On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 01:13:59PM +0100, Michael Tatge wrote: > Philip Mak muttered: > > "set mail_check" configures how often (in seconds) mutt should look > > for new mail. I have it set to 5, but new e-mail that I receive does > > *not* show up within 5 seconds. > > > > It seems that it only shows up if I press a key in mutt. > > mailboxes must be set > You have to find a balance between $mail_check and $timeout. See > sections 4.12. and 6.3.215. of the manual.
Thanks. $timeout was the problem; since timeout defaults to 600 seconds, mutt will only check mail every 10 minutes no matter how small $mail_check is, if I don't press a key! I would like to suggest that the phrase "See also timeout." or something similar be added to the definition of mail_check in section 6.3 of the manual. Otherwise, someone might not realize that a low value of mail_check may be useless if timeout is set too high.
