[gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

I've recently discovered the awesomeness of mutt. (I may be a little
late, but better late than never!)

I'm use it for my work email. I have a rather complex and lengthy set
of folders, and an equally complex procmail to go along with it. Mutt
is blazing fast at opening mail folders and sorting things, but I'm
wondering how to check when a new messages comes into a folder and
skips the inbox.

I've heard of xbuffy and gbuffy, but xbuffy isn't in portage and
gbuffy fails to compile every time (and it's masked)

Any other suggestions? Something very lightweight would be awesome --
even text based would be okay. What are you mutt users to check email
in all your folders?

Thoughts? Ideas? :)

-j

[gentoo-user] Re: any gentoo mutt users?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-05-02, James <jtp@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> I've recently discovered the awesomeness of mutt. (I may be a little
> late, but better late than never!)
>
> I'm use it for my work email. I have a rather complex and lengthy set
> of folders, and an equally complex procmail to go along with it. Mutt
> is blazing fast at opening mail folders and sorting things, but I'm
> wondering how to check when a new messages comes into a folder and
> skips the inbox.
>
> I've heard of xbuffy and gbuffy, but xbuffy isn't in portage
> and gbuffy fails to compile every time (and it's masked)
>
> Any other suggestions? Something very lightweight would be
> awesome -- even text based would be okay. What are you mutt
> users to check email in all your folders?

I used gbuffy for years, but finally gave up on it -- it was
unmaintained and just wouldn't build any longer.

After that, I switched to gkrellm for a while, but had to make
a _lot_ of modifications to the mail-indicator program to get
it to work with multiple folders/servers.

I've recently switched to XFCE's mailwatch panel plugin.  I
have a separate panel for nothing but mailwatch instances. If
you're already using XFCE, it's pretty lightweight.  It does
have some problems with instances randomly vanishing
(permanently) and taking configuration files with them.  To
solve that problem, I've created some bash/sed scripts I use to
re-create the instances and config files after they've
vanished. :/

It's also a PITA to configure it so that it displays folder
names. I ended up creating a set of svg/png icons containing
the folder names (one in red when there's new mail, and one in
black when there isn't).

-- 
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Willie Wong]

On Sat, May 02, 2009 at 12:24:00PM -0400, Penguin Lover James squawked:
> I've recently discovered the awesomeness of mutt. (I may be a little
> late, but better late than never!)

7 year user of Mutt, and I cannot agree more. 

> I'm use it for my work email. I have a rather complex and lengthy set
> of folders, and an equally complex procmail to go along with it. Mutt
> is blazing fast at opening mail folders and sorting things, but I'm
> wondering how to check when a new messages comes into a folder and
> skips the inbox.

> Any other suggestions? Something very lightweight would be awesome --
> even text based would be okay. What are you mutt users to check email
> in all your folders?

In your .bashrc (if you you bash) insert

unset MAIL
export MAILCHECK=15
export MAILPATH='<colon separated list of Mailboxes>'

This will make bash check for new mail in your MAILPATH every 15
seconds, and will display something about you having new mail before
showing the next primary prompt.

If you want to get fancier, try something like mine

export MAILPATH='~/Mail/inbox?You have mail from unknown sender.:~/Mail/gentoo-ml?New mail from Gentoo Mailing List.:~/Mail/work?New mail from office mates.:~/Mail/family?New mail from a family member.'

(I trimmed it a bit, so you don't get the names of all my friends.)
The idea is simple, and I think the syntax is self-evident. 

Also, in your .muttrc, you should set (if you use mbox type boxes. For
maildirs the syntax is similar, but your should check the mutt manual
to be sure) something like the following snip

set mbox_type=mbox
set folder=/home/wwong/Mail
set spoolfile=/home/wwong/Mail/inbox
unset mbox
mailboxes =gentoo-ml =work =family 

This way mutt will know about your mailboxes. The spoolfile will be
the default box that mutt opens. If you have bash-completion enabled,
you can just type 'mutt -f =<mailbox name>' for any mailbox listed
under mailboxes in .muttrc to open that mailbox. 

