Room With A View - Administration

Like most mail clients, Mutt offers two "views" of your mail. First, there's the list of messages, which Mutt's manual calls the "index". From this index, you can choose to read a particular message, which launches the "pager".

Both index and pager allow you to perform common mail operations - delete, forward, reply, save - and use standard keys for navigation. Here's a quick list of the default navigation keys (you can change these if they don't work for you, keep reading for details):

Key            What it does            Where it does it
---------------------------------------------------------
j              Move one line up        Index
k              Move one line down      Index
z              Move one page up        Index
Z              Move one page down      Index
<enter>        Open message            Index
-              Move one page up        Pager
<space>        Move one page down      Pager
q              Close message           Pager

In addition to these navigation keys, Mutt also allows you to perform commonly-used functions just by tapping the appropriate key. Here's what you need to get started:

Key            What it does               Where it does it
---------------------------------------------------------
m              Compose new message        Index, pager
r              Reply to current message   Index, pager
f              Forward current message    Index, pager
d              Delete current message     Index, pager
b              Bounce current message     Index, pager
c              View different mailbox     Index, pager
v              View attachment            Index, pager
a              Create alias               Index, pager
q              Quit                       Index, pager

You can obtain a complete list from the Mutt manual, or by tapping the

?

key at any time for detailed help.

When it comes to composing new messages or replying to existing ones, Mutt can use any text editor you like. On my system, it defaults to vi; however, you can easily modify it to use emacs, pico or any other editor that strikes your fancy. As soon as you decide to edit a message, Mutt will launch your selected editor, either with an empty document or with quoted message text, and allow you to edit it using standard editor commands. And as soon as you save the file, Mutt will offer you the option of sending it immediately, postponing it or trashing it.

If this seems simple, it is - new users should have very little difficulty getting their arms around Mutt's basic navigation and functions. But don't be fooled - there's a lot more you can do with Mutt, if you're willing to futz around with its default configuration. I'll be discussing this on the next page - try out the functions above and then come back for that.{mospagebreak title=Under The Hood} If you only check your mail occasionally, Mutt's default settings will probably work fine for you, and you won't ever need to see a configuration file. If, on the other hand, your mail client is your closest friend, you're probably going to want to alter some of Mutt's factory settings.

Since Mutt doesn't come with a preferences editor - who needs the overhead? - this is accomplished by editing Mutt's configuration file, usually located in

/etc/muttrc (for system-wide configuration)

or in each user's home directory

~/.muttrc (for per-user configuration)

Mutt's configuration file is pretty easy to understand - it consists of a bunch of variable-value pairs, which allow you to control everything from where Mutt stores your mail to the colors and formatting of email messages. A sample configuration file is included with the Mutt distribution - you should take a look at this well-commented sample to understand the configuration options available.

The variables you'll encounter in this configuration file come in different flavours. Some are Boolean (all you have to do is set them to true to activate them) while others require a specific value (for example, the location of your mail folders or the color to use for quoted text). Mutt has a default setting for every variable in this configuration file; if you don't specify a value for a particular variable, this default setting will be used instead.

The configuration file is read by Mutt every time it starts up, and it's also possible to reconfigure Mutt's behaviour "hot" - while it's running - by editing the variable-value pairs through the client itself.

Let's see how this works in practice, with a few extracts from my own configuration file.

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