At 15:40 -0400 19 Jul 2000, Michael Soulier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hey guys. I noticed that mutt creates .lock files while reading from
> mailboxes, as it should. At work here, we have some project accounts where
> multiple users are managing mail. I'm wondering about mutt's capabilities in
> this area, with respect to multiple users accessing the same mailboxes from
> the same account.
> I don't see anything in particular mentioned on this in the manual, so if
> someone could summarize it's multi-user features, that'd be great.
Mutt doesn't have any features specifically to allow multiple people to
use a mailbox. As you noted, it does lock the mailbox (through .lock
files and/or kernel locks); this is to prevent mutt and the MDA (message
delivery agent) from conflicting with each other, not to allow multiple
people to use a mailbox.
But, it really depends upon what type of features you need. Mutt will
allow multiple instances to access the same mailbox at once, and for the
most part it will do a pretty good job of merging the changes made by
each. It won't do anything to prevent multiple people from replying to
the same message or otherwise duplicating work.
At my employer, we use mutt for responding to messages to our helpdesk.
We often have several people doing this simultaneously, but only one
person is using each mailbox at any one time (this is enforced by a
wrapper script which also specifies a custom muttrc file). Instead, we
have people send different types of issues to different addresses and
thus different mailboxes. For some of the busier mailboxes, one person
goes through the main mailbox and splits it into several other boxes
(it's safe to save a message to a mailbox that's currently open in
another mutt).
--
Aaron Schrab [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.execpc.com/~aarons/
[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time. -- K&R
