Re: experience setting up gnus for the first time

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> Carson Chittom <carson@wistly.net> writes:
>
>> Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
>>
>>> This was less obvious.  Getting SMTP to work required identifying a
>>> whole slew of variables, with the various settings shown here.  I am not
>>> yet sure which of these are superfluous but this full set did enable
>>> both fetching and sending of emails.  The annoying aspect is having the
>>> same information (e.g. mail address, server) repeated in the
>>> configuration.
>>
>> I'm using the Gnus bundled with Emacs 24, rather than from the git
>> repository, but the first time I tried to send a message, Emacs asked me
>> whether I wanted to use /usr/bin/sendmail, SMTP, or...there was one
>> other option, which I forget.  Having selected SMTP, it prompted me for
>> the correct values (server name and so on) and set them in ~/.emacs, and
>> I never had to manually configure anything.  Not sure why it didn't work
>> for you?
>
> To be fair, the difficulties could be due to my using the Live@ system
> from Microsoft where the server name and the domain name are completely
> different, as are the userid and the actual email address.  In any case,
> I don't know.  The system did prompt for some fields but these were not
> enough.  I wish I had taken notes but I didn't.
>
> It would be useful to know what variables Emacs set for your
> configuration.  Maybe post them?  
>
> I posted the above in the hope that, if anybody else that has any
> problems, they will see what variables may need setting.
>
> And I should make it clear that I wasn't complaining.  It was simply
> that fetching email was very straightforward whereas sending was
> somewhat less so which surprised me.

It was only after using gnus that I first realized that the processes of
sending and receiving mail were completely separate, that was definitely
a surprise. Right now I use msmtp in linux to handle mail sending, which
means far less configuration in gnus, but the exact same variables still
have to be set in .msmtprc. I don't think there's any way around that!
Automation is the most you can hope for.

Eric