1NOTMUCH-SETUP(1)                    notmuch                   NOTMUCH-SETUP(1)
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NAME

6       notmuch-setup - getting started with notmuch
7

SYNOPSIS

9       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Notmuch  is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read‐
13       ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.
14
15       This page describes how to get started using notmuch from  the  command
16       line,  and  gives  a brief overview of the commands available. For more
17       information on e.g. notmuch show consult  the  notmuch-show  man  page,
18       also accessible via notmuch help show
19
20       The  quickest  way  to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
21       notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively  guide  you
22       through the process of indexing your mail.
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NOTE

25       While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality,
26       it does not provide the most convenient interface for that  functional‐
27       ity.  More  sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
28       either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of  the  not‐
29       much  library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for more about al‐
30       ternate interfaces to notmuch. The  emacs-based  interface  to  notmuch
31       (available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
32       the most widely used at this time.
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OPTIONS

35       Supported global options for notmuch include
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37       --help [command-name]
38              Print a synopsis of available commands and  exit.  With  an  op‐
39              tional command name, show the man page for that subcommand.
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41       --version
42              Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
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44       --config=FILE
45              Specify  the  configuration file to use. This overrides any con‐
46              figuration file specified by NOTMUCH_CONFIG. The empty string is
47              a permitted and sometimes useful value of FILE, which tells not‐
48              much to use only configuration metadata from the database.
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50       --uuid=HEX
51              Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier  which  per‐
52              sists until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an
53              error if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modifi‐
54              cation  counts  on  messages.  You can find this UUID using e.g.
55              notmuch count --lastmod
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57       All global options except --config can also be specified after the com‐
58       mand.  For example, notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to not‐
59       much --uuid=HEX subcommand.
60

COMMANDS

62   SETUP
63       The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for  first  use,
64       (or to reconfigure it later).
65
66       The  setup  command  will prompt for your full name, your primary email
67       address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory  con‐
68       taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu‐
69       ration file in NOTMUCH_CONFIG (if  set)  or  ${HOME}/.notmuch-config  .
70       This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak‐
71       ing it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration.  Or  you
72       can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.
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74       The  mail  directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directo‐
75       ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes‐
76       sages  (eg.  maildir  or  mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
77       non-email files (such as indexes maintained by  other  email  programs)
78       then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
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80       Mail  storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
81       messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is  cur‐
82       rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
83       with a utility such as mb2md(1) before running notmuch setup.
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85       Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if  the  setup
86       command has not previously been completed.
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88   OTHER COMMANDS
89       Several  of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syn‐
90       tax. See notmuch-search-terms for more details on the supported syntax.
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92       The notmuch-search,  notmuch-show,  notmuch-address  and  notmuch-count
93       commands are used to query the email database.
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95       The  notmuch-reply  command  is  useful for preparing a template for an
96       email reply.
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98       The notmuch-tag command is the only command available for  manipulating
99       database contents.
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101       The  notmuch-dump  and notmuch-restore commands can be used to create a
102       textual dump of email tags for backup purposes,  and  to  restore  from
103       that dump.
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105       The  notmuch-config  command  can be used to get or set settings in the
106       notmuch configuration file.
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108   EXTERNAL COMMANDS
109       If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to  execute
110       the external notmuch-<subcommand> in PATH instead. This allows users to
111       have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch command.
112       By  design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be overridden
113       using external commands.  The environment variable NOTMUCH_CONFIG  will
114       be set according to --config, if the latter is present.
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116   OPTION SYNTAX
117       All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a sep‐
118       arator. Except for boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a  space
119       can also be used as a separator. The following are all equivalent:
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121          notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
122          notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
123          notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
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DUPLICATE MESSAGE FILES

126       Notmuch  considers  the Message-ID to be the primary identifier of mes‐
127       sage. Per RFC 5322 the Message-ID is supposed to  be  globally  unique,
128       but  this fails in two distinct ways. When you receive copies of a mes‐
129       sage via a mechanism like Cc or via a mailing list, the copies are typ‐
130       ically  interchangeable.  In the case of some broken mail sending soft‐
131       ware, the same Message-ID is used for  completely  unrelated  messages.
132       The options search --duplicate and show --duplicate options provide the
133       user with control over which message file is displayed. Front ends will
134       need  to  provide  their  own  interface,  see e.g. the Emacs front-end
135       Dealing with duplicates.
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ENVIRONMENT

138       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
139       of notmuch.
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141       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
142              Specifies  the  location  of the notmuch configuration file. See
143              notmuch-config for details.
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145       NOTMUCH_DATABASE
146              Specifies  the   location   of   the   notmuch   database.   See
147              notmuch-config for details.
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149       NOTMUCH_PROFILE
150              Selects among notmuch configurations. See notmuch-config for de‐
151              tails.
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153       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
154              Location to write a talloc memory usage report.  See  talloc_en‐
155              able_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.
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157       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
158              If  set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
159              stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
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SEE ALSO

162       notmuch-address,   notmuch-compact,   notmuch-config,    notmuch-count,
163       notmuch-dump,      notmuch-hooks,      notmuch-insert,     notmuch-new,
164       notmuch-properties,  notmuch-reindex,  notmuch-reply,  notmuch-restore,
165       notmuch-search, notmuch-search-terms, notmuch-show, notmuch-tag
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167       The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org
168

CONTACT

170       Feel  free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
171       list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is  not  required  before
172       posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
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174       Real-time  interaction  with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
175       (server: irc.libera.chat, channel: #notmuch).
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AUTHOR

178       Carl Worth and many others
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181       2009-2023, Carl Worth and many others
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1860.37                             Jan 19, 2023                 NOTMUCH-SETUP(1)
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