please help!! email prob

[Sicnus]

ok i am using kmail but i don't like it. and i want to use mutt. but no one will help me. and i have used all the online help i can find... none answers my problem. its tells me me that /var/spool/mail/Sicnus doesn't exsist and its looking for a mailbox. and i can't find any good examples of .muttrc files and the ones i find are hard to understand. then fetchmail is all wierd and i can't get it to work riht either. and i tested it and i got emails saying that it couldn't send to Sicnus@localhost its assuming thats my email i think. please help!!

[bdl]

Hokay. The first problem, the fact that /var/spool/mail/username doesnt exist, is due to the fact that you either a) havent created the file yet, e.g. sent yourself an email with the local server or b) you dont have a mail server setup correctly on your machine. If you do indeed have a properly configured mail server, such as sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim, etc then you can send yourself an email with mutt or with the 'mail' command. Or you might simply do the command (as root):

prompt# touch /var/spool/mail/username && chown username.usergroup /var/spool/mail/username

This will create the apropriate mail spool file and you can read/write to it from then on. Now, having said all that, there are ways to use Mutt to fetch your POP3 and IMAP email from other servers other than your own. Fetchmail can also grab the email from another server, send it to yours and of course you are then back at the start, with requiring the mail spool file again.

There are indeed lots of good examples of .muttrc files around the net, unfortunately, the best advice I can give is just use Mutt and read up on how to configure it properly. You will then be able to decipher the .muttrc file, create your own, etc.

If you cannot send an email to yourself, this leads me to believe that you do not have a properly configure and running email server, in which case there are lots of sites available to read up on and install, configure your own; it's way beyond the scope of this post or indeed this messageboard.

Hope this is helpful to you. Luck!

[Sicnus]

ok setting up email server.... i thought sendmail was just for smtp? oh well. i use yahoo for email... but how does mutt read what fetchmail gets? and i sent an email to me linuxmail.org account and it said from sicnus@localhost.localdomain but its from xoriphus@yahoo.com and i used a simple smtp thing i downloaded called nbsmtp

[bdl]

Thats exactly right, sendmail and the other servers talk SMTP. Your local system will talk to other mail servers around the world with SMTP and send/receive mail. Fetchmail is a very usefull app with lots of options, but in a nutshell, it will grab your email from lets say your ISP's POP3 server (different type of mail server) and then hand it off to your local SMTP server (sendmail) which will deliver it straight to your mailbox. You can setup a cronjob or the like and have your POP3 mail account checked once an hour, whenever you want and have all your mail delivered right to your own machine.

On the other questions, I'm not quite certain what you want to do; nbsmtp is fine for someone that simply wants to send/receive mail from their ISP's account and not really mess with a 'real' sendmail configuration. I've not really used that app, I did try it once but I can't say I'd be able to give you any pointers on it.

The big picture is, if you want to really go to the depth of maintaining a server and domainname, keep a machine up 24/7 so you can always send and recieve mail directly to that particular machine, then you need to seriously delve into sendmail/qmail/postfix/exim and learn to install and properly configure one of them. Otherwise, the solution you have should be alright, just send and receive mail through your ISP. Luck!

[Sicnus]

thanks... yeah all i am is one teenager, wanting to send and recieve mail, but if i can do it with more options and more secury then why not... just read stuff for another week hoping to get somewhere. yeah well thanks man. ok so just set up fetchmail.. it sends it sendmail and then to /var/spool/mail/Sicnus file? and then mutt will read that? thats pretty cool. just its really hard to find stuff i understand. i am not deep in knowledge of syntax, internet protocal, or much of anything. i messed iwth c++ for a month or 2 and will start python once my book arives. oh yeah, would you happen to know how to change my localhost.localdomain to something else? what is it? and how do i get sendmail to work... i type sendmail and nothing happens bash just says its not a command, but i have it cuase during boot up it starts...