mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

gladstone · 2010-11-05 20:37:57

mutt frequently freezes if left inactive (such as when I'm reading or switch to a different app). Only a ^c and a relaunch solves it.

I'm using the Lifehacker Gmail config.

Frustrating! Any ideas?

jasonwryan · 2010-11-05 21:01:18

No, I've not experienced any issues with mutt - but many of us here used brisbin33's excellent guide to set up mutt: you might want to take a look at it:

http://pbrisbin.com/tags/Mutt/

brisbin33 · 2010-11-05 21:46:06

If I had to guess, I'd point to these lines:

set mail_check = 120
set timeout = 300
set imap_keepalive = 300

and advise you to `man muttrc` and investigate each of them. Though, I've heard mutt is buggy with native IMAP in general. My guide (and myself) advocates using offlineimap.

gladstone · 2010-11-07 09:38:07

Paraphrasing from `man muttrc`:

* mail_check specifies how often (in secs) it should look for new mail
* timeout how long mutt should block while waiting for user input
* imap_keepalive number of seconds to wait before mutt polls the IMAP server to prevent being disconnected

Of those, timeout -- while being a bit unclear -- seems relevant. I'll play around with it's value.

brisbin33 wrote:

My guide (and myself) advocates using offlineimap.

I haven't dived into offlineimap, but can it fetch only mail headers? Downloading 5GB+ of emails does make me stop and think, though I do agree it shouldn't really be mutt's job.

skanky · 2010-11-08 14:04:03

From memory (so I could be wrong), from the mutt mailing list, the issue mutt has with imap is that so many imap servers/services out there do not conform to the imap RFCs.
Doing a search for IMAP on the mutt mailing though will get a fair few results and may help solve the issue. http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.mail.mutt.user

EDIT: NB I don't use imap myself so can't help in any way other than point you to the above.

Last edited by skanky (2010-11-08 14:05:05)

brisbin33 · 2010-11-08 14:29:53

gladstone wrote:

can it fetch only mail headers? Downloading 5GB+ of emails does make me stop and think, though I do agree it shouldn't really be mutt's job.

it'll only do that once. from then on, you have a local and remote copy of all your mails and offlineimap just keeps them in syc. think rsync vs cp. the first rsync will be slow as hell but after that it's just incremental updates.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-11-05 20:37:57

mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

#2 2010-11-05 21:01:18

Re: mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

#3 2010-11-05 21:46:06

Re: mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

#4 2010-11-07 09:38:07

Re: mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

#5 2010-11-08 14:04:03

Re: mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

#6 2010-11-08 14:29:53

Re: mutt frequently becomes unresponsive

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