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MU(1) General Commands Manual MU(1) NAME mu - a set of tools to deal with Maildirs and message files, in partic- ular to index and search e-mail messages. SYNOPSIS mu [COMMON-OPTIONS] [[COMMAND] [COMMAND-OPTIONS]] For information about the common options, see COMMON OPTIONS. DESCRIPTION mu is the general command that shows help about the specific commands: -- add: add specific messages to the database. -- cfind: find contacts -- extract: extract attachments and other MIME-parts -- find: find messages in the database -- help: get help for some command -- index: (re)index the messages in a Maildir -- info: show information about the mu database -- init: initialize the mu database -- mkdir: create a new Maildir -- remove: remove specific messages from the database -- server: start a server process (for mu4e-internal use) -- view: view a specific message Each of the commands have their own manpage mu-<command>. mu is a set of tools for dealing with Maildirs and the e-mail messages in them. mu's main purpose is to enable searching of e-mail messages. It does so by periodically scanning a Maildir directory tree and analyzing the e- mail messages found (this is called `indexing'). The results of this analysis are stored in a database, which can then be queried. In addition to indexing and searching, mu also offers functionality for viewing messages, extracting attachments and creating maildirs, and searching and exporting contact information. mu can be used from the command line or can be integrated with various e-mail clients. This manpage gives a general overview of the available commands (index, find, etc.); each mu command has its own man-page as well. COLORS Some mu commands support colorized output, and do so by default when writing to a TTY (roughly, to a screen). When not writing to a TTY, for instance when redirection the output to a file or using a pipe, the de- fault is to not show output. If you don no want colors, you can use --nocolor. If you want colors even when it is not the default, use --no- color=false. ENCODING mu's output is in the current locale, with the exceptions of the output specifically meant for output to UTF8-encoded files. In practice, this means that the output of commands index, view, extract is always en- coded according to the current locale. The same is true for find and cfind, with some exceptions, where the output is always UTF-8, regardless of the locale: -- For cfind the exception is --format=bbdb. This is hard-coded to UTF-8, and as such specified in the output-file, so emacs/bbdb can handle it correctly without guessing. -- For find the output is encoded according the locale for --for- mat=plain (the default), and UTF-8 for all other formats. DATABASE AND FILE The index, find, and cfind commands work with the database, while the other ones work on individual mail files. Hence, running view, mkdir and extract does not require the mu database. LOGGING mu logs to the standard logging location, which is either the systemd journal, syslog or a log file (by default, ~/.cache/mu/mu.log), depend- ing on your *system's setup; the first that appears to be working is used. When using a log file, it can safely be deleted when mu is not running. When running with --debug option, the log file can grow rather quickly. See the note on logging below. COMMON OPTIONS -d, --debug Makes mu generate extra debug information, useful for debugging the program itself. Debug information goes to the standard logging loca- tion; see mu(1). -q, --quiet Causes mu not to output informational messages and progress information to standard output, but only to the log file. Error messages will still be sent to standard error. Note that mu index is much faster with --quiet, so it is recommended you use this option when using mu from scripts etc. --log-stderr Causes mu to not output log messages to standard error, in addition to sending them to the standard logging location. --nocolor Do not use ANSI colors. The environment variable NO_COLOR can be used as an alternative to --nocolor. -V, --version Prints mu version and copyright information. -h, --help Lists the various command line options. EXIT CODE This command returns 0 upon successful completion, or a non-zero exit code otherwise. 0. success 2. no matches found. Try a different query 11. database schema mismatch. You need to re-initialize mu, see mu- init(1) 19. failed to acquire lock. Some other program has exclusive access to the mu database 99. caught an exception REPORTING BUGS Please report bugs at https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues. AUTHOR Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl> COPYRIGHT This manpage is part of mu 1.12.15. Copyright 2008-2026 Dirk-Jan C. Binnema. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL ver- sion 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html. This is free soft- ware: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO mu-add(1), mu-cfind(1), mu-extract(1), mu-find(1), mu-help(1), mu-in- dex(1), mu-info(1), mu-init(1), mu-mkdir(1), mu-remove(1), mu- server(1), mu-view(1), mu-query(7), mu-easy(1) MU(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COLORS | ENCODING | DATABASE AND FILE | LOGGING | COMMON OPTIONS | EXIT CODE | REPORTING BUGS | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO
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