While in mutt, hitting 'c' will now first check all your mailboxes
listed under the mailboxes entry in order to see if there are any new
mails in those boxes, if so, it will default to the box, and you can
just hit <Return> to open the box and read your new mail. If no
mailbox has new mail, 'c' will bring up a prompt for the mailbox you
want to change to as usual. 

I hope my explanation is clear enough... if you need more help, feel
free to ask!

Best, 

W
-- 
"Pages one and two [of Zaphod's presidential speech] had 
been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had 
already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form 
of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed 
largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for 
a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran 
Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of 
the species but wanted no truck with it." 

- An example of Damogran wildlife. 
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 876 days, 16:33

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

Thanks for the response Grant and Willie!

I'm not sure that the xfce4 mail watch plugin is going to be helpful.
I currently have mutt configured as an IMAP client and I have yet to
find a tool that can poll individual "folders" (or mailboxes) on a
remote IMAP system.

Because everything is remote, I can't tell bash to check for mail
locally. Not to mention I'm a zsh user. ;)

I actually configured mutt with a list of mailboxes, but because I
have so many mailboxes mutt actually became completely unresponsive
and would take over 5 minutes to actually load completely. Bummer.

I must admit that Thunderbird is pretty good about keeping tabs on the
many mailboxes I have and updating me when something new pops up.

From what I've been told, gbuffy is one of the few tools that actually
does what I'm looking for, but as Grant mentioned it won't compile
successfully (at least not using the ebuild in the portage tree).

Any thoughts on how to do this when using IMAP and lots of folders? :)

-j

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Willie Wong <wwong@princeton.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, May 02, 2009 at 12:24:00PM -0400, Penguin Lover James squawked:
>> I've recently discovered the awesomeness of mutt. (I may be a little
>> late, but better late than never!)
>
> 7 year user of Mutt, and I cannot agree more.
>
>> I'm use it for my work email. I have a rather complex and lengthy set
>> of folders, and an equally complex procmail to go along with it. Mutt
>> is blazing fast at opening mail folders and sorting things, but I'm
>> wondering how to check when a new messages comes into a folder and
>> skips the inbox.
>
>> Any other suggestions? Something very lightweight would be awesome --
>> even text based would be okay. What are you mutt users to check email
>> in all your folders?
>
> In your .bashrc (if you you bash) insert
>
> unset MAIL
> export MAILCHECK=15
> export MAILPATH='<colon separated list of Mailboxes>'
>
> This will make bash check for new mail in your MAILPATH every 15
> seconds, and will display something about you having new mail before
> showing the next primary prompt.
>
> If you want to get fancier, try something like mine
>
> export MAILPATH='~/Mail/inbox?You have mail from unknown sender.:~/Mail/gentoo-ml?New mail from Gentoo Mailing List.:~/Mail/work?New mail from office mates.:~/Mail/family?New mail from a family member.'
>
> (I trimmed it a bit, so you don't get the names of all my friends.)
> The idea is simple, and I think the syntax is self-evident.
>
> Also, in your .muttrc, you should set (if you use mbox type boxes. For
> maildirs the syntax is similar, but your should check the mutt manual
> to be sure) something like the following snip
>
> set mbox_type=mbox
> set folder=/home/wwong/Mail
> set spoolfile=/home/wwong/Mail/inbox
> unset mbox
> mailboxes =gentoo-ml =work =family
>
> This way mutt will know about your mailboxes. The spoolfile will be
> the default box that mutt opens. If you have bash-completion enabled,
> you can just type 'mutt -f =<mailbox name>' for any mailbox listed
> under mailboxes in .muttrc to open that mailbox.
>
> While in mutt, hitting 'c' will now first check all your mailboxes
> listed under the mailboxes entry in order to see if there are any new
> mails in those boxes, if so, it will default to the box, and you can
> just hit <Return> to open the box and read your new mail. If no
> mailbox has new mail, 'c' will bring up a prompt for the mailbox you
> want to change to as usual.
>
> I hope my explanation is clear enough... if you need more help, feel
> free to ask!
>
> Best,
>
> W
> --
> "Pages one and two [of Zaphod's presidential speech] had
> been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had
> already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form
> of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed
> largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for
> a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran
> Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of
> the species but wanted no truck with it."
>
> - An example of Damogran wildlife.
> Sortir en Pantoufles: up 876 days, 16:33
>
>



