1MU(1) General Commands Manual MU(1)
2
6 mu - a set of tools to deal with Maildirs and message files, in partic‐
7 ular to index and search e-mail messages.
8
11 mu [COMMON-OPTIONS] [[COMMAND] [COMMAND-OPTIONS]]
12 For information about the commmon options, see COMMON OPTIONS.
15
18 mu is the general command shows help about the specific commands:
19 — add: add specific messages to the database.
22 — cfind: find contacts
24 — extract: extract attachments and other MIME-parts
26 — find: find messages in the database
28 — help: get help for some command
30 — index: (re)index the messages in a Maildir
32 — info: show information about the mu database
34 — init: initialize the mu database
36 — mkdir: create a new Maildir
38 — remove: remove specific messages from the database
40 — server: start a server process (for mu4e-internal use)
42 — view: view a specific message
44 Each of the commands have their own manpage mu-<command~>.
47 mu is a set of tools for dealing with Maildirs and the e-mail messages
50 in them.
51 mu's main purpose is to enable searching of e-mail messages. It does so
54 by periodically scanning a Maildir directory tree and analyzing the e-
55 mail messages found (this is called 'indexing'). The results of this
56 analysis are stored in a database, which can then be queried.
57 In addition to indexing and searching, mu also offers functionality for
60 viewing messages, extracting attachments and creating maildirs, and
61 searching and exporting contact information.
62 mu can be used from the command line or can be integrated with various
65 e-mail clients.
66 This manpage gives a general overview of the available commands (index,
69 find, etc.); each mu command has its own man-page as well.
70
73 Some mu commands support colorized output, and do so by default. If you
74 don't want colors, you can use --nocolor.
75
78 mu's output is in the current locale, with the exceptions of the output
79 specifically meant for output to UTF8-encoded files. In practice, this
80 means that the output of commands index, view, extract is always en‐
81 coded according to the current locale.
82 The same is true for find and cfind, with some exceptions, where the
85 output is always UTF-8, regardless of the locale:
86 — For cfind the exception is --format=bbdb. This is hard-coded to
89 UTF-8, and as such specified in the output-file, so emacs/bbdb can
90 handle it correctly without guessing.
91 — For find the output is encoded according the locale for --for‐
93 mat=plain (the default), and UTF-8 for all other formats.
94
97 Commands mu index and find and cfind work with the database, while the
98 other ones work on individual mail files. Hence, running view, mkdir
99 and extract does not require the mu database.
100
103 -d, --debug
104 makes mu generate extra debug information, useful for debugging the
105 program itself. By default, debug information goes to the log file,
106 ~/.cache/mu/mu.log. It can safely be deleted when mu is not running.
107 When running with --debug option, the log file can grow rather quickly.
108 See the note on logging below.
109 -q, --quiet
112 causes mu not to output informational messages and progress information
113 to standard output, but only to the log file. Error messages will still
114 be sent to standard error. Note that mu index is much faster with
115 --quiet, so it is recommended you use this option when using mu from
116 scripts etc.
117 --log-stderr
120 causes mu to not output log messages to standard error, in addition to
121 sending them to the log file.
122 --nocolor
125 do not use ANSI colors. The environment variable NO_COLOR can be used
126 as an alternative to --nocolor.
127 -V, --version
130 prints mu version and copyright information.
131 -h, --help
134 lists the various command line options.
135
138 This command returns 0 upon successful completion, or a non-zero exit
139 code otherwise. Typical values are 2 (no matches found), 11 (database
140 schema mismatch) and 12 (failed to acquire database lock).
141 no matches found (2)
144 Nothing matching found; try a different query
145 database schema mismatch (11)
148 You need to re-initialize mu, see mu-init(1)
149 failed to acquire lock (19)
152 Some other program has exclusive access to the mu (Xapian) database
153
156 Please report bugs at https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues.
157
160 Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>
161
164 This manpage is part of mu 1.10.5.
165 Copyright © 2022-2023 Dirk-Jan C. Binnema. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL ver‐
168 sion 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html. This is free soft‐
169 ware: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY,
170 to the extent permitted by law.
171
174 mu-add(1), mu-cfind(1), mu-extract(1), mu-find(1), mu-help(1), mu-in‐
175 dex(1), mu-info(1), mu-init(1), mu-mkdir(1), mu-remove(1),
176 mu-server(1), mu-view(1), mu-query(7), mu-easy(1)
177 MU(1)