[Beowulf] Does anyone here use the email program "mutt"?

Fri Jan 24 15:43:50 UTC 2025

To reiterate, anything Sean and Tina have said about procmail, vacation, or other Unix utilities will only be relevant if and only if your friend uses a Unix-type email server (like a departmental server handling all @department.univeristy.edu emails).

If he’s using Gmail, Google Apps, Office 365, Outlook.com, or most any other larger email provider, the correct steps will be specific to that provider.

Hoping he gets better soon.

From: Beowulf <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org> on behalf of Alexandre Ferreira Ramos via Beowulf <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Date: Friday, January 24, 2025 at 9:01 AM
To: Tina Friedrich <tina.friedrich at it.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: beowulf at beowulf.org <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Does anyone here use the email program "mutt"?

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________________________________
Hi Sean and Tina,

thank you very much for your responses! I shall work using your material. Will let you know the outcome.

All the best,
Alexandre

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 11:55 AM Tina Friedrich via Beowulf <beowulf at beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>> wrote:
Hello,

I just remembered something - it's been a while since my work email
wasn't handled by something MS Exchange like - there's a 'vacation' tool
for Linux/Unix systems that can help with this. See e.g.
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/linux-in-a/0596004826/re470.html

It still needs the sort of transport agent that uses e.g. a .forward
file, but (if I remember correctly) makes setting the vacation
forwarding up easier (and handles things like only sending something
like one repsonse per week per sender etc).

Tina

On 24/01/2025 14:48, Sean Mc Grath via Beowulf wrote:
> Hi Alexandre,
>
> Get well soon to your friend.
>
> As Tina said, mutt doesn't do this. Here is a procmail example I have
> used in the past but not for a long time. Sorry if it is no help.
>
> Setting up an out of office, (vacation/ auto-reply).
>
> Edit your ~/.procmailrc file, create it first if needed below, update
> the "$lOGNAME at fqdn.tldr" entrie(s).
> Create the ~/.vacation.msg as your automatic response to send to users.
> This should be a plaintext file containing the text of the response you
> want to send to recipients.
> taken from http://system.cs.technion.ac.il/Mail_Guides/
> Configuring%20Vacation%20Mail%20With%20Procmail.htm [DEAD LINK]
> ### Vaction response,
>
> E.g. ~/.procmailrc contentcs
> :0 Whc: vacation.lock
> * $^To:.*\<$\LOGNAME\>
> * !^FROM_DAEMON
> * !^X-Loop: root@*
> ## `--> to not reply to root or ops mails, can have multiple `* !^X-
> Loop:` entries
> # store sender's address in vacation.cache if not there already.
> | /usr/bin/formail -rD 8192 $HOME/.vacation.cache
> :0 ehc
> | (/usr/bin/formail -rA"Precedence: junk" -A"x-loop:
> $lOGNAME at fqdn.tldr" ; cat $HOME/.vacation.msg ) | /usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t
>
> To turn off the vacation response comment out or remove the above from
> your procmail file.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Sean
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Beowulf <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org>> on behalf of Tina
> Friedrich via Beowulf <beowulf at beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>>
> *Sent:* Friday 24 January 2025 14:44
> *To:* beowulf at beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org> <beowulf at beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>>
> *Subject:* Re: [Beowulf] Does anyone here use the email program "mutt"?
> [External Email] This email originated outside of Trinity College
> Dublin. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the
> sender and know the content is safe.
>
> Hi Alexandre,
>
> I do use mutt, but not exclusively/heavily, so I might be wrong, but...
>
> I don't think that's a thing mutt can do. Auto-replies are usually set
> on the server/MTA (i.e. procmail, sedmail, MS Exchange...), not in a
> mail client? So if it's the sort of mail system that heeds those, that's
> done in a .forward file or similar.
>
> (If we're dealing with Microsoft 365 - it's in your settings.)
>
> Tina
>
> On 24/01/2025 14:34, Alexandre Ferreira Ramos via Beowulf wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have a friend who is ill and we need to configure his email
>> for automatically replying to messages. He uses mutt but we do not know
>> how to proceed to set this functionality. I am writing here with the
>> hope that someone is knowledgeable about mutt email system.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Alexandre
>>
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