Continuing my series about a
desktop in a shell, today I will present you my
mutt setup. I use mutt because it has no bugs and is a really good MUA for people loving consoles ;)First of all you have to know, that all my mail is forwarded to my server and sorted into Maildirs via maildrop, so I do not care about sorting on my desktop , which just fetches the mail via IMAP from the server ;)I m running
mutt-patched from Debian Squeeze, so not all options may be available for you if you do not have the same patchset as I do.First, tell mutt to fetch mail from
imap.die-welt.net via IMAP:
set imap_user=username
set imap_pass=password
set folder="imaps://imap.die-welt.net/INBOX"
set spoolfile="imaps://imap.die-welt.net/INBOX"
Now, enable IMAP-IDLE, list subscribed folders, reconnect to the server if needed and mark mail as read when you open it:
set imap_idle
set imap_check_subscribed
unset imap_passive
unset imap_peek
Let mutt save sent mail to the Sent directory on the IMAP server, and postponed mail to Drafts:
set record=+Sent
set postponed=+Drafts
Read mail should stay where it is:
set mbox="!"
We use IMAP-IDLE, thus check for new mail manually only every 90 seconds:
set mail_check=90
Instead timeout after 15 seconds if no user input is given:
set timeout=15
Set default mail from address to my default mail address:
set from=evgeni@golov.de
And send mail via mstmp (see below for mstmp configuration):
set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp"
Tell mutt which addresses I recieve mail to (danger, ugly regex!):
alternates (evgeni@(debian.org golov.(de eu)) sargentd@(die-welt sargentd).net evgeni.golov@uni-duesseldorf.de)
As mutt knows where I receive mail, let it set From accordingly:
set reverse_name
Let mutt cache some stuff and find its certificates:
set header_cache="~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir="~/.mutt/cache/bodies"
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates
set ssl_ca_certificates_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
Show only interesting headers in an useful order:
ignore headers *
unignore headers from to subject date cc
hdr_order from to cc subject date
Fix stupid MUAs behaviour (e.g. filenames like
=?iso-8859-1?Q?file=5F=E4=5F991116=2Ezip?=):
set rfc2047_parameters
Beep on new mail, will generate a ! in the window name in screen:
set beep_new
mutt-patched has the great sidebar patch, assign ctrl-n, ctrl-p to select next, prev folder, ctrl-o to open selected folder:
bind index \Cp sidebar-prev
bind index \Cn sidebar-next
bind index \Co sidebar-open
And toggle sidebar visibility with ctrl-b:
macro index \Cb '<enter-command>toggle sidebar_visible<enter><refresh>'
macro pager \Cb '<enter-command>toggle sidebar_visible<enter><redraw-screen>'
Since 1.5.20-2, mutt patched contains
my sidebar-dotted and sidebar-sorted patches.
Let mutt shorten the displayed path (e.g.
debian-devel instead of
INBOX.ml.debian-devel) and sort the folders (the are returned in random order when using imap_check_subscribed):
set sidebar_shortpath
set sidebar_sort
Now let s set some colors (that match the rest of my desktop ):
color sidebar_new yellow default
color normal white default
color hdrdefault brightcyan default
color signature green default
color attachment brightyellow default
color quoted green default
color quoted1 white default
color tilde blue default
And add some useful macros for marking new and old messages as read:
macro index .n "<tag-pattern>~N<enter><tag-prefix><clear-flag>N<clear-flag>*" "Catchup all new messages"
macro index .o "<tag-pattern>~O<enter><tag-prefix><clear-flag>O<clear-flag>*" "Catchup all old messages"
When forwarding mail, I like it to be forwarded as an attachment (YMMV):
set mime_forward=yes
I m using
goobook in mutt to fetch my addressbook from Google. As there is no Debian package for goobook (yet), you have to install it yourself (via
easy_install):
apt-get install python-argparse python-gdata python-simplejson python-keyring python-nose
easy_install goobook
Configuration is easy via
~/.goobookrc:
[DEFAULT]
# If not given here, email and password is taken from .netrc using
# machine google.com
email: me@gmail.com
password: password
And then add the following to your
.muttrc:
set query_command="goobook query '%s'"
bind editor complete-query
macro index,pager a "<pipe-message>goobook add<return>" "add the sender address to Google contacts"
That s all for mutt, but We are running mutt in a screen, so let s add the following to
.screenrc to fix transparency and cut&paste (see
http://wiki.mutt.org/?MuttFaq/Appearance):
defbce on
term screen-bce
And as mutt uses mstmp (yes, I know, mutt can handle SMTP itself ), this is my
.msmtprc:
defaults
domain dorei.kerker.die-welt.net
tls on
account die-welt.net
host smtp.die-welt.net
from sargentd@die-welt.net
auth on
user username
password password
tls_starttls on
tls_certcheck off
# Set a default account
account default : die-welt.net
C est tout! That is my personal mutt configuration, you can download it as one file here:
my .muttrc. And as everyone loves screenshots, here is one:
Oh, the next chapter will be about
irssi, but not before next Sunday (March 6th) as I ll be offline for a week, skiing in Austria :)
Google provides a handy image search, and given that the Internet is for porn, it is a good thing that they provide a filter that tries to remove pornographic images. This allows us to define the pornyness of a name (or of any word): It is the percentage of images found by Google that are removed when enabling the SafeSearch filter. For those who want to find out the pornyness of their name without having to count pictures that are NSFW, I have created the pornyness calculator. The range of values goes from 0% (for Ursel) to 97% (for Aletta, exact percentage depends on your location, it seems). This is implemented by some simple JavaScript in a static file, and using Google s API.
