM
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability


On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:17:32 -0400
Dave Nebinger wrote:

> You're looking at the difference between an mbox-based tool (pine) and

> a maildir-based tool (postfix).
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not sure if the mbox/maildir USE flags can override the default 
> behaviour, but you could try "-mbox maildir" in your USE flags and 
> re-emerge both.
> 

Where do you get the idea that pine has a mbox or maildir USE flag? It
doesn't:

nick@www ~/Brother/UK-ENG $ emerge -pv pine

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] app-misc/mime-types-3  5 kB
[ebuild  N    ] mail-client/pine-4.63-r2  -debug -kerberos
-largeterminal -ldap +pam -passfile +ssl 3,173 kB

Total size of downloads: 3,178 kB

However pine does have maildir built in,  If you look at the ebuild (or
read as it flashes past the screen) you will see:

maildir_warn() {
    einfo
    einfo "This build of Pine has Maildir support built in as"
    einfo "part of the chappa-all patch."
    einfo
    einfo "If you have a maildir at ~/Maildir it will be your"
    einfo "default INBOX. The path may be changed with the"
    einfo "\"maildir-location\" setting in Pine."
    einfo
    einfo "To use /var/spool/mail INBOX again, set"
    einfo "\"disable-these-drivers=md\" in your .pinerc file."
    einfo
    einfo "Alternately, you might want to read following webpage, which
explains how to"
    einfo "use multiple mailboxes simultaneously:"
    echo
    echo
"http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/pine-info/collections/incom
ing-folders/"
    echo
:


>  
> 
> Personally rather than trying to get pine to work I switched to mutt.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Lester [mailto:SFLester@sbcglobal.net]
> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:00 PM
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability
> 
>  
> 
> Greetings,
> 
>      I've installed Postfix.  But when I try to use Pine as a mail 
> client, I can't seem to read an inbox.  It looks like Pine is trying 
> to use an "inbox" which is a file, and Postfix delivers things as 
> individual messages to a folder.  Can I configure Pine to read 
> messages from a folder?  Or, does pine require messages appended as 
> one file?  Or, is there something I can change in Posfix?  I'm 
> flexable :-)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for your time
> 
> Sean
> 
>  
> 

-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

-- 
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Re: [OT] Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 21:58:06 -0400
Dave Nebinger wrote:

> >> We've had two misleading posts on this subject, which basically only
> >> offer a guess to a question that is very easily answered!
> >
> > So I made a gross overlook, but why can't you be civil about it?
> 
> Sorry, Willy, but for as long as Nick has been posting I would just assume 
> he was having a bad moment and not take it so personally.
> 
> But Nick, my original position was the assumption that the USE flags 
> controlled the builds and enabled/disabled features as indicated.
> 
> Up to this point I haven't read a single ebuild, and I wouldn't have thought 
> of going there to check pine's maildir compatibility, so I'm glad you 
> pointed that out.
> 
> That being said, I've got enough on my plate already; how often is it that 
> we should be reading ebuilds to find relevant clues to how a package is 
> going to work when installed?

Look I apologise for being intemperate, lets move on.

But lets also remember  to be accurate in our posts. I think there is a
good deal of "guess the answer" going on on this list, this isn't
pointed at anyone in particular. 

So to be positive about it heres how i found the answer:

1. looked to see if there were mbox or maildir USE flags that affected
the build of pine - answer NO
2. google "pine maildir" and discover that there are patches in
circulation - answer YES
3. grep the pine ebuild for the lines with epatch and see that none seem
to have any obvious connection with the term "maildir" - answer NO
4. grep the ebuild for the term "maildir' and find what i posted.

I never used to read many ebuilds, now I find its a useful step,
particularly to see what effect USE flags have, what changes gentoo
makes to the build, and what configuartion files of its own gentoo uses.

I'm not intending this email to challenge your methodology for
troubleshooting, just to point out that:

a. accurate postings will raise the signal to noise ratio significantly
b. reading the ebuild is a worthwhile troubleshooting step.


Cheers, Nick
> 
> -- 
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

-- 
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Re: [OT] Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix & Pine incompatability

[Willie Wong]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 02:51:35PM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
> So to be positive about it heres how i found the answer:
> 
> 1. looked to see if there were mbox or maildir USE flags that affected
> the build of pine - answer NO
> 2. google "pine maildir" and discover that there are patches in
> circulation - answer YES
> 3. grep the pine ebuild for the lines with epatch and see that none seem
> to have any obvious connection with the term "maildir" - answer NO
> 4. grep the ebuild for the term "maildir' and find what i posted.

This is a pretty good algorithm. Personally I prefer to do 2 before 1
(because more often than not I don't run into USE flags of which I
know their existence). I'll try to follow that in the future. 

W
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