[orca-list] Alpine: Still don't get it after reading documentation

["Chris Gilland" <cgilland1 carolina rr com>]

I still cannot get alpine working.  frankly, I'm quite appalled at an e-mail 
I got earlier from a list member who out of respect for them, I will not 
reveal who it was, so don't even ask. If you were the one who sent it, 
you'll know... point blank.  Anyway, off list, they blessed me out like none 
other, and told me that I was a quote: cry baby for asking for so much help 
on list.  They said over the past few days, they've gotten over probably 30 
e-mails from me asking for help.  They then proceeded, as I quote, to tell 
me without using the accronym, to quote: read the effen manual.  They told 
me this is why they never help people, as so many non-tech people can be so? 
stupid. then they wonder why we come crawling back asking for more help. 
They said the docs are there, and for me thus to quit being a whoose and go 
read and stop bombarding the list.  I didn't think that was the way the 
linux community worked.  If someone asks me something on list, and I know 
enough to feel confident answerring them, I will.  Otherwise, I keep my 
mouth shut, or will write and say I think this'll work, but don't quote me.

With all this said, again: I really don't mind using a gnome based e-mail 
client like TB, or Evolution, but there is just something nice about also 
every now and then being able to get e-mail working in a terminal.  I have 
alpine, and it looks patheticly symple to use, but I just cannot for the 
life of me understand how to get it to poll my road runner mail which is 
pop3.

I made a .fetchmailrc file, in my home folder

poll pop-server.carolina.rr.com proto pop3 user cgilland1 carolina rr com 
pass XXXXXXXXXXXX

Obviously, XXXXXXXXXXXX is not literally my pwd.  LOL!  I did however put 
enough exes to correctly represent the numver a characters in it.

anyway, I then did a

chmod 700 ~/.fetchmailrc

Why am I making it executible?  I dono.  I just figured being I don't know 
how fetchmail needs to poll that file, I didn't know if it actually somehow 
executes it, although I highly doubt it. It's not as if it's a bash shell 
script.  I figured better safe though than sorry.

well, I now can run

fetchmail

and, sure enough, it tells me I got x amount of mails on the server, but 
when I bring up alpine, if I hit i for msg index, I get absolutely nowhere 
even after hitting ctrl l to have it poll manually.

The other weird thing is if I hit l for list folders, all I see is inbox.  I 
don't even see sent items, deleted items, or any of that sort a stuff.

when in the msg index, if I hit ctrl+l to force it to poll, it says I have 
no msgs, even though I know I do, as fetchmail's reporting that I do.  Not 
only that, but on my netbook running win xp, if I bring up Outlook, it polls 
those mails that fetchmail saw just fine.

It just for some reason isn't sending my mail over to alpine.

I really don't wanna run fetchmail as a daemon as I don't always want it 
downloading my mail, being as I have about 3 computers in this house and 
don't want my mail all just going bump bump bump? I wanna have the control 
of what system polls my mail, when.

One other user sent me an old .fetchmailrc file, as well as two other files, 
but I dono what those other two did exactly more than having to do with a 
mutt configuration.  He explained to me in his e-mail, but I still don't 
have a clue what he meant.  Honestly it didn't make much sense.  I did read 
the man page for fetchmailrc, as well as just for fetchmail, but even after 
about the fourth time reading it, some of the more basic parts of it make 
sense, but pretty much everything from the concepts header down, is greek to 
me.  I'm really trying to understand this, but it's just not coming together 
for me.

I can tell you that fetchmail isn't running all the time, which is good in 
my view, as I don't want it always polling.  I know this as if I do

fetchmail --quit

it says no other process for fetchmail.

If someone can maybe on or off list work with me on this, I'd really 
appreciate it.  I dono what is left to do.  It's obvious I am not getting 
something, but, what that something is, is beyond me by far.

Frankly, even after taking a break, this is continuously frustrating me more 
and more by the minute.  Not yall's falt, I guess I'm just stupid for not 
understanding any of this like all you techy geeks do.

LOL!

Here's to the very linux illiterate!  All hale he, hale he!  LOL!  Sorry, 
couldn't resist.  Seriously though, please can someone help?  I get upto 25 
free mailboxes with my rr account.  I only am using one of them which is my 
own master account.  I'd be happy beyond belief to set up another mailbox 
for testing purposes and let one of you all have the login to it if you 
could try to make it work on your end, then tell me how you didit, step by 
step.

I heard something about, we gotta get fetchmail now to send my mail 
somewhere, being through sendmail, through getmail, etc.  See, this is just 
going way over my head and I think I'm probably breaking things more than 
fixing 'em by trying more things.  This is why I'm not trying anything else 
till yall can point me what to specifically do.

I will say this:

I did set

carolina.rr.com

as my default domain in Alpine, and I also did set my smtp to

smtp-server.carolina.rr.com

I thought maybe just typing

fetchmail

at the terminal would work and get it to poll.

again though, all that did was told me how many mails I had.

I thought if that was all I wanted it to do, I had to pass the -c option to 
it, to check.

not the case though, I suppose.

Sorry I sound so stupid at this, but I really don't havva clue what I'm 
doing.  If I've red the docs you all refered me to, 4 times, and still don't 
get it at all, odds I will, are very slim.

I know I'm asking for a lot of help, especially sense I joined yestrerday, 
but really, I promise that'll die down eventually, once we get my system 
running the way I want it to, and, aside from my e-mail, it's pretty much at 
that point.

Thanks.

I'm really not stupid, I say to the person who chewed me out. I'm really 
not.

Chris.