Mail ???

[Jeff Ratliff]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 06:49:08AM -0400, Hugh Crissman wrote:
> I am running FC2. I am using evolution as my mail reader under X. All is
> good with that. But, I would also like to ssh into my box and read my
> mail with mutt. When I launch mutt it says no ~/mail directory exists,
> so I let it create one and it proceeds to an empty mutt interface. I am
> trying to vies the same mail and as I view when I am local and using
> evolution. What I am missing? I have googled around and read about
> mutt's .muttrc and postfix's main.cf (postfix is my MTA) config files
> but I am not sure I am on the right track. At this point I do not want
> to run a mail server, I just want to be able to ssh in and read, send,
> and receive just like when I am local using X and evolution. Thanks in
> advance to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Hugh,
  I do exactly what you're describing. I've got one box that sits 
there and grabs mail from my ISP all day long, and I SSH in from
wherever and read it with mutt. 

Mutt by default expects to find your mail in /var/spool/mail/<user>. 
Mutt only reads mail, and expects some other program to deal with
sending (usually sendmail) and receiving (usually fetchmail). You 
can get around this, though, because mutt DOES have built in POP
and IMAP support. Use the 'c' command to change mailboxes, and at
the prompt enter pop://popserver/ for the new mailbox. Popserver
is whatever your mailserver is (usually mail.yourISP.net). It will
then ask four username and password on that server, and log you in. 
>From there you can read mail directly on the server. That way 
you can leave the mail there and not delete messages so that you 
can still use Evolution if you want. 

The manual explains the syntax for IMAP if you use IMAP rather 
than POP3. (probably imap://imapserver/)

A more permanent solution is to install fetchmail (should be on
Fedora CDs) and let it run in daemon mode to log in and download
your mail. Then when you start mutt your mail WILL be in 
/var/spool/mail/<user>. You'd also probably need to reconfigure 
sendmail, because you'll be sending mail as 
<user>@localhost.localdomain rather than your real E-mail address,
which makes some mailservers think you're a spammer.

Go to www.mutt.org and check out "Mutt overview for newbies." I
found it to be a great resource. Mutt is great, but as with any
extremely powerful tool, it takes a while to learn to use it and
configure it properly..