[1862] in athena10
Re: mutt config
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Shreevatsa R)
Wed Mar 25 13:20:44 2009
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:20:34 -0400
From: Shreevatsa R <vatsa@MIT.EDU>
To: Greg Price <price@mit.edu>
Cc: debathena@mit.edu
Message-ID: <20090325172034.GA49454@WHITAKER-THREE-TEN.MIT.EDU>
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* Quoting Greg Price who at 2009-03-24 02:39:49-0400 (Tue) wrote
> I've taken a look at the Muttrc provided in the sipb locker and
> compared it to the system Muttrc.
I have a few suggestions, some of which are just personal preference and
some of which I don't entirely understand myself, but perhaps they are
worth thinking about:
> ================================
>
> Using MIT IMAP
> --------------
> set folder="imap://$USER@`hesinfo $USER pobox | awk '{print $2}'`"
> set spoolfile="imap://$USER@`hesinfo $USER pobox | awk '{print $2}'`"
> set record=""
>
> $folder is the root of the user's mail tree. $spoolfile is the inbox;
> I'd set it to just "+INBOX", where "+" is a Mutt abbreviation for the
> value of $folder.
> Recommendation: definite keep.
[One thing I don't understand is why I need that on Athena and
set folder = "imaps://$USER.mail.mit.edu/"
set imap_user = "$USER"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
on my laptop -- is there some configuration that would work on both?]
> This setting of $record is dangerous -- it means that mail you send is
> forgotten, with no local copy. This bit me for my first few days at
> MIT, using sipb-locker mutt. The upstream default is "~/sent", which
> at least means the mail is saved, though not in an optimal place.
> I set it to +INBOX.sent-mail, which is my own idiosyncratic choice.
> Recommendation: leave default, unless there's a justifiable "MIT
> mail" convention; does webmail pick a sent-mail folder?
I just use
my_hdr bcc vatsa@mit.edu
to bcc all emails to myself so that they get threaded with replies etc.,
but maybe that's an unpopular personal preference. :)
It's probably best to not set it, so that it defaults to ~/sent, which
is better than nothing.
> Personal preference
> -------------------
> set sort=threads
>
> I set this value myself. But Debathena shouldn't.
>
> Recommendation: drop
>
Agreed. Most users are confused by threads, anyway, and without
set sort_aux='last-date-received'
one ends up having new email at random locations in the inbox.
> Comments welcome. I'll commit a version of this later this week if
> the discussion has settled. There is a .d mechanism, so it only means
> dropping a file in place.
>
> Greg
1. Each time one quits mutt, one is prompted:
Move read messages to /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/v/a/vatsa/mbox? ([no]/yes):
This is quite annoying. I just "set move=no", and I wonder if any users
would actually want this. The move is also hard to reverse; it's easy to
accidentally hit 'y' and not know how to move mail back into MIT mail.
This is a personal preference, but it would make life easier for most
users. Those who actually want to move their mail will figure out how
to do it anyway. :)
2. Caching: Large mailboxes take quite a while to load. It would be nice
to enable caching by default. Something like
set header_cache=~/.muttcache
It can make quite a bit of difference.
[BTW it seems that /usr/bin/mutt 1.5.18 (2008-05-17) on Linerva uses
gdbm, and SIPB mutt 1.5.12 (2006-07-14) uses Berkeley DB for the caches:
I don't remember whether it's a compile-time option or it needs to be
fixed by updating the mutt in the sipb locker to a newer version. (Or
will the Debathena cluster machines eventually use Ubuntu-default mutt
instead of running from the sipb locker?) Anyway, this incompatibility
would be more of an annoyance than a serious problem.]
3. "set imap_check_subscribed"
So that the user doesn't have to manually poll all folders to check for
new mail.
--
vatsa
