Mutt on Cygwin unable to read downloaded email.
vksh...@sbcglobal.net
I am using Mutt 1.4.2.1i (2004-02-12) on Cygwin.
I use the built-in POP support to download my email
into an mbox type mailbox. The problem is that Mutt
is not able to parse this file correctly and does
not list any messages.
I played around with the format of the file that
Mutt created for me and discovered that the 'From '
line at the start of every message is throwing it off.
A typical line in my inbox file looks like this:
>From MyFirstName A. MyLastName Sun Jul 12 ...
I found out that the following formats are OK with Mutt.
>From usr...@isp.com Sun Jul 12 ...
>From - Sun Jul 12 ...
>From Sun Jul 12 ...
I have a strong suspicion that Mutt/POP is adding that
line to each email. I do not know how to change the format
of this line or to get Mutt to parse it correctly.
I have tried setting the 'realname' property in muttrc to a
blank string but it did not work. I believe it is picking up
this value from my $USERNAME or $USER env. variable.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very very much in advance.
The output of 'mutt -v' is:
*************************************************
Mutt 1.4.2.1i (2004-02-12)
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.
Mutt is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.
System: CYGWIN_NT-5.1 1.5.17(0.129/4/2) (i686) [using ncurses 5.4]
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-DEBUG
-HOMESPOOL -USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK -DL_STANDALONE
+USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
+USE_POP +USE_IMAP -USE_GSS +USE_SSL -USE_SASL
+HAVE_REGCOMP -USE_GNU_REGEX
+HAVE_COLOR +HAVE_START_COLOR +HAVE_TYPEAHEAD +HAVE_BKGDSET
+HAVE_CURS_SET +HAVE_META +HAVE_RESIZETERM
+HAVE_PGP +BUFFY_SIZE -EXACT_ADDRESS -SUN_ATTACHMENT
+ENABLE_NLS +LOCALES_HACK -HAVE_WC_FUNCS +HAVE_LANGINFO_CODESET
+HAVE_LANGINFO_YESEXPR
+HAVE_ICONV -ICONV_NONTRANS +HAVE_GETSID -HAVE_GETADDRINFO
-ISPELL
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/var/spool/mail"
PKGDATADIR="/usr/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/etc"
EXECSHELL="/bin/sh"
-MIXMASTER
*************************************************
Olaf Foellinger
> Hello,
>
> I am using Mutt 1.4.2.1i (2004-02-12) on Cygwin.
>
> I use the built-in POP support to download my email
> into an mbox type mailbox. The problem is that Mutt
> is not able to parse this file correctly and does
> not list any messages.
>
> I played around with the format of the file that
> Mutt created for me and discovered that the 'From '
> line at the start of every message is throwing it off.
>
> A typical line in my inbox file looks like this:
>
>>From MyFirstName A. MyLastName Sun Jul 12 ...
>
> I found out that the following formats are OK with Mutt.
>
>>From usr...@isp.com Sun Jul 12 ...
>>From - Sun Jul 12 ...
>>From Sun Jul 12 ...
>
> I have a strong suspicion that Mutt/POP is adding that
> line to each email. I do not know how to change the format
> of this line or to get Mutt to parse it correctly.
I've had problems before with mutt and mbox format whic were based on
line ending problems. How is your directory mounted where mutt stores
the mails locally?
Beside this I'd recomment to contact the cywin-users ml as well (and
reading http://cygwin.com/problems.html before).
--
Gruss Olaf
Alan Connor
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I am using Mutt 1.4.2.1i (2004-02-12) on Cygwin.
>
> I use the built-in POP support to download my email
> into an mbox type mailbox. The problem is that Mutt
> is not able to parse this file correctly and does
> not list any messages.
>
> I played around with the format of the file that
> Mutt created for me and discovered that the 'From '
> line at the start of every message is throwing it off.
>
> A typical line in my inbox file looks like this:
>
>>From MyFirstName A. MyLastName Sun Jul 12 ...
>
> I found out that the following formats are OK with Mutt.
>
>>From usr...@isp.com Sun Jul 12 ...
>>From - Sun Jul 12 ...
>>From Sun Jul 12 ...
>
> I have a strong suspicion that Mutt/POP is adding that
> line to each email. I do not know how to change the format
> of this line or to get Mutt to parse it correctly.
>
> I have tried setting the 'realname' property in muttrc to a
> blank string but it did not work. I believe it is picking up
> this value from my $USERNAME or $USER env. variable.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you very very much in advance.
The ">" in front of the "From " headers is an 'escape'
added at some stage of the processing, which leaves
the mail without a valid "From " header, and thus
mutt doesn't recognize the mailbox as a valid.
Try removing the "> " from the mails in a box and
and do mutt -f +mailbox_name and see if that takes
care of the problem and get back to us.
Never heard anything good about mutt's POP support,
and really recommend using fetchmail instead.
Any chance you are using procmail?
<snip>
AC
vksh...@sbcglobal.net
I looked at the Mutt code and found the spot where the
problematic line is being written out. I changed the code
and tried building Mutt on cygwin but ran into problems
right away. I gave up quickly.
I instead cobbled together the following quick Python
script to download my emails.
*********************************
#!/usr/bin/python
import getpass, poplib, time
M = poplib.POP3('pop.isp.isp.com')
M.user('unameit')
M.pass_('upassit')
numMessages = len(M.list()[1])
for i in range(numMessages):
print ""
print "From - " + time.strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y")
for j in M.retr(i+1)[1]:
print j
M.dele(i+1)
M.quit()
*********************************
I piped the output to my inbox file.
This hack worked perfectly !!!
Thank you all for responding. If I find out anything new I will
be sure to post it here.
-v
Alan Connor
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I looked at the Mutt code and found the spot where the
> problematic line is being written out. I changed the code
> and tried building Mutt on cygwin but ran into problems
> right away. I gave up quickly.
>
> I instead cobbled together the following quick Python
> script to download my emails.
You could just as well have used bash. POP is not a particularly
complex protocol.
>
> Thank you all for responding. If I find out anything new I will
> be sure to post it here.
>
> -v
Considering that you utterly ignored everyone's advice here, and
seem to think that a bare-bones python script is a reasonable
substitute for fetchmail, I doubt that you will get many
responses the next time you post.
What you really need to do is get rid of that lame nix emulator
and install unix/linux on a seperate partition or drive.
AC
Paul Walker
> I piped the output to my inbox file.
> This hack worked perfectly !!!
It works, but it doesn't take any account of possible error conditions. I'm
pretty sure that cygwin packages up fetchmail (and procmail); why not just
use those instead?
--
Paul
Tick: You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world.
vksh...@sbcglobal.net
I am still trying to get fetchmail to work on Cygwin.
I also have a perfectly configured FreeBSD partition which
I use for most of my personal work. At work, I am forced to
use Windows and sometimes I work from home, hence I
need Windows. I grew weary of switching back and forth
between my two partitions just to check my email so I was
trying to get cygwin to work with my favourite tools.
I apologize if I seemed like I was ignoring sound advice.
Thank you all again for taking the time to post responses
to my query.
Thank you
-v