Panix Help System: Using Pine on Panix

Using Pine with the Panix Mail System

In general, you are best off using the system default settings for mail retrieval with Pine. However, if you wish to configure it yourself, here are the correct settings for the various methods.

IMAP versus maildir

The difference is subtle enough that it goes by most people who aren't technically interested. Using Pine as an IMAP client tells it to look for mail on a mail server. Using it with maildir lets it pretend that the mail you're reading is on the host you're logged into. If your mailbox is very big and Pine is loading very slowly, you might want to try using the Maildir setup. Otherwise, don't worry about it.

IMAP:

1. .pinerc changes

Your inbox should be set like this for IMAP mail:

      inbox-path={localhost}INBOX

If you want Pine to handle IMAP folders as well as the folders already in your "mail" directory, change your "folder-collections" setting like this:

   folder-collections=mail/[],
                      "IMAP folders" {localhost}INBOX.[]

(The "mail/[]" folder collection will already be there. Just add the comma and the second line, so Pine will let you see your IMAP folders too.)

2. Changes in usage

Pine may take a bit longer to show you your INBOX now, especially if it's very big. That's the tradeoff for having your mail visible in Webmail, and for having IMAP access. If this gets very annoying, the only alternative right now is to switch to Mutt and read mail using direct NFS access to .maildir.
But that's just about all! Oh, since you're saving mail over IMAP now, you cannot use dots in your folder names. A minor issue.

Maildir:

From the Pine main menu, press "s" for Setup, then "c" for Config.
Arrow down to the "inbox-path" setting, and press ENTER.
For "Name of Inbox server", just press ENTER (leave it blank).
For "Folder name to use for INBOX", type:
$HOME/.maildir/
Press "e" to exit the setup, saving your changes. Now your Pine INBOX will be read directly.