/ Chris Green wrote on Sun 11.Nov'12 at 18:56:24 +0000 / > I was just looking at changing some of my muttrc settings and, as a > result, looked in the documentation for the mbox variable. It says:- > > mbox > > Type: path > Default: "~/mbox" > > This specifies the folder into which read mail in your `` $spoolfile'' > folder will be appended. > > So, what good is it? If one sets spoolfile then there's nothing more to > do is there and mbox is redundant. Or am I missing something obvious? > > ... or does it mean that mail will actually be *moved* from my spoolfile > to mbox as I read it? As it is I have:- > > set mbox=~/Mail > set spoolfile=~/Mail/In/inbox > > and as far as I can tell the mbox setting doesn't do anything at all. My > mail is delivered by a custom script to ~/Mail/In/inbox and various other > places which are specified in the mailboxes setting in muttrc. Does > even spoolfile add anything to this? > > > -- > Chris Green
I guess it comes from the code in the old mail(1) program where mail delivered to the system spoolfile, typically in /var/mail/$user , would then be moved into your home directory after being read which would usually have more diskspace than /var. These days many people have filtering programs and mta's deliver directly to a maildir or mbox in your home directory. Certainly maildirs are used in the home directory as the default spoolfile in /var is in mbox format I believe. I personally keep to the old way of doing things by using my system spoolfile in /var (actually I symlink it to /home/me/Mail/inbox and set the MAIL environment variable) and have mboxes in my home directory as I do use mail(1) a lot. it's useful for dealing with code diff's amongst other things, and it, unfortunately, doesn't support maildir format. In mutt i just set $move to no then the $mbox setting doesn't really do anything.
