Re: newbie install

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Friday, February 13 at 05:37 PM, quoth James Freer:
> I'd be grateful if someone could just clarify a couple of things 
> before i do an installation.

I can try! :)

> using Ubuntu 8.04 on a standalone PC connected to broadband. I chose 
> Mutt as i can use vim as an editor and hopefully will be able to 
> reply to emails from my many yahoogroups and mail lists rather more 
> quickly than i have been doing.

Sounds good.

> I have three emails addresses with googlemail.com

Ah, fun.

> Reading the Mutt manual and the gentoo guide; i gather that i need to 
> install fetchmail, procmail, mutt and one of a] nbstmp, b]ssmtp, c]
> esmtp, d] mstmp as i'm not setting up an actual mail server either of 
> these are adequate but which should i choose.

Eh? No, that must be an outdated guide.

Let's frame this in terms of tasks: you need to be able to read your 
email, and you need to be able to *send* email.

Sending email has gotten much easier; you *can* use 
nbsmtp/ssmtp/esmtp/msmtp or any of the other variants, but the 1.5.x 
versions of mutt can also simply send mail themselves, as long as you 
have a server to relay through (e.g. your ISP or google's mail 
servers). All you need to do is ensure that your version of mutt has 
been compiled with smtp support (the default Ubuntu package probably 
has) and then add the following to your muttrc:

     set smtp_url="smtp://user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@smtp.gmail.com/"

(and replace "user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" with one of your actual addresses)

The other task is to be able to *read* email. You can do this lots of 
different ways, but the simplest is to simply use mutt to read the 
messages via IMAP (you don't NEED fetchmail or procmail or any of the 
others, though you certainly *can* use them if you like). You DO need 
to enable IMAP on your Gmail accounts first, though (see 
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=75725&ctx=sibling). 
The appropriate mutt setting would be something like this:

     set folder="imaps://user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@imap.gmail.com/"
     set spoolfile="=INBOX"

There's more work to be done to efficiently handle all three accounts 
at the same time, and a lot of it depends on how exactly you want mutt 
to behave.

Does that help?

~Kyle
- -- 
Many who claim to have been transformed by Christ's love are deeply, 
even murderously, intolerant of criticism.
                                                          -- Sam Harris
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