Before I decide to try this mail agent, I wish to know if anyone can tell
me if it can be configured to retrieve headers only.

I receive a lot of mail, mostly junkmail. Everyday, I get, say, 200 mails
of which I will read only 15, so, I have to sort them. Since I don't have
a dsl connection (only a modem connection), it would take quite a long
time to download all 200 mails with bodies and attachments, some of them
being very big, especially the spams. I have tryed spam filters,
especially those provided with Mozilla, but I don't like it that much,
since I still have to go check all discarded headers in the junk mail
folder, so as to check if there isn't one or two non junk mails in there
(most often there is), therefore, it takes about the same time as to
verify headers prior to download bodies.

Up to now, I managed my mail using StarOffice 5.2. This software includes
mail functions, and you can download headers only, then pick the headers
you are interrested in, and get bodies. StarOffice mail, unfortunately, is
bugged, and sometimes you loose mail, or headers and bodies get mixed up,
especially when downloading a large number of headers. And StarOffice mail
no longer exists in newer versions of the sofware.

I wonder if Mutt would accept downloading headers only, as StarOffice did.
Mozilla can't, and Mozilla crashes when it has to download several
hundreds of mails at once.

* Bernard <debreil@lcpc.fr>:
> Before I decide to try this mail agent, I wish to know if
> anyone can tell me if it can be configured to retrieve headers
> only.
> [...]
> Up to now, I managed my mail using StarOffice 5.2. This
> software includes mail functions, and you can download headers
> only, then pick the headers you are interrested in, and get
> bodies.

Yes, Mutt can be made to do something similar to what you want,
but be aware mutt isn't meant to be a mail retrieval agent like
fetchmail or getmail.

This is how my Mutt behaves: when I run 'mutt', it connects to my
IMAP server and loads my inbox. I see the subjects, senders, and
dates of the mail received, but the body isn't downloaded until I
explicitly load one of the emails. I've not used mutt to connect
to a POP3 server, but going by the manual it looks like POP3 is
treated similarly to IMAP.

As you're on a slow link I guess you want offline reading. What
you could do is load mutt, tag the non-spam messages you want,
then copy those messages to a local folder. Default behaviour is
to mark those messages as deleted, then confirm if you want them
deleted when you exit.

You might also want to ask in comp.mail.mutt.

--
Andrew Preater

Bernard wrote:
> Before I decide to try this mail agent, I wish to know if anyone can tell
> me if it can be configured to retrieve headers only.

The question I do not understand.

I use sendmail as a message transfer agent to send and receive e-mail from
my machine to the Internet and my LAN. I have /etc/mail/access configured so
as to weed out lots of known spammers, such as the whole country of China,
Korea, Brazil, as well as some well-known ISP spammers such as hotmail (I
also enable one or two senders from hotmail). I also use DNS blackholing
from two sources. As a result, I get only a couple of dozen spams a day on
that system by that route. You could, or course, also enable SpamAssassin in
sendmail, though I have never done it.

When sendmail is done with it, it goes up in /var/spool/mail where mutt (a
mail user agent)looks for it. By then, most of the spam is already gone. My
system is on dial-up too, and
>
> I receive a lot of mail, mostly junkmail. Everyday, I get, say, 200 mails
> of which I will read only 15, so, I have to sort them. Since I don't have
> a dsl connection (only a modem connection), it would take quite a long
> time to download all 200 mails with bodies and attachments, some of them
> being very big, especially the spams. I have tryed spam filters,
> especially those provided with Mozilla, but I don't like it that much,
> since I still have to go check all discarded headers in the junk mail
> folder, so as to check if there isn't one or two non junk mails in there
> (most often there is), therefore, it takes about the same time as to
> verify headers prior to download bodies.

I have another e-mail account with my ISP. They run FreeBSD with sendmail
and SpamAssassin (optional for each user) and SpamAssassin picks up 100 to
200 spams per day for my account. They are presented to me (without
downloading) with the subject, sender, and spam score, in a list of
increasing spam scores. I glance over the ones with a score of 10 or less
and every month or two get one that I may want (and I have it delivered),
and then just bulk delete the rest.
>
> Up to now, I managed my mail using StarOffice 5.2. This software includes
> mail functions, and you can download headers only, then pick the headers
> you are interrested in, and get bodies. StarOffice mail, unfortunately, is
> bugged, and sometimes you loose mail, or headers and bodies get mixed up,
> especially when downloading a large number of headers. And StarOffice mail
> no longer exists in newer versions of the sofware.
>
> I wonder if Mutt would accept downloading headers only, as StarOffice did.
> Mozilla can't, and Mozilla crashes when it has to download several
> hundreds of mails at once.

