Setting Up MH
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Before you use MH, your UNIX account needs to be set up.
Log in and get a shell prompt (which I'll show as
a percent sign (%); yours might be different).
If you're using the X Window System, open an xterm window (a terminal
or command window) where you get a shell prompt.
Type the following command at the prompt:
% folder +inbox
If the answer is something like folder: Command not
found then the MH commands aren't in your shell search path
or they haven't been installed on your system.
(Here is help setting your search path.)
Your system administrator can help you find the MH commands -- or install them.
-
If you haven't used MH before, it will automatically run the command
install-mh(8)
to make an .mh_profile
setup file.
(If your system administrator has made a file named mh.profile
in the MH library directory, it will be copied into your .mh_profile.)
Then, it will ask you two questions; answer y
(for "yes") to both questions:
% folder +inbox
Your MH-directory "/xxx/Mail" doesn't exist; Create it? y
Create folder "/xxx/Mail/inbox"? y
inbox+ has no messages.
Now, if you go to your home directory and type ls -a,
you should see a directory named Mail and a file named
.mh_profile.
You're all set.
-
If you've used MH before or if the system administrator already set up your
account for MH, something like this will happen:
% folder +inbox
inbox+ has 5 messages ( 1- 5); cur= 5.
At this point, it's a good idea to be sure that your .mh_profile
file isn't left over from MH before Version 5.
(Except, of course, if your computer is still running an old MH version.
If you aren't sure, see the Section
The -help Switches.)
Look through the file with a UNIX command like cat, more or
pg:
% cat .mh_profile
Path: Mail
Folder-protect: 700
Msg-protect: 600
...
Current-folder: xxx
...
If you see a Current-folder: entry, like the one above,
use a text editor (vi, emacs, and so on) to delete it from
the .mh_profile.
That entry is left over from MH before Version 5, and it can cause some
warning messages when you run newer MH commands.
(MH used to keep track of the current folder name in the .mh_profile
file.
Now it uses a file named context in the MH directory instead.)
If there are entries besides Path:, Folder-protect: and
Msg-Protect: in your .mh_profile
and you didn't put them there, you may want to "comment out" those extra
entries so that MH will ignore them.
That way, when you use MH, you won't be confused by commands that work
differently than you expect.
An easy way to "comment out" an entry is by putting a few uppercase X's before
it, like this:
XXXrepl: -annotate
Later, after you have more experience with MH, you may want to delete the
Xs.
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