Using Mutt at UCD

Mutt is an e-mail client. It is more powerful, more configurable, more secure, faster, and in other ways superior to Pine, which is the e-mail client that many UCD students use when they access their campus e-mail. (The web interface is also popular -- I don't know why; it appears to be even less powerful than Pine.)

Unfortunately, while Mutt is installed on nearly all the Linux computers here, it is not configured and won't work well -- or at all -- until you take some steps to set it up. It took me awhile to figure out how to do this, but I've got it working very well now, so if you're interested in trying out Mutt, you can take advantage of my blood, sweat, and tears.

Setting up a .muttrc

First, telnet or ssh to isun.ucdavis.edu (I'm assuming you're enlisted in the campus service ISUN -- if you aren't, it's easy to add the service to your account from the Computing Account Services page.) Run Pine, and write down the name of the server that asks for your username and password. Mine's pop16.ucdavis.edu.

Mutt uses a configuration file called .muttrc in your home directory. Create this file by hand, and put the below text in it (you'll probably want to add more later -- this is a minimal setup):

set spoolfile = {pop16.ucdavis.edu/ssl}INBOX
set folder = {pop16.ucdavis.edu/ssl}
set imap_user = william
set imap_pass = ife*9_ui

Obviously, you'll want to replace william and ife*9_ui with your username and password. You don't have to use the imap_user or imap_pass lines, but if you don't, you'll need to enter your username and password every time you start mutt. If you do use the lines, be sure that you chmod 600 your .muttrc file so that no one else (besides root) can read it.

The /ssl bit is cool -- it encrypts your session with the IMAP server so that malicious users with packet sniffers can't get at your e-mail.

Try typing in man muttrc at a shell prompt to read about the (many) other settings you can include in your .muttrc file.

Using mutt

There are already a host of excellent Mutt tutorials on the Web, so I won't try to write another one. Here are a few to get you started:

Our own Professor Matloff's introduction to Mutt
My First Mutt
A Man and His Mutt
Official Mutt home page

Some notes on using IMAP under Mutt

The instructions I've given you use IMAP. IMAP is a mail protocol that -- among other cool features -- permits you to organize your mail on folders on the mail server, rather than your local hard disk. This means that you can use good software like Mutt to access the folders, yet have those folders available on any computer. Many popular e-mail software packages can access IMAP folders.

There is already a good tutorial for using Mutt under IMAP, and it's worth reading.

One important fact to remember: in Mutt, folder names that start with = are server-side folders. If you save mail to a folder called important-mail, you are saving to your local machine. If you save mail to a folder called =important-mail, you are saving to the mail server. Always save to the mail server unless you only want to be able to view your saved messages on the machine you saved them on!

Integrating Mutt with GnuPG

One of Mutt's best features is its near-seamless integration with GPG (or GnuPG -- the "Gnu Privacy Guard"), an open-source, PGP-compatible cryptography program. If you want to send e-mail securely, you should use this feature. I'm not quite good enough at this to write a decent tutorial on it, but here are a few links to get you started if you're interested in giving it a shot:

E-mail security using Mutt and GPG
GPG and Mutt
GPG homepage