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Carlos
Guru
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 458
Location: Providence, RI
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 Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 12:59 pm Post subject: Check for new mail from console; watch for mail with tail. |
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I just wrote a script, called "mail?", that will go through my ~/.maildir and print out the date, subject, and from header lines from all new messages, separated by blank lines and preceded by the current date and time. The script's very short: | Code: | #!/bin/bash
echo -n "New mail as of "
date '+%d %b %R:%S:'
for i in `find ~/.maildir/ -name new`; do for j in `find $i/ -type f`; do echo; gawk -F: '/^From|^Subject|^Date/' $j; done; done |
This is useful for me because so far I have three subdirectories that mail gets put into by procmail, and opening up mutt to see if I have mail would be a pain even with only one mailbox.
Why don't I use a dock app or something to monitor my mailboxes? First of all, I like to be able to see who sent the messages, since some messages aren't urgent, whereas an indicator that only tells me that I have mail - and nothing else - will have me opening up mutt in mere seconds. Also, Ion, my WM of choice, doesn't have a bar.
I don't use biff because it's not in Portage, and I want to run the program on my own instead of being told that I have mail. Actually, I added this job to my crontab: | Code: | | 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * fetchmail &> /dev/null; ~/scripts/mail? >> ~/.newmail |
Before I just had fetchmail running, but now I check for new mail after that. I have a console running tail -f on ~/.newmail (actually it's in the workspace that's running top, iptraf, and xtail monitoring all the log files in /var/log)so I'm immediately apprised of incoming mail, and in detail too.
I'm just hoping maybe one person finds this useful, since most people will be sticking with their dockapps and panel applets and such.
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Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. |
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tukem
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2002
Posts: 114
Location: Tampere, Finland
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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Nice script. I just wondered why don't you just say:
*/5 * * * * fetchmail &> /dev/null; ~/scripts/mail? >> ~/.newmail
in crontab instead of listing all those times. |
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Carlos
Guru
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 458
Location: Providence, RI
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| tukem wrote: | Nice script. I just wondered why don't you just say:
*/5 * * * * fetchmail &> /dev/null; ~/scripts/mail? >> ~/.newmail
in crontab instead of listing all those times. |
Oh, good point. I wrote that line in my crontab (with juts the fetchmail, not the new script) back when I didn't know you could do that.
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Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. |
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