Store Mails in External Disk

Post by Jaydip C
Hi,
I have installed Neomutt on Arch Linux using Luke Smith's Mutt-Wizard.
It's working fine. I am storing all my emails in my local laptop's
~/.config/mutt/accounts folder which is mentioned in my .muttrc file.
But I have thousands of emails. And very soon there will be some space
problem. So I wanted to change the location of storing the mails. I
intend to store them on an external hard disk. But when I write the
location of external disk in my .muttrc, Neomutt gives me error as
"Cannot execute .muttrc file".
Is there any way to config this?
Please help.

I think you must have some sort of misconfiguration of where things
are. It should be quite easy to do what you want.

What hve you actually put in your .muttrc file? You could post the
whole thing here, less passwords and anything else private of course.

This newsgroup is pretty quiet by the way, the mutt mailing list is
much more active.

--
Chris Green
·

Jaydip C

2021-07-27 17:22:22 UTC

I think you must have some sort of misconfiguration of where things
are. It should be quite easy to do what you want.
What hve you actually put in your .muttrc file? You could post the
whole thing here, less passwords and anything else private of course.
This newsgroup is pretty quiet by the way, the mutt mailing list is
much more active.

Thanks for your reply.
I have some cloud drives, like Google, NextCloud, Mega etc. I configured
Rclone to automount them in home directory. I created a directory "Mutt"
in my "NextCloud" directory.
Now in my gmx muttrc, which is sourced from original
~/.config/mutt/muttrc, in place of 'set folder =
"~/.local/share/mail/***@gmx.com"', I put 'set folder =
"~/NextCloud/Mutt/***@gmx.com"'. But then when I started Neomutt,
it says, "Cannot source ***@gmx.com.muttrc from muttrc". Then it
asked if it should create the necessary directories. When I typed "Yes",
it created all the mailboxes except Inbox. And I cannot see any emails
in any mail folders.
I know I am missing something.

Also how do I access mutt mailing list?

Thanks again.

Chris Green

2021-07-27 18:17:02 UTC

I think you must have some sort of misconfiguration of where things
are. It should be quite easy to do what you want.
What hve you actually put in your .muttrc file? You could post the
whole thing here, less passwords and anything else private of course.
This newsgroup is pretty quiet by the way, the mutt mailing list is
much more active.

That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't exist or
isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/***@gmx.comk

what do you see? I wonder if the @ in the file name is causing the
problem?

Post by Jaydip C
asked if it should create the necessary directories. When I typed "Yes",
it created all the mailboxes except Inbox. And I cannot see any emails
in any mail folders.
I know I am missing something.
Also how do I access mutt mailing list?

Go to mutt.org and scroll down to the link for 'Mailing Lists', on the
page that takes you to there are links to subscribe, etc. You want
the mutt_users mailing list.

--
Chris Green
·

Jaydip C

2021-07-28 06:27:53 UTC

Post by Jaydip C
Hi,
I have installed Neomutt on Arch Linux using Luke Smith's
Mutt-Wizard.
It's working fine. I am storing all my emails in my local laptop's
~/.config/mutt/accounts folder which is mentioned in my .muttrc
file. But I have thousands of emails. And very soon there will be
some space problem. So I wanted to change the location of storing
the mails. I intend to store them on an external hard disk. But when
I write the location of external disk in my .muttrc, Neomutt gives
me error as "Cannot execute .muttrc file".
Is there any way to config this?
Please help.

I think you must have some sort of misconfiguration of where things
are. It should be quite easy to do what you want.
What hve you actually put in your .muttrc file? You could post the
whole thing here, less passwords and anything else private of course.
This newsgroup is pretty quiet by the way, the mutt mailing list is
much more active.

That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't exist
or isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
problem?

Go to mutt.org and scroll down to the link for 'Mailing Lists', on the
page that takes you to there are links to subscribe, etc. You want the
mutt_users mailing list.

You are right. I don't see anything there.

ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/
total 0

So what needs to be changed?

Thanks.

Chris Green

2021-07-28 08:10:30 UTC

Post by Chris Green
That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't exist
or isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
problem?

[snip]

Post by Jaydip C
You are right. I don't see anything there.
ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/
total 0
So what needs to be changed?

