[SOLVED] ~/.maildir is not a mailbox?

roboto · Last edited by roboto on Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

I had recently installed mutt, but an issue had arisen. When I open mutt, a message at the bottom said /home/myusername/.maildir is not a mailbox.

So I changed some stuff in /etc/mutt/Muttrc; converting the directory from /home/myusername/.maildir to /var/spool/mail.
But, it did not have permissions, so I typed

# chown root:mail /var/spool/mail/
# chmod root:mail /var/spool/mail/

Once again, mutt complained that /var/spool/mail was not a mailbox.

What do I do then?

Any answer will help.
Thank you.

EDIT:

/etc/mutt/Muttrc with /home/myusername/.maildir

# Some minimal Mutt settings, Gentoo-style. These reflect the Gentoo
# predilection for maildir folders.
#
# Please don't add settings to this file to change other user
# preferences (such as colors), since those can be hard for a user to
# undo if their preference doesn't match yours! For example, it is
# *impossible* currently in mutt to remove color settings from objects
# other than the index.

set mbox_type=Maildir
set folder=~/.maildir
set spoolfile=~/.maildir/
set record=~/.maildir-sent/
set move=no

# Maybe we shouldn't set index_format here, but this is a recommended
# one for maildir-style folders.

set index_format="%4C %Z %{%b %d} %-16.16L %s"

/etc/mutt/Muttrc with /var/spool/mail with permissions

#Some minimal Mutt settings, Gentoo-style. These reflect the Gentoo
# predilection for maildir folders.
#
# Please don't add settings to this file to change other user
# preferences (such as colors), since those can be hard for a user to
# undo if their preference doesn't match yours! For example, it is
# *impossible* currently in mutt to remove color settings from objects
# other than the index.

set mbox_type=Maildir
set folder=/var/spool/mail
set spoolfile=/var/spool/mail/
set record=/var/spool/mail/
set move=no

# Maybe we shouldn't set index_format here, but this is a recommended
# one for maildir-style folders.

set index_format="%4C %Z %{%b %d} %-16.16L %s"
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cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

Try /var/spool/mail/username

Edit to add, that one file will essentially be your (usual or default) INBOX. Any additional folders for mail will most likely be installed somewhere off /home/username.

roboto · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 7:54 pm Post subject:

cboldt wrote:
Edit to add, that one file will essentially be your (usual or default) INBOX.

I don't quite understand what you're aiming at.

I created the /var/spool/mail/myusername directory but I'm not quite sure what to do next.
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cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

Delete the directory you just created.

Tell mutt your mail will be at /var/spool/username <- oops, should be /var/spool/mail/username

Something, not you directly, will create the file. On my system, this file was created by postfix.

Edit "oops". Same principle though, don't create that file, just tell mutt that's where your Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) is going to put your email.

roboto · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:34 pm Post subject:

cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

What were you using for a mail reader before you decided to use mutt? Use that mail reader's configuration to guide configuration of mutt.

If you want your machine to host e-mail (which I perhaps incorrectly assumed you were already doing, because your question was, in other terms "how do I get mutt to interact with the e-mail that is already on my system?"), that is totally separate from setting up mutt, and as you might imagine, there are many way to get your machine to host email.

sendmail
postfix
qmail
exim
nullmailer
courier
opensmtpd
... and more!

And even THAT doesn't fully describe the options, because it is possible to have other programs transfer mail from outside mail sources to your system (e.g., fetchmail), and yet others do some sorting (e.g., procmail)., and yet others to "serve" email (e.g., dovecot).

I wish I knew of a good howto. I searched for a gentoo-centric howto, and none of them are what I consider "basic."

roboto · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:40 pm Post subject:

*I have Thunderbird to read my e-mail, but I prefer doing things through the console.

I have no idea what kind of service I have e.g. postfix.

When it comes to hosting e-mail in Linux, I am completely gullible. :? :(

I use an IMAP server for reading e-mail, if it's necessary.

