Setting Up MH

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Before you use MH, your UNIX account needs to be set up. Log in and get a shell prompt (which I'll show as a percent sign (%); yours might be different). If you're using the X Window System, open an xterm window (a terminal or command window) where you get a shell prompt.

Type the following command at the prompt:

% folder +inbox

If the answer is something like folder: Command not found then the MH commands aren't in your shell search path or they haven't been installed on your system. (Here is help setting your search path.) Your system administrator can help you find the MH commands -- or install them.

If you haven't used MH before, it will automatically run the command install-mh(8) to make an .mh_profile setup file. (If your system administrator has made a file named mh.profile in the MH library directory, it will be copied into your .mh_profile.) Then, it will ask you two questions; answer y (for "yes") to both questions:
```
% folder +inbox
Your MH-directory "/xxx/Mail" doesn't exist; Create it? y
Create folder "/xxx/Mail/inbox"? y
           inbox+ has   no messages.
```
Now, if you go to your home directory and type ls -a, you should see a directory named Mail and a file named .mh_profile. You're all set.
If you've used MH before or if the system administrator already set up your account for MH, something like this will happen:
```
% folder +inbox
           inbox+ has  5 messages (   1-  5); cur=  5.
```
At this point, it's a good idea to be sure that your .mh_profile file isn't left over from MH before Version 5. (Except, of course, if your computer is still running an old MH version. If you aren't sure, see the Section The -help Switches.)
Look through the file with a UNIX command like cat, more or pg:
```
% cat .mh_profile
Path: Mail
Folder-protect: 700
Msg-protect: 600
    ...
Current-folder: xxx
    ...
```
If you see a Current-folder: entry, like the one above, use a text editor (vi, emacs, and so on) to delete it from the .mh_profile. That entry is left over from MH before Version 5, and it can cause some warning messages when you run newer MH commands. (MH used to keep track of the current folder name in the .mh_profile file. Now it uses a file named context in the MH directory instead.)

If there are entries besides Path:, Folder-protect: and Msg-Protect: in your .mh_profile and you didn't put them there, you may want to "comment out" those extra entries so that MH will ignore them. That way, when you use MH, you won't be confused by commands that work differently than you expect. An easy way to "comment out" an entry is by putting a few uppercase X's before it, like this:

XXXrepl: -annotate

Later, after you have more experience with MH, you may want to delete the Xs.

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Last change $Date: 1996/06/06 15:14:18 $

This file is from the third edition of the book MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers, ISBN 1-56592-093-7, by Jerry Peek. Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. This file is freely-available; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see the file copying.htm.

Suggestions are welcome: Jerry Peek <jpeek@jpeek.com>