[NCLUG] email setup with mutt

Bob Proulx bob at proulx.com
Mon Sep 11 23:36:54 MDT 2006


Chad Perrin wrote:
> I'm interested in getting some input into how to set up email on a
> Debian system.  The conditions are:
> 
>   Postfix MTA

Easy to set up an outgoing relayhost to be your ISP.  Then any mail
generated will be sent to your ISP and away it will go.  This should
work fine for most outgoing email.

>   mutt MUA

Good.

>   ISP-provided webserver

Not so useful.

>   POP3 account

Configure mutt to use the pop://[user@]popserver[:port]/ URL to access
your mail by POP3.  Or use 'fetchmail' to fetch your mail.

> The requirements are:
> 
>   multiple email accounts received

You can specify the username with the pop address.  This assumes that
you have multiple accounts with your ISP.

>   multiple email accounts sending

You can have mutt set the From: address to any of your valid account
addresses.  Or even invalid ones but those are not so useful.  In mutt
you can set up hook scripts to automatically set the From: address
based upon certain rules such as mailbox or to/from address or other
things.

>   access all accounts via one standard shell user account

If using POP3 then you don't even need a shell account.

> The preferences are:
> 
>   access all accounts via one instance of mutt

That should work fine.

> More conditions, requirements, and preferences may occur to me later,
> but that's what comes to mind right now.  I'd like to solicit ideas for
> how best to handle this, with pros and cons for alternate approaches.

I have always used mutt with a local MTA.  So actually the above is
all academic knowledge for me.  But I believe it will work.

> This seems to be a badly underdocumented collection of requirements for
> implementation with console-based mail user agents, which I find mildly
> annoying.

Uhm, what did you mean to say there?  That failed the parity check.

Bob



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