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204 lines
6.5 KiB
Groff
204 lines
6.5 KiB
Groff
.TH MU-EASY 1 "November 2010" "User Manuals"
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.SH NAME
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mu easy \- a quick introduction to mu
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.SH DESCRIPTION
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\fBmu\fR is a set of tools for dealing with e-mail messages in Maildirs. There
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are many options, which are all described in the man pages for the various
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sub-commands. This man pages jumps over all the details and gives examples of
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the more common use cases. If the use cases described here do not precisely do
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what you want, please check the more extensive information in the man page
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about the sub-command you are using -- for example, the mu-index or mu-find
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man pages.
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\fBNOTE\fR: the \fBindex\fR command (and therefore, the ones that depend on
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that, such as \fBfind\fR), require that you store your mail in the
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Maildir-format. If you don't do so, you can still use the other commands, but
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you won't be able to index/search your mail.
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.SH INDEXING YOUR E-MAIL
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Before you can search e-mails, you'll first need to index them:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu index\fR
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.fi
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The process can take a few minutes, depending on the amount of mail you have,
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the speed of your computer, hard drive etc. Usually, indexing should be able to
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reach a speed of a few hundred messages per second.
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\fBmu index\fR guesses the top-level Maildir to do its job; if it guesses
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wrong, you can use the \fI--maildir\fR option to specify the top-level
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directory that should be processed. See the \fBmu-index\fR man page for more
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detail.
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Normally, \fBmu index\fR visits all the directories under the top-level
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Maildir; however, you can exclude certain directories (say, the 'trash'
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or 'spam' folders) by creating a file called \fI.noindex\fR in the directory.
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When \fBmu\fR sees such a file, it will excluded this directory and its
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sub-directories.
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.SH SEARCHING YOUR E-MAIL
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After you have indexed your mail, you can search it. Normally, the search
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results are to standard output, but the output can also be in the form of
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Maildir with symbolic links to the found messages. This enables integration
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with e-mail clients; see the \fBmu-find\fR man page for details, the syntax of
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the search parameters and so on. Here, we just give some examples for common
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cases.
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First, let's search for all messages sent to Julius Caesar regarding fruit:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find t:julius fruit\fR
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.fi
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This should return something like:
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.nf
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2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST John Milton <jm@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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.fi
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This means there is a message to 'julius' with 'fruit' somewhere in the
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message. In this case, it's a message from John Milton. Note that the display
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of the date depends on your system locale.
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How do we know that the message was sent to Julius Caesar? Well, it's not
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visible from the results above, because the default fields that are shown are
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date/sender/subject. However, we can change this using the \fI--fields\fR
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parameter (see the \fBmu-find\fR man page for the details):
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find --fields="t s" t:julius fruit\fR
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.fi
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In other words, display the 'To:'-field (t) and the subject (s). This should
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return something like:
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.nf
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Julius Caesar <jc@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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.fi
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This is the same message found before, only with some different fields
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displayed.
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By default, \fBmu\fR uses the logical AND for the search parameters -- that
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is, it displays messages that match all the parameters. However, we can use
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logical OR as well:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find t:julius OR f:socrates\fR
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.fi
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In other words, display messages that are either sent to Julius Caesar
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\fBor\fR are from Socrates. This could return something like:
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.nf
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2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST Socrates <soc@example.com> cool stuff
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2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST John Milton <jm@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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.fi
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What if we want to see some of the body of the message? You can list (parts
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of) the message contents by using the --summary-len=\fIn\fR option, which
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will 'summarize' the first \fIn\fR lines of the message:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find --summary-len=4 napoleon m:/archive\fR
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.fi
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.nf
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1970-01-01T02:00:00 EET Napoleon Bonaparte <nb@example.com> rock on dude
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Summary: Le 24 février 1815, la vigie de Notre-Dame de la Garde signala le
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trois-mâts le Pharaon, venant de Smyrne, Trieste et Naples. Comme
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d'habitude, un pilote côtier partit aussitôt du port, rasa le château
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.fi
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The summary consists of the first n lines of the message with all superfluous
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whitespace removed.
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Also note the \fBm:/archive\fR parameter in the query. This means that we only
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match messages in a maildir called '/archive'.
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.SH MORE QUERIES
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Let's list a few more queries that may be interesting; please note that
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searches for message flags, priority and date ranges are only available in mu
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version 0.9 or later.
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Get all important messages which are signed:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find flag:signed prio:high \fR
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.fi
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Get all messages from Jim without an attachment:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find from:jim AND NOT flag:attach\fR
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.fi
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Get all unread messages where the subject mentions Ångström:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find flag:new subject:Ångström\fR
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.fi
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which is equivalent to:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find flag:new subject:angstrom\fR
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.fi
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because does mu is case-insensitive and accent-insensitive.
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Get all unread messages between March 2002 and August 2003 about some bird (or
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a Swedish rock band):
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find date:20020301..20030831 flag:new nightingale\fR
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.fi
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Get all message we got today:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find date:today..now\fR
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.fi
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Get all message we got in the last two weeks about emacs:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find date:2w..now emacs\fR
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.fi
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.SH DISPLAYING MESSAGES
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We might also want to display complete messages. This can be done using \fBmu
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view\fR command. Note that this command does not use the database; you simply
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provide the path to a message.
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Therefore, if you want to display some message from a search query, you'll
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need its path. To get the path (think \fBl\fRocation) for our first example we
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can use:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu find --fields="l" t:julius fruit\fR
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.fi
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And we'll get someting like:
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.nf
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/home/someuser/Maildir/archive/cur/1266188485_0.6850.cthulhu:2,
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.fi
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We can now display this message:
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.nf
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\fB$ mu view /home/someuser/Maildir/archive/cur/1266188485_0.6850.cthulhu:2,\fR
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From: John Milton <jm@example.com>
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To: Julius Caesar <jc@example.com>
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Subject: Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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Date: 2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST
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OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
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Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
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Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
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[...]
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.fi
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.SH AUTHOR
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Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>
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.SH "SEE ALSO"
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mu(1) mu-index(1) mu-cleanup(1) mu-find(1) mu-mkdir(1) mu-view(1) mu-extract(1)
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