-- 
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and
quick to anger."
   -Tolkien

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 03 May 2009 00:00:13 James wrote:
> I must admit that Thunderbird is pretty good about keeping tabs on the
> many mailboxes I have and updating me when something new pops up.
>
> From what I've been told, gbuffy is one of the few tools that actually
> does what I'm looking for, but as Grant mentioned it won't compile
> successfully (at least not using the ebuild in the portage tree).
>
> Any thoughts on how to do this when using IMAP and lots of folders? :)

How about this, thinking slightly out the box:

Pop your mail to a local maildir, but do not delete mails from the server. Run 
a local IMAP server with that maildir as it's source and point your mail 
client at it

Getmail is excellent at popping like this, it works in the background and you 
can use whatever filtering tool you fancy. If you need mails more immediately 
than within three minutes you really should be using jabber instead :-) With 
local IMAP you can change mail clients in an instant without mucking about 
with all that tedious import/export stuff. And every mailbox monitoring tool 
out there will monitor local maildirs and do it well.

With this you get all the benefits of IMAP, albeit in a sort of disconnected 
fashion, and you only suffer the bandwidth hit with large mails once. Your 
mails are still on the server, so you can still connect to them with IMAP if 
you wish.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: any gentoo mutt users?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-05-02, James <jtp@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the response Grant and Willie!
>
> I'm not sure that the xfce4 mail watch plugin is going to be
> helpful. I currently have mutt configured as an IMAP client
> and I have yet to find a tool that can poll individual
> "folders" (or mailboxes) on a remote IMAP system.

Gbuffy, gkrellm, and the XFCE mailwatch plugin can all do that.

One more "complaint" about the XFCE mailwatch plugin is that it
opens/closes a new connection every time it polls the mailbox.
It would be way less load on the network (and both hosts
involved) if it kept the connection open and used the idle
command.

-- 
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

Alan,

Thanks for the response. :)

I've thought about doing something similar to this, but it's a last
resort. I end up using mutt on various different workstations and it'd
be nice to run everything "locally". Obviously a solution where I'm
fetching mail on every machine where I'm using mutt doesn't scale very
well.

It's certainly an alternative, however, if I can't find anything else
that works.

-j

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 03 May 2009 00:00:13 James wrote:
>> I must admit that Thunderbird is pretty good about keeping tabs on the
>> many mailboxes I have and updating me when something new pops up.
>>
>> From what I've been told, gbuffy is one of the few tools that actually
>> does what I'm looking for, but as Grant mentioned it won't compile
>> successfully (at least not using the ebuild in the portage tree).
>>
>> Any thoughts on how to do this when using IMAP and lots of folders? :)
>
> How about this, thinking slightly out the box:
>
> Pop your mail to a local maildir, but do not delete mails from the server. Run
> a local IMAP server with that maildir as it's source and point your mail
> client at it
>
> Getmail is excellent at popping like this, it works in the background and you
> can use whatever filtering tool you fancy. If you need mails more immediately
> than within three minutes you really should be using jabber instead :-) With
> local IMAP you can change mail clients in an instant without mucking about
> with all that tedious import/export stuff. And every mailbox monitoring tool
> out there will monitor local maildirs and do it well.
>
> With this you get all the benefits of IMAP, albeit in a sort of disconnected
> fashion, and you only suffer the bandwidth hit with large mails once. Your
> mails are still on the server, so you can still connect to them with IMAP if
> you wish.
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

Grant,

I've tried gbuffy but something breaks during the emerge. I've been
tinkering with it but gave up a bit earlier (likely out of sheer
laziness ;)). I don't really use gkrellm so I'd rather not start
mucking with it.

I actually do use xfce4, so I may give the mailwatch plugin a try.
Certainly lame that it opens a new connection every time it polls, but
maybe that's something I can tweak in the code if I settle.

What do you use to poll, Grant? Gbuffy?