That's nothing to do with mutt or your muttrc.

If you can't see the file ***@gmx.comk from the command line then
mutt isn't going to be able to see it either.

I still think that @ sign may be an issue. Also are there any case
sensitivity issues there?

Did you just edit the file ***@gmx.comk locally and then copy it
to the remote storage or what exactly? Try creating a file with no
special characters in the name (my standard test file name is "fred")
and, if that works in terms of being able to see it then work slowly
from that simple name to the one you are trying and see what breaks
things.

--
Chris Green
·

Jaydip C

2021-07-28 16:40:21 UTC

Post by Chris Green
That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't
exist or isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
problem?

[snip]

Post by Jaydip C
You are right. I don't see anything there.
ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/
total 0
So what needs to be changed?

That's nothing to do with mutt or your muttrc.
mutt isn't going to be able to see it either.
sensitivity issues there?
the remote storage or what exactly? Try creating a file with no special
characters in the name (my standard test file name is "fred") and, if
that works in terms of being able to see it then work slowly from that
simple name to the one you are trying and see what breaks things.

As suggested, I changed the folder name from ***@gmx.com to gmx. I
also created the folder gmx in ~/NextCloud/Mutt/ directory. now when I run
mbsync -a, I get error "Maildir error: cannot read UIDVALIDITY". Also it
gives me error "Error: channel ***@gmx.com: near side box INBOX
cannot be opened". That error is there for all the mail folders. Although,
I found all the direcotories have been created. But when I start Neomutt,
I don't see any emails in the Inbox.

Thanks.

Chris Green

2021-07-28 19:42:51 UTC

Post by Chris Green
That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't
exist or isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
problem?

[snip]

Post by Jaydip C
You are right. I don't see anything there.
ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/
total 0
So what needs to be changed?

also created the folder gmx in ~/NextCloud/Mutt/ directory. now when I run
mbsync -a, I get error "Maildir error: cannot read UIDVALIDITY". Also it
cannot be opened". That error is there for all the mail folders. Although,
I found all the direcotories have been created. But when I start Neomutt,
I don't see any emails in the Inbox.

You are getting farther and farther from mutt problems! :-)

When using maildir remember that many systems create *all* their
maildirs in one directory with the 'folder' names being part of very
long directory names separated by dots.

E.g. if you have maildir mailboxes in sub-folders of a directory
called root what you will actually see is directories as follows:-

root.folder1
root.folder2
root.folder3.sub-folder3

Then, inside these directories are the cur, new and tmp directories
that make up a maildir mailbox. Trying to manage this sort of thing
across an interface to cloud storage can be fraught with difficulties.

The error about "... near side box INBOX cannot be opened" sounds like
it's talking about imap4, yet another can of worms IMHO.

I think you need to try and simplify what you are doing and work your
way up to what you want.

--
Chris Green
·

Jaydip C

2021-07-30 09:12:25 UTC

Post by Chris Green
That says to me that, for whatever reason, the file either doesn't
exist or isn't visible to mutt. If you exit mutt and do:-
the problem?

[snip]

Post by Jaydip C
You are right. I don't see anything there.
ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/
total 0
So what needs to be changed?

That's nothing to do with mutt or your muttrc.
then mutt isn't going to be able to see it either.
sensitivity issues there?
to the remote storage or what exactly? Try creating a file with no
special characters in the name (my standard test file name is "fred")
and, if that works in terms of being able to see it then work slowly
from that simple name to the one you are trying and see what breaks
things.

also created the folder gmx in ~/NextCloud/Mutt/ directory. now when I
run mbsync -a, I get error "Maildir error: cannot read UIDVALIDITY".
INBOX cannot be opened". That error is there for all the mail folders.
Although,
I found all the direcotories have been created. But when I start
Neomutt, I don't see any emails in the Inbox.

You are getting farther and farther from mutt problems! :-)
When using maildir remember that many systems create *all* their
maildirs in one directory with the 'folder' names being part of very
long directory names separated by dots.
E.g. if you have maildir mailboxes in sub-folders of a directory called
root what you will actually see is directories as follows:-
root.folder1 root.folder2 root.folder3.sub-folder3
Then, inside these directories are the cur, new and tmp directories that
make up a maildir mailbox. Trying to manage this sort of thing across
an interface to cloud storage can be fraught with difficulties.
The error about "... near side box INBOX cannot be opened" sounds like
it's talking about imap4, yet another can of worms IMHO.
I think you need to try and simplify what you are doing and work your
way up to what you want.