I do not think mutt acts as an MTA. It is (at least as I use it) just an MUA.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
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/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 06:50:00 up 62 days, 44 min, 4 users, load average: 4.23, 4.16, 3.83

Bernard <debreil@lcpc.fr>:
> Before I decide to try this mail agent, I wish to know if anyone can tell
> me if it can be configured to retrieve headers only.

mutt is a Mail User Agent (MUA). Add it to fetchmail, a Mail Transfer
Agent (MTA) for incoming mail, and Sendmail/Postfix/Exim/ssmtp (all
MTAs) for outgoing mail, and mailf or procmail Mail Delivery Agents
(MDA) which will scan incoming mail, and you've a complete system.

For you, I recommend fetchmail, mailf
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailf), and ssmtp. mailf (called by
fetchmail) will scan headers on the server before downloading,
fetchmail gets what's left, and ssmtp sends outgoing mail (from mutt)
to your ISP's smarthost.


--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Linux Counter #80292
- - Spammers! http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling/autospam.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt democracy human rights Taiwan Independence

On 2005-08-16, s. keeling <keeling@spots.ab.ca> wrote:
>
> For you, I recommend fetchmail, mailf
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailf), and ssmtp. mailf (called by
> fetchmail) will scan headers on the server before downloading,
> fetchmail gets what's left, and ssmtp sends outgoing mail (from mutt)
> to your ISP's smarthost.

As somebody else posted, it might be easier to simply configure mutt to
talk to the POP3 or IMAP server directly, if that's where the mail is
located. Then the OP needs only a program like ssmtp to send mail.

--keith

--
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/cgi-bin/fom
see X- headers for PGP signature information

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:57:26 +0200, Keith Keller wrote:

> On 2005-08-16, s. keeling <keeling@spots.ab.ca> wrote:
>>
>> For you, I recommend fetchmail, mailf
>> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailf), and ssmtp. mailf (called by
>> fetchmail) will scan headers on the server before downloading,
>> fetchmail gets what's left, and ssmtp sends outgoing mail (from mutt)
>> to your ISP's smarthost.
>
> As somebody else posted, it might be easier to simply configure mutt to
> talk to the POP3 or IMAP server directly, if that's where the mail is
> located. Then the OP needs only a program like ssmtp to send mail.
>
> --keith

I am trying to achieve such a config, but I don't know how to get pop
functions active. Manual says to run the config file with the
"--enable-pop" flag, but then I get errors running "make" :

make[2]:*** [mutt] Error 1

make[1]:*** [all-recursive] Error 1

make: [all-recursive-am] Error 2

The ./configure process ran OK, but I don't know how to check the config
file (8,000 lines...). Both config file and a copy of the output of the
"make" function, are available, but, prior to displaying them here, I
wonder if there would be a shortcut, a ready to use file for instance.

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:00:42 +0200, Bernard wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:57:26 +0200, Keith Keller wrote:
>
>> On 2005-08-16, s. keeling <keeling@spots.ab.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> For you, I recommend fetchmail, mailf
>>> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailf), and ssmtp. mailf (called by
>>> fetchmail) will scan headers on the server before downloading,
>>> fetchmail gets what's left, and ssmtp sends outgoing mail (from mutt)
>>> to your ISP's smarthost.
>>
>> As somebody else posted, it might be easier to simply configure mutt to
>> talk to the POP3 or IMAP server directly, if that's where the mail is
>> located. Then the OP needs only a program like ssmtp to send mail.
>>
>> --keith
>
> I am trying to achieve such a config, but I don't know how to get pop
> functions active. Manual says to run the config file with the
> "--enable-pop" flag, but then I get errors running "make" :
>
> make[2]:*** [mutt] Error 1
>
> make[1]:*** [all-recursive] Error 1
>
> make: [all-recursive-am] Error 2
>
> The ./configure process ran OK, but I don't know how to check the config
> file (8,000 lines...). Both config file and a copy of the output of the
> "make" function, are available, but, prior to displaying them here, I
> wonder if there would be a shortcut, a ready to use file for instance.