-j

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> On 2009-05-02, James <jtp@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for the response Grant and Willie!
>>
>> I'm not sure that the xfce4 mail watch plugin is going to be
>> helpful. I currently have mutt configured as an IMAP client
>> and I have yet to find a tool that can poll individual
>> "folders" (or mailboxes) on a remote IMAP system.
>
> Gbuffy, gkrellm, and the XFCE mailwatch plugin can all do that.
>
> One more "complaint" about the XFCE mailwatch plugin is that it
> opens/closes a new connection every time it polls the mailbox.
> It would be way less load on the network (and both hosts
> involved) if it kept the connection open and used the idle
> command.
>
> --
> Grant
>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 03 May 2009 06:06:54 James wrote:
> Alan,
>
> Thanks for the response. :)
>
> I've thought about doing something similar to this, but it's a last
> resort. I end up using mutt on various different workstations and it'd
> be nice to run everything "locally". Obviously a solution where I'm
> fetching mail on every machine where I'm using mutt doesn't scale very
> well.

I've got several hard-core network engineer users with the same problem. They 
solved it in a neat way, by running mutt in a permanent screen session on a 
server I provided for the purpose. Getmail is now not necessary as I deliver 
their mail to that machine. Working on the LAN and from home over vpn it just 
works, connecting from home without vpn is a simple matter of ssh port 
forwarding. Their shell profiles on every workstation runs screen and 
.screenrc is set up to automatically connect to that server.

It works for them and is just geeky enough to appeal :-)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Mike Kazantsev]

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On Sun, 3 May 2009 00:06:54 -0400
James <jtp@nc.rr.com> wrote:

> I've thought about doing something similar to this, but it's a last
> resort. I end up using mutt on various different workstations and it'd
> be nice to run everything "locally". Obviously a solution where I'm
> fetching mail on every machine where I'm using mutt doesn't scale very
> well.

But that's exactly the benefit of IMAP - you can always access your
mail, gathered from dozens of mailboxes and neatly sorted and filtered
to your folders, from any workstation, pda, smartphone etc.

And everything you do in this "metabox" just stays there, so you don't
have to care about transferring messages between local boxes,
remembering the messages you've replied to or already read, sorting,
filtering...

> It's certainly an alternative, however, if I can't find anything else
> that works.

I've read much criticism of imap protocol, but with such widespread
adoption I doubt there can be anything more versatile at the moment.

-- 
Mike Kazantsev // fraggod.net

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Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 03 May 2009 11:44:39 Mike Kazantsev wrote:
> > It's certainly an alternative, however, if I can't find anything else
> > that works.
>
> I've read much criticism of imap protocol, but with such widespread
> adoption I doubt there can be anything more versatile at the moment.

Well, James' problem is not the use of IMAP per se, rather that he can't find 
a mailbox monitor that works right with IMAP. For him, that's a little bit of 
a deal-breaker

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Mike Kazantsev]

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On Sun, 3 May 2009 12:05:43 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, James' problem is not the use of IMAP per se, rather that he can't find 
> a mailbox monitor that works right with IMAP. For him, that's a little bit of 
> a deal-breaker

You're right, my bad. I should probably get a bit more sleep :)

-- 
Mike Kazantsev // fraggod.net

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[gentoo-user] Re: any gentoo mutt users?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-05-03, James <jtp@nc.rr.com> wrote:

> I actually do use xfce4, so I may give the mailwatch plugin a
> try.

You'll probably want to use the SVN version -- it's got several
fixes that I don't think are in the released packages.

> Certainly lame that it opens a new connection every time it
> polls, but maybe that's something I can tweak in the code if I
> settle.

I've been thinking about having a go at re-writing the IMAP
stuff to hold the connection open and use the IDLE command to
allow the server to send a notification to the client instead
of having the clinet repeatedly polling the server, but I
haven't done anything yet (and I'm probably not going to
anytime soon).

> What do you use to poll, Grant? Gbuffy?

The XFCE mailwatch plugin.

-- 
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

Ahhh yes, screen!

Good idea. ;) I'll have to think about how to implement this because
I'm not certain I'll have access to one single server from all the
different locations I know I'm going to be using mutt as a mail
client.

