Linux Desktop Hacks

Read Yahoo! Mail from Any Email Client #56

Chapter 8, Desktop Programs

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179

HACK

The most important parts to configure are at the top of the file. Like many

other Linux configuration files, each option has the format

option_keyword =

setting

. For example, username = johnsmith sets the username option to

johnsmith. To get started, you need to set the username and password

options to your Yahoo! account settings (you don’t need to put these set-

tings in double quotes, as with other configuration files). It is also advisable

that you set

use-https = 1 to ensure secure communications between your

computer and the mail server.

The spool option is another important setting. This indicates where your

mail spool (the place where your mail is stored) is located on your Linux sys-

tem. Most distributions place this in a file with your account name inside

the /var/spool/mail/ directory. As an example, the user

bob would have his

mail spool at /var/spool/mail/bob. To check this, have a poke around /var/

spool/mail and see if the username exists in there—every user should have a

mail spool file. If you don’t have a mail spool (such as if your mail client

cannot read mail from a spool), you can have the mail stored in maildir for-

mat by adding a slash (/) to the spool setting (e.g., /var/spool/mail/); this

directory will contain the mailbox.

A variety of other options are in the configuration file, and each one