Daniel
Naber

    daniel.naber@t-online.de

David
Rugge

    davidrugge@mediaone.net

2002-10-03
1.5

# Getting Started

This is a short introduction to &kmail; and its usage so you can start working with it right away. For more in-depth information see the Using &kmail; section. Note that &kmail;'s installation is described in the appendix.

Invoking &kmail; for the first time creates a folder called `Mail` in your home folder. This folder contains the initial folders (`inbox`, `outbox`, `sent-mail`, `trash` and `drafts`). Use Settings Configure &kmail;... to enter some initial information so &kmail; will be able to properly retrieve and send your messages.

The Configure window consists of six sections: Identities, Network, Appearance, Composer, Security, and Folders.

To begin sending and receiving messages you will only have to change some settings in the Identities and Network pages.

## Setting your Identity

The settings in the Identities page are fairly straightforward. Select your default identity and click Modify. Fill in the Name field with your full name (&eg; `John Doe`) and the Organization field (optional) with the appropriate information. Next, fill in the Email Address field with your email address (&eg; `john@example.net`). If you are using PGP or GnuPG you need to set your key in the OpenPGP Key field in the Advanced tab. Optionally, go to the Signature tab and enter your signature. This is a short text that will be automatically appended to all your messages.

## Setting up your Account

The Network page contains the settings that tell &kmail; how to send and receive your email messages. Many of these settings can vary greatly depending on the setup of your system and on the kind of network that your mail server is located in. If you do not know what setting to choose or what to put in a field, consult your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or system administrator.

### Sending Messages

The Sending tab provides a list of ways to send messages. The first item in the list is the default way to send messages. Using the Add... button you can choose between two different ways of sending messages: SMTP and Sendmail. &Sendmail; here means a local software installation - this has a reputation of being difficult to set up, so if you do not already have a working &Sendmail; configuration, choose SMTP and fill in the Name field with a descriptive name (&eg; `My Mail Account`) and the Host field with the name and domain of your mail server (&eg; `smtp.provider.com`). You will probably not need to change the Port setting (the default is `25`).

If you do want to use &Sendmail; and you are using a dial-up connection, follow the instructions for setting up sendmail for a dial-up connection in the &FAQ; section.

The way of sending messages configured here will be used for your default identity and for all other identities that have no own way of sending messages. You can use different ways of sending messages for different identities by selecting the Special transport checkbox in the Advanced tab of the Identities section.

A description of the other options can be found in the Configuration chapter.

### Receiving Messages

To set up an account so you can receive mail, press the Add... button in the Receiving tab. You will then be prompted for the type of your email account. Most users should select POP3 or IMAP. If you want to use a local mailbox file, please see the FAQ about file locking.

You will then be presented with the Add Account window. First, fill in the Name field to name your account. You can choose any name you like. Login, Password, and Host should be filled in with the appropriate information from your ISP or system administrator. You should not need to change the Port setting (the default for POP3 is `110`, the default for IMAP is `143`).

#### Options only relevant to IMAP

If you are using IMAP, you can optionally specify a path in the Prefix to folders field. This tells &kmail; where it can find your folders on the server. If you also have a shell account on the server and the messages are stored in your home folder it might be useful to store the messages in a subfolder `Mail`. Use this as a value in the Prefix to folders field so that &kmail; does not mix up mailbox files and other files. If you are not interested in this feature, simple leave the field blank.

If you check Automatically compact folders &kmail; removes the messages you deleted from the server as soon as you leave a folder. Otherwise the messages are only marked as deleted and it is up to you to compact the folders manually by using the menu item File Compact All Folders.

If you check Show hidden folders, folders whose name starts with a dot are also displayed.

#### Options only relevant to POP3

Select Delete message from server after fetching if you do not want to leave your messages on the server after you downloaded it.

Select Exclude from "Check Mail" if you do not want to check this account whenever you use File Check Mail. You can still check for new messages on this account with File Check Mail In.

Select Enable interval mail checking if you want &kmail; to check for new messages automatically. The interval can be specified below under Check interval (minutes).

inbox is the default folder for incoming messages. If you want to change that for some reason, you can do so with Destination folder. But what you probably want is a filter, which has nothing to do with this option.

With Precommand you can specify any program that &kmail; will execute just before fetching mail. Please specify the full path (do not use ~) and note that &kmail; will not continue until the program returns.

On the Extras tab you can select Use pipelining for faster mail download if this is supported by your server. You should carefully test this to make sure it works safely.

#### Options for both IMAP and POP3

If you select Store POP password in configuration file resp. Store IMAP password in configuration file &kmail; will remember your password so you will not have to type it every time you start &kmail; and fetch new mail.

Be warned that &kmail; cannot really encrypt your password, so people who can access your configuration files (&eg; system administrators) can easily get your password if you select this option.

&kmail; supports encryption via SSL and TLS (TLS should be preferred if it is available).

For POP3 &kmail; supports:

- Clear text,

- PLAIN,

- LOGIN,

- CRAM-MD5 (recommended if DIGEST-MD5 is not available),

- DIGEST-MD5 (recommended) and

- APOP authentication.

DIGEST-MD5, CRAM-MD5 and APOP are secure on their own, the other options are only secure when used together with SSL or TLS. You should only use Clear text if your server does not support any of the other authentication methods. Additionally, for IMAP Anonymous is supported, but APOP is not. Use the Check what the server supports button on the Extras resp. Security tab to automatically select the most secure settings supported by your server.

You are now ready to send and receive mail. For IMAP, just open your folders in the folder tree in &kmail;'s main window. &kmail; then connects to your server and displays the messages it finds. For POP3 use File Check Mail.

## Testing your Setup

First, you should send yourself a message to test your configuration. To send a message, either hit &Ctrl;N, select the New Message icon or select the Message New Message... menu item. The composer window will appear. Fill in the To: field with your email address and type something in the Subject field. Send the message by selecting Message Send .

To check your email, select File Check Mail. In the lower right corner of the main window, a progress bar will indicate how many messages are being downloaded. If you receive the message you just sent, then congratulations! If, however, you receive any error messages while testing your setup, make sure that your network connection is working and recheck your settings at Settings Configure &kmail;....

## Section Authors

This section written by: Daniel Naber daniel.naber@t-online.de and David Rugge davidrugge@mediaone.net.