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Re: Sending mail



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On Wednesday, March 14 at 04:35 PM, quoth Umut Tabak:
>>>>> As a newbie, I tried to configure mutt. Partially successful if 
>>>>> you don't consider that I can not send mails :) . I can get mail 
>>>>> but can not send. My incoming mail server is an IMAP and 
>>>>> outgoing server is an SMTP.  I guess there is a problem with my 
>>>>> .muttrc. I pasted that (relatively short for a beginner :) )

Your configuration looks correct. What error do you get when you 
attempt to send mail?

>>>> account-hook imap://<username>@mech.huleuven.be

Two things: 1. How would that help? 2. That's incomplete syntax. The 
form is "account-hook thing-to-match thing-to-do" and you're missing 
the "thing to do" section.

OP: probably best to ignore that.

>>> Thanks for the reply but this command is not recognized by bash.

That's because it's not a bash (or shell) command, it's something that 
goes in mutt's config file (i.e. ~/.muttrc).

> Yes that is the case when I try to source .muttrc by typing
>
> . .muttrc

Umm... I don't think you're quite grasping the concept of that being MUTT's 
config file. This may be your original problem.

Put it this way: every program likes storing it's configuration 
settings somewhere, usually in a file. These configuration settings 
are virtually NEVER in a form that your shell will (or *should*) 
understand.

Take the standard car analogy. Your car starts because you put the key 
in the ignition and turn. That doesn't mean that your new car radio 
will turn on when you stick your car key in the tape player and turn.  
The way you turn on the radio is NOT the same way you turn on the car. 
Similarly, mutt's config files are NOT your shell's config files. The 
fact that they use "set something=somethingelse" syntax may *look* 
like shell syntax, and may mean that your shell will interpret them as 
valid shell commands (though they won't do anything relevant to mutt 
in that case), but that doesn't mean that it's something that your 
shell *should* interpret. Your ~/.muttrc is a file that needs ONLY 
make sense to mutt; if your shell thinks it can understand some of it, 
that is purely coincidence and if your shell objects that it cannot 
understand all of it, that's irrelevant because your shell shouldn't 
be reading it in the first place.

Now you may be asking yourself "okay, so, if that's a mutt-only file, 
how does mutt find it to read it?" One of two ways. The first, and 
most common, is to put that file in a known location. Mutt always 
checks your home directory ($HOME or ~) for a file named .muttrc to 
read its configuration settings out of. The second way mutt can find 
the file is by telling mutt where it is when you launch mutt. For 
example:

    mutt -F ./.muttrc

That command launches mutt and tells it to read its configuration data 
out of the .muttrc that is in the current directory. The -F is a 
"flag" that tells mutt that the next word is the name of the config 
file it should read.

Does that make sense?

~Kyle
- -- 
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one 
innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and 
generally approved.
                                                  -- Benjamin Franklin
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