It might seem weird that I reply to my own post, but I have discovered
something new ever since I wrote it :

While searching archives in comp.mail.mutt, I found several questions
about the same errors in trying to compile with the --enable-pop flag.
Most of time there were no reply, or else, someone said something like
this : "Why don't you use Fetchmail instead of bothering with pop ?". One
guy said that this flag worked on his system, using mutt 1.4. My own
version was 1.4.2, so I downloaded 1.4 instead, and this one does compile
OK when enabling pop ! There ought to be a bug in 1.4.2 as far as enabling
POP is concerned.

I have tried mutt 1.4 using the online command advised by Thomas Roessler
in his post dated june 2001, that is : mutt -f pop://user@host/

and it worked ! I got mail headers displayed without downloading bodies,
as I expected.

The reason why I don't want to use Fetchmail, is that it downloads bodies.
When I come back from holidays with 1800 mail headers or more, I wish I
can choose what I want to download and what I want to discard, especially
since I am on a slow connection. I used to do that using StarOffice 5.2
mail capabilities, but it is buggy and it crashes whenever there are too
many mails.

Now, I wish to ask some more questions. While browsing archives of
comp.mail.mutt, I heard someone mentioning that Mutt was unable to deal
with popservers in a secure manner, and that, in such process, your mail
account password was not uncrypted. Is this being confirmed, with mutt 1.4
? Is there anything to do about it ?

Bernard <debreil@lcpc.fr>:
> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:57:26 +0200, Keith Keller wrote:
>
> > On 2005-08-16, s. keeling <keeling@spots.ab.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >> For you, I recommend fetchmail, mailf
> >> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailf), and ssmtp. mailf (called by

Sorry, that should have been maildrop, not mailf. http://freshmeat.net/projects/maildrop/

> >> fetchmail) will scan headers on the server before downloading,
> >> fetchmail gets what's left, and ssmtp sends outgoing mail (from mutt)
>
> I am trying to achieve such a config, but I don't know how to get pop

I agree with Bernard; if you can use IMAP, do. Alternatively,
fetchmail comes with fetchmailconf, which will walk you through
building a ~/.fetcmailrc. Or, look at mine:

set postmaster "keeling"
set no bouncemail
set no spambounce
set logfile /home/keeling/dox/fetchmail.log
set properties ""
poll mail.spots.ab.ca with proto POP3
user 'keeling' there with password '_________' is 'keeling' here
options fetchall


--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Linux Counter #80292
- - Spammers! http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling/autospam.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt democracy human rights Taiwan Independence

* Bernard <debreil@lcpc.fr>:
> While searching archives in comp.mail.mutt, I found several
> questions about the same errors in trying to compile with the
> --enable-pop flag. Most of time there were no reply, or else,
> someone said something like this : "Why don't you use Fetchmail
> instead of bothering with pop ?". One guy said that this flag
> worked on his system, using mutt 1.4. My own version was 1.4.2,
> so I downloaded 1.4 instead, and this one does compile OK when
> enabling pop !

I didn't know that. I am using 1.5.10, and it compiles fine with
pop - you might consider using the 'devel' branch, I've used it
for a while and have had no stability problems. Then again, I
have never seen any version of mutt segfault. There's always
mutt-ng to try as well: http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/

I do have an account on another machine that has mutt 1.4.1 (from
Fedora Core 3) installed; that is compiled with pretty much
everything enabled, including pop. I tried it out, and oddly
enough direct pop / secure pop doesn't actually work! The
connection to the pop server always times out.

I can't say if that's mutt's fault, or the fault of the network
the machine is on.

> I have tried mutt 1.4 using the online command advised by
> Thomas Roessler in his post dated june 2001, that is : mutt -f
> pop://user@host/
>
> and it worked ! I got mail headers displayed without
> downloading bodies, as I expected.

Yeah, I tried it myself on my spam-filled myrealbox account.
Worked nicely, felt just the same as using imap in fact.

> [...] Now, I wish to ask some more questions. While browsing
> archives of comp.mail.mutt, I heard someone mentioning that
> Mutt was unable to deal with popservers in a secure manner, and
> that, in such process, your mail account password was not
> uncrypted.

Really? That's worrying if so! I did my own searchs about this,
but all I could find were Debian users complaining about their
mutt being compiled without --with-ssl, and requiring a recompile
from source to enable. Could you give us a link or a Message-ID?

--
Andrew Preater