And *where* do I find mutt's configuration, the only one I know is /etc/mutt/Muttrc, but I don't know what else to do with it.
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cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

You can get mutt to read email the same way (close enough) that thunderbird does. I use pine, another console mail reader, dabbled with mutt years ago, and never took a shine to it.

The pertinent settings just to get e-mail will be found in thunderbird's "Edit / Account Settings"

I feel your pain as a person new to setting up e-mail. It is confusing, and the supposedly helpful material floating around in the wild goes in many directions.

Edit to add a couple remarks:

- muttrc is the config file for mutt
- your system does not need to host email, in order you to read email from your system

khayyam · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:46 pm Post subject: Re: ~/.maildir is not a mailbox?

roboto · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:00 am Post subject:

I don't have any mutt file or directory in /home/myusername except for ~/.maildir and ~/.maildir-sent.

khay... you typed:

print -rl ~/.mutt{rc,/*}

I typed:

print -rl ~/.mutt{rc,/*}

Output:

sudo: print: command not found

sudo grep '^source' ~/.muttrc

Output:

grep: /home/myusername/.muttrc: No such file or directory

I created ~/.muttrc, but I don't know what to do with it.
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khayyam · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:02 am Post subject:

roboto · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:31 am Post subject:

I did exactly what was mentioned in that thread and also added my e-mail address to it.

Mutt works well now and the "not a mailbox" message was gone, but another issue had arisen. I was sending myself an e-mail for testing reasons, but it did not appear in my inbox.

I tried to send one to someone, and he/she said that he/she did not get any e-mail.

I added imap smtp sasl to the USE flags for mutt.

Still same issue.
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Answers please.

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khayyam · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:01 am Post subject:

roboto · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:16 am Post subject:

You asked for the configuration I used on ~/.muttrc:

set ssl_starttls="yes"
set ssl_force_tls="yes"
set imap_user="user_name@gmail.com"
set imap_pass="password"
set from="user_name@gmail.com"
set realname="Roboto"
set folder="imaps://imap.gmail.com/"
set spoolfile="imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX"
set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts"
set header_cache="~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir="~/.mutt/cache/bodies"
set certificate_file="~/.mutt/certificates"
set smtp_url="smtps://user_name@gmail.com:password@smtp.gmail.com:465/"
set move="no"
set imap_keepalive="900"

I also created the files in ~/.mutt/cache

I did not use sudo for chmod.

I typed the command you suggested with chown and all the permissions were changed to my username, yet mutt's issue with e-mail unavailability still remains.
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Answers please.

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khayyam · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:20 am Post subject:

roboto ...

that looks ok, but just to be clear, 'user_name' does refer to your ID on gmail, and 'password' is your gmail password. Silly question I know, but I need to make sure the obvious possibilities are covered. Also, can you show me the useflags for mutt?

roboto · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:24 am Post subject:

# emerge -pvq mail-client/mutt
[ebuild R ] mail-client/mutt-1.5.24-r2 USE="berkdb crypt gdbm imap nls sasl smtp ssl -debug -doc (-gnutls) -gpg -idn -kerberos (-libressl) -mbox -nntp -pop -qdbm (-selinux) -sidebar -slang -smime -tokyocabinet"

USER_NAME is my ID for gmail. password is my gmail password.

And there is no error showing up whenever I send an e-mail and it still does not appear in any inbox.
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Answers please.

The true hater of man expects nothing from him and is indiscriminate to his works.
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khayyam · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 5:21 am Post subject:

roboto ...

again to clarify, when you start mutt you are connected to imap, and you see your gmail mailbox (with the mail you have there)? Can you try adding the following

roboto · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:03 pm Post subject:

The code you suggested works!

When I launched mutt, there were certificate verifications and my inbox showed up. Also, my self e-mails showed up in my inbox.

Many, many thanks!
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Answers please.

The true hater of man expects nothing from him and is indiscriminate to his works.
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khayyam · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:54 pm Post subject: