[Gllug] mutt/gpg

[Bruce Richardson]

On 10/8/01, 9:36:43 AM, "Paul Brazier" <pbrazier at cosmos-uk.co.uk> wrote 
regarding [Gllug] mutt/gpg:


> I've just started the steep climb up the mutt learning curve and I've
> got a few problems:

> I'm not quite sure what the difference is between the mail in the
> /var/spool/mail/paul directory and that in the ~/Mail directory.

/var/spool/mail/username (the exact location can vary from system to 
system) is your mail "spool", the default location where mail is 
delivered.  ~/mail or ~/Mail (on my box one is a symlink to the other) is 
the traditional place to keep your mail folders - the place to put your 
sorted mail, that is.

> Is the /var/spool/mail/paul the equivalent of the "Inbox" in
> Outlook/Evolution and the ~/Mail the equivalent of the various folders
> where you sort and store emails?

I don't know evolution but yes.

An extra wrinkle is that if you look at your spool file using Mutt, after 
you leave the spool folder mutt moves any read mail into ~/mbox (by 
default - you can change this).

> When I start up mutt it shows the /var/spool/mail and some of the other
> mailboxes with an "=" sign in front.
> If I press <tab> it changes to my ~/Mail directory.
> I've set up procmail to automatically sort mail into various folders so
> the /var/spool/mail/paul directory is always empty.
> Is this what I should do?

It's entirely up to you.

> The other problem I've got is PGP/GPG support. I've got an PGP-encrypted
> email that I can decrypt if I do:
> gpg -d ~/Mail/encryptedmail (where encryptedmail is a mailbox containing
> just the email.)
> But mutt doesn't flag it as encrypted - is this because the encrypted
> message is "inline" rather than a MIME attachment?

Likely.  The Mutt developers don't believe in inline pgp 
encryption/signatures - they say it breaks Mime.

> I found something to add to my .procmailrc that I think changes any
> future ones to MIME - does this sound right?

Yes.

> I've also included the gpg.rc sample file that comes with mutt in my
> .muttrc.

Try leaving that out.  I have never needed it - the mutt packages for 
both Red Hat and Debian work with gpg out of the box.  Last time I looked 
at the gpg readme for Mutt (which was a while ago because, as I said, it 
just works) it was out of date.

-- 

Bruce



-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug