Tux Training

On 2 previous mutt setups (ubuntu and arch), mutt behaved pretty much like I told it to .  I carry my *rc files with me from install to install, so nothing changed.  But in Opensuse 11.1, on mutt, when you compose a message, it skips the “To:” inquiry that allows you to select from your aliases and goes straight into vim or whatever you have set as your editor.

This is a simple fix.  Simply add the following in your ~/.muttrc file:

set autoedit=no

In many instances you will notice, over IMAP, that Mutt may just close your mailbox.

There is probably a firewall or NAT router between you and your server which drops connections that don’t get traffic frequently enough. Mutt by default will send keepalive traffic every 15 minutes, which is well within the IMAP specification (servers are required to hold connections open for 30 minutes).

Unfortunately some routers will drop you after as little as one minute. You can try adjusting $timeout (reducing this polls the current mailbox more often), $mail_check (this controls how frequently other mailboxes are polled), or $imap_keepalive (which controls how often keepalive messages are sent in non-interactive contexts, eg while composing email messages). Lower these until your router stops disconnecting you, but don’t make them so low that mutt starts to feel sluggish.

In my .muttrc file i have the following listed:

set imap_keepalive=300
set timeout=300

Mutt lets you efficiently search inside messages using regular expressions and patterns. You can search both message headers and bodies for fragments matching a particular query string, and even automatically tag all matching messages for action. To do this, use the T command, followed by an appropriate selector. For example, the command T ~B techfinds and tags all messages containing the string “tech”.

Continue reading ‘Search, Filter, and Tag messages in Mutt’ »

Mutt lets you define certain mailboxes as “active”—that is, mailboxes which are likely to receive new mail on an ongoing basis. When any of these active mailboxes receives a new message, Mutt will alert you with a status bar notification. To use this feature, list the mailboxes to be monitored with the mailboxes command, as follows:

mailboxes “=inbox”
mailboxes “=lists/php”

You can set, how often mutt shall check for new mails with:

set timeout=10 # mutt ‘presses’ (like) a key for you (while you’re idle)
# each x sec to trigger the thing below
set mail_check=5 # mutt checks for new mails on every keystroke
# but not more often then once in 5 seconds
set beep_new # beep on new messages in the mailboxes

If you subscribe to mailing lists, you’ll be pleased to know about Mutt’s threading features. Mutt automatically sorts messages by topic, so that messages with the same topic end up organized sequentially. You can then use the cursor keys to navigate between messages in the same thread, allowing you to quickly view all the replies to a particular message. To use this feature, place the following in your ~/.muttrc file.

set sort=threads

Note: In threaded mode, a number of additional functions become available: you can delete all messages in a thread, collapse or expand a thread, mark a thread as read or unread, and jump to the start or end of a thread. See the Mutt manual for information on the keystrokes to access these functions.

Mutt lets you colorize almost any aspect of a message, making it easier to visually distinguish between, for example, a reply and text quoted from an earlier message. It’s also possible to find and highlight regular expressions in either the body or headers of an e-mail message, and display them in different colors—for example, e-mail addresses in yellow and URLs in green. To do this, issue the color command with appropriate parameters, as in the examples below:

#Different colors for different levels of quoting.
## Syntax
# color WHERE FOREGROUND BACKGROUND REGEXP
color hdrdefault white black # headers white on black
color header brightgreen black ^From: # sender’s name in green
color header brightgreen black ^To:
color quoted magenta black
color quoted1 blue black
color quoted2 red black
color quoted3 yellow black
color quoted4 cyan black
color quoted5 blue black
color quoted6 magenta black
color quoted7 red black
color quoted8 yellow black
color quoted9 cyan black
color signature red black  #signature in red

You can have Mutt automatically activate Lynx (or any other Web browser) when it encounters hyperlinks embedded in an e-mail message. To do this, download and install the add-on urlview program from the Mutt Web site, and then create a macro to launch it from the message viewer, like this:

macro pager \cu |urlview\n

Now, whenever you’re reading a message containing URLs, you can simply type <Ctrl>-u to launch the URL viewer and select a link to browse.

Mutt lets you create an address book of frequently-used addresses with the alias command. This command lets you define a short “alias” which is automatically expanded to one or more e-mail addresses by Mutt before the message is sent. Here’s an example, type the folowing in the mutt application.:

aliasjoe joe.gobby@example.com

You can also create group aliases, by using multiple e-mail addresses separated with commas. Here’s an example:

aliasfridayclubjoe.gobby@example.com,layla@domain.net,ex@ample.info

You can enter a line in your .muttrc as follows as well.

alias George George Dubya <gdubya@comcast.net>

Mutt is a console based mail client which can connect to IMAP, or POP3 mail servers. It can also read and write to local mailboxes. For a console client it’s very sophisticated, allowing you to customize your setup enormously. One thing that it lacks by default is the ability to read HTML emails though.

Continue reading ‘View HTML emails in mutt’ »