INSTALL-MH(8mh)

NAME
install-mh - initialize the nmh environment

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lib/mh/install-mh [-help] [-version] [-auto] [-check]

DESCRIPTION
install-mh creates the initial setup for a first-time nmh user. install-mh is installed in two locations for historical reasons.

The -auto switch does things as automatically as possible and makes install-mh less chatty.

The user is prompted for the name of the directory to be designated as the user's nmh directory. If this directory does not exist, the user is asked if it should be created. Normally, this directory should be under the user's home directory, and has the default name of `Mail'. install-mh writes an initial .mh_profile for the user.

As with all nmh commands, install-mh first checks for the existence of the $MH environment variable, since that, if set, gives the profile path. If it isn't set, the $HOME environment variable is consulted to determine the user's home directory. If $HOME is not set, then the /etc/passwd file is consulted.

When creating the user's .mh_profile, install-mh will check for the existence of a global profile at /etc/nmh/mh.profile. If found, this will be used to initialize the new .mh_profile.

The -check switch checks if nmh is installed. (This can be used by other programs to determine if nmh has been installed.)

install-mh sets up the user's profile to support the mh-draft(5) draft folder facility.

FILES
$HOME/.mh_profile
    The user's profile.
/etc/nmh/mh.profile
    Used to initialize user's profile.

PROFILE COMPONENTS

Path:
    To set the user's nmh directory.

SEE ALSO
mh-draft(5)

CONTEXT
With -auto, the current folder is changed to “inbox”.

UNDOING THE INSTALLATION

If you only ran install-mh to try out nmh briefly, you might like to remove the configuration files it creates. (This is not obligatory -- install-mh creates only a few small files so simply leaving them in place will not cause problems.)

Most nmh configuration information lives in the user's nmh directory; you can print its name by running

mhpath +

Basically all plain files in the nmh directory are configuration files and can be removed.

Attention: The nmh directory holds not just configuration files! Its subdirectories contain all the emails you have written or received with nmh. Don't delete the nmh directory without carefully checking that there are no mail files that you might want later!

The only configuration file that lives outside the nmh directory is your profile file. You can print its name by running

echo ${MH:-$HOME/.mh-profile}

If you aren't using nmh any more you can delete this file, too.