:)

Definitely geeky to boot! Good idea indeed!

-j

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 5:10 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 03 May 2009 06:06:54 James wrote:
>> Alan,
>>
>> Thanks for the response. :)
>>
>> I've thought about doing something similar to this, but it's a last
>> resort. I end up using mutt on various different workstations and it'd
>> be nice to run everything "locally". Obviously a solution where I'm
>> fetching mail on every machine where I'm using mutt doesn't scale very
>> well.
>
> I've got several hard-core network engineer users with the same problem. They
> solved it in a neat way, by running mutt in a permanent screen session on a
> server I provided for the purpose. Getmail is now not necessary as I deliver
> their mail to that machine. Working on the LAN and from home over vpn it just
> works, connecting from home without vpn is a simple matter of ssh port
> forwarding. Their shell profiles on every workstation runs screen and
> .screenrc is set up to automatically connect to that server.
>
> It works for them and is just geeky enough to appeal :-)
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[James]

Bingo.

Mutt works great as an IMAP client (which is rather interesting
because, to the best of my knowledge, mutt did not support IMAP until
somewhat "recently", and quite a bit after it first appeared). I
personally do everything via IMAP -- no worries about switching mail
clients and having to convert emails.

I don't know what there is to criticize about IMAP. ;) It's infinitely
better than pop for the grand majority of users.

It is somewhat strange, however, that almost every mail client on the
planet can "scan" all the mail folders available / used and let the
user know if there's a new message, but mutt seems to struggle when is
a very large number of (large) mailboxes.

Mutt, actually, has a built-in "mail checker." To use it you have to
(a) use mbox format (I believe), and (b) set the mailboxes you want
monitored in the .muttrc using a format similar to the one below:

mailboxes +Stuff
mailboxes +moreStuff

This works great when I have one or two mailboxes listed. But when I
set a mailboxes directive for every one of my mbox files, mutt ends up
practically hanging and becoming unusable about 95% of the time. It
takes about 5 minutes from executing mutt until I can start using it
because it tries to download every single email to keep track of what
is "already there" so it knows when a new message arrives so it can
warn the user.

I imagine I'm not the only person who has had this problem in the 14
years mutt has been around. ;) I guess that's why gbuffy and xbuffy
were created in the first place.

Funny how these older tools (mutt, *buffy, etc.) seem to work better
than all the newer GUI tools like gnubiff, etc.). They just don't seem
to make things the way they used to. ;)

-j

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 6:05 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 03 May 2009 11:44:39 Mike Kazantsev wrote:
>> > It's certainly an alternative, however, if I can't find anything else
>> > that works.
>>
>> I've read much criticism of imap protocol, but with such widespread
>> adoption I doubt there can be anything more versatile at the moment.
>
> Well, James' problem is not the use of IMAP per se, rather that he can't find
> a mailbox monitor that works right with IMAP. For him, that's a little bit of
> a deal-breaker
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 03 May 2009 16:03:50 James wrote:
> Ahhh yes, screen!
>
> Good idea. ;) I'll have to think about how to implement this because
> I'm not certain I'll have access to one single server from all the
> different locations I know I'm going to be using mutt as a mail
> client.

And there's not a problem in the world that can't use "ssh -L" in it's 
solution somehow :-)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] any gentoo mutt users?

[Yahya Mohammad]

> 
> I've got several hard-core network engineer users with the same problem. They 
> solved it in a neat way, by running mutt in a permanent screen session on a 
> server I provided for the purpose. Getmail is now not necessary as I deliver 
> their mail to that machine. Working on the LAN and from home over vpn it just 
> works, connecting from home without vpn is a simple matter of ssh port 
> forwarding. Their shell profiles on every workstation runs screen and 
> .screenrc is set up to automatically connect to that server.
> 

I use mutt with screen as well. It works great even from my nokia
cellphone after installing the putty ssh client. It's probably the
fastest, and lowest bandwidth consuming email client for mobile phones.

One problem I had was Vim was very slow to startup, as it was trying to
connect to the X server remotely. To fix this vim can be started with
the -X parameter or the DISPLAY variable can be unset.