PS: It was pointed out to me that Maschinenbau (civil engeneering) has a score of 0%, but Mathematik (mathematics) has a score of 2%. Feel free to add more interesting results to the comments.
Once again, there will be another round of the Summer School Advanced Scientific Programming in Python . This year in St. Andrews, UK.
Quoting from the 
Another month and thus another issue of 
). I get a bit less for dpkg than 
The 
As the results are quite persuating, this gives no space to discuss.
Next question was about inclusion of additional theme in standard download kit:
While two themes still have big majority, people are not that convinced about it.
The last question of the survey was which theme should be included as additional in the download kit:
I think this is most interesting result - while in question about default theme Graphite theme was clearly the second one, in this question people have indicated that Original theme should stay in the download kit.
I would like to thank to all 228 people who have participated (the number is low because the survey required email confirmation, but I still think it is better way than thousands of votes which are easily scriptable).
Everybody hates Xperia
When I first got Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 it was running on Android Donut (1.6), my frustrations followed soon after mostly because it was greatly 
Google, please hurry up 
I've been slowly moving towards full IPv6 usage on my main machines for the past few months. My main servers all have IPv6 setup and appropriate DNS records in place.
This weekend I configured my mailserver, which is based upon QPSMTPD & exim4, to be available on IPv6 too. Previously it would send mail via IPv6 where appropriate, but only receive mail via IPv4.
QPSMTPD I've written about a lot in the past, and indeed I did commercial things with it for a year or two, but in short it is more of an SMTP framework than an actual mailserver.
These days I use a small collection of plugins which test incoming mail in various ways, and either:
I'm surprised to be on the porch hearing rushing water. I tend to think
of up here as high and mostly dry, but not this time of year. Yesterday
was such a soaking rain, very annoying at the time as I did chores and
drove out from town. Now there are two little creeks here. That's a sound
I've missed..
Pity that all the water is going to waste. I discovered the reason the large
cistern is not filling up is simply because the pipe into it is not connected
to the feeder pipe in the spring. It seems like a complete shambles really,
with layer upon layer of pipes, all broken. I will have to wait until the
water is down to dig and find out what's going on, and fix it.
In the last of the evening light today I got the house's two battery banks
finally combined into one bank. I had planned this out long ago, and bought one
long cable I'd need, so was surprised to find I needed two long cables. Had to
slide batteries around like a big sokoban puzzle, and swap several cables to
make it work. While I was away I'd charged up the bank that had gone unused
most of the winter. So they were near equalized and the combination seems to
have gone ok. I got through the lean part of the year with only half the
batteries; there never seemed to be a good time to combine them. It remains to
be seen if the solar panels can keep my increased capacity filled.
I hope this was only an early taste of spring. Would be nice to have some
more icy weather so I can put off dealing with refrigeration a little while
longer. I have my eye on a 12v/propane fridge.
...For the cases where, yes, you actually do want it.
For the impatient
assuming you're in a clean checkout on the tip of your current branch:
You re eager to start contributing to Debian, your first action is to subscribe to some high-profile mailing lists (like 
Enough news to release another Debian XSF News issue, after less
than a week.
Thank you 
Eh. Why does