[Techtalk] Mutt Attachments display

[Subba Rao]

On  0, Mary Gardiner <linuxchix at puzzling.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 01:55:51PM -0400, Subba Rao wrote:
> > Is there anyway to indicate mail with attachments in the index? My main concern
> > is that, I believe, mail is sent with virus file attachments. My mailbox format
> > is Maildir type. There are several files to scan for viruses. My IDS logs
> > indicate that there are virus signatures from my ISP's POP server traffic. How
> > can I display mail with attachments?
> 
> The index is set via the "set index_format" directive in your .muttrc
> 
> See the (incredibly comprehensive) mutt manual.txt for details on this
> directive, but no, there is no option to flag a messge that has an
> attachment in the mailbox.
> 
> Why must it be indicated in the index? Opening the mail shouldn't
> activate the viruses, unless you've got some very comprehensive
> auto_view settings in your .muttrc or the system's /etc/Muttrc
> 
> I'm still under the impression that most of the virii around today are
> Windows specific, and afaik mutt doesn't have a Windows port, so you
> should be safe enough, even opening them. Or are these Linux viruses of
> some kind.
> 

I agree that most virii are Windows specific. That is where I feel so proud
for staying with Linux and not suffer so much downtime. One disgusting fact
that I am finding is that lot of the Linux users are still communicating via
Windows clients. That means, when they get infected, they mail the virus from
their Outlook (most likely) to the mailing list. Although the Virus is inactive
on my Linux, I do like to know who sent it. 

The version Mutt 1.3.23i with the attachments patch at
 
        http://home.uchicago.edu/~dgc/mutt/
 
will show the mail with attachments in Mutt + Maildir format much more
easily. The index_format string needs something like %?V?*& ?%Z. Thanks to
the author David Champion for his help.

-- 

Subba Rao
subba9 at home.com                     http://members.home.net/subba9/
OpenPGP/GPG public key ID CCB7344E

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