Now I can see all the mailboxes in neomutt. I don't see any mails in them.
So I guess my .muttrc file is okay.
Whenever I issue command 'mbsync -a', I get error

Maildir error: cannot read UIDVALIDITY.
Error: channel ***@gmx.com: near side box INBOX cannot be opened.

So here is my .mbsyncrc file. Please have a look and suggest if it's okay.

IMAPStore ***@gmx.com-remote
Host imap.gmx.net
Port 993
User ***@gmx.com
PassCmd "pass ***@gmx.com"
AuthMechs LOGIN
SSLType IMAPS
CertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

MaildirStore ***@gmx.com-local
Subfolders Verbatim
Path /home/jaydipc/NextCloud/Mutt/gmx/
Inbox /home/jaydipc/NextCloud/Mutt/gmx/INBOX

Channel ***@gmx.com
Expunge Both
Master :***@gmx.com-remote:
Slave :***@gmx.com-local:
Patterns * !"[Gmail]/All Mail"
Create Both
SyncState *
MaxMessages 0
ExpireUnread no
# End profile

Thanks.

Chris Green

2021-07-30 09:28:58 UTC

Post by Jaydip C
Now I can see all the mailboxes in neomutt. I don't see any mails in them.
So I guess my .muttrc file is okay.
Whenever I issue command 'mbsync -a', I get error
Maildir error: cannot read UIDVALIDITY.
So here is my .mbsyncrc file. Please have a look and suggest if it's okay.

I know nothing about mbsync, you need to ask elsewhere, start at:-

https://isync.sourceforge.io/

--
Chris Green
·

Jaydip C

2021-07-31 03:29:36 UTC

I know nothing about mbsync, you need to ask elsewhere, start at:-
https://isync.sourceforge.io/

I got it figured out. I copied the mw file to mymw file. I changed the
bash script. In maildir location, I put my Nextcloud folder. Changed same
for .mbsyncrc file. Now it works.

Thanks for all the advices.

Keith Thompson

2021-07-27 21:21:21 UTC

I think you must have some sort of misconfiguration of where things
are. It should be quite easy to do what you want.
What hve you actually put in your .muttrc file? You could post the
whole thing here, less passwords and anything else private of course.
This newsgroup is pretty quiet by the way, the mutt mailing list is
much more active.

Your excerpts from your .muttrc file are line-wrapped, which makes it
difficult to tell exactly what you really have in the file. And you've
shown us only the excerpts that you assume are relevant -- but as you
say, you don't know what the problem is.

If you don't want to share your .muttrc file (and anything it sources),
perhaps you can reduce it to a smaller version that reproduces the
problem and show us that.

As Chris Green suggested, the first thing to do is to verify that you
can access ~/NextCloud/Mutt/***@gmx.com from your shell:

ls -l ~/NextCloud/Mutt/***@gmx.com

If there's a problem with that file, I'd expect a more specific error
message than "Cannot source ..." from mutt. You apparently have a
"source" command in your .muttrc. Mutt isn't complaining about
~/NextCloud/Mutt/***@gmx.com
It's complaining about
***@gmx.com.muttrc
My guess is that you have a syntax error somwhere in your .muttrc or in
something it refers to.

The string "Cannot source" does not occur anywhere in the current
neomutt source code, and there are no occurrences of "Cannot" that are
not followed by something other than "source". In other words, I don't
see how neomutt could have produced that message. Are you sure that's
*exactly* what it printed? If you want to show us an error message,
copy-and-paste it, don't re-type it.

I presume that your ~/NextCloud directory is actually a separate file
system. If it's not, if it's just synchronized with NextCloud, then
it's going to take up just as much space on your local file system.

Another solution would be to leave your .muttrc alone and make the
folder directory a symbolic link. But that's not going to help with the
problem you're reporting.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+***@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Philips
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

Jaydip C

2021-07-28 06:49:39 UTC

Post by Keith Thompson