This is your friendly guide and tutorial to getting started with Notmuch. It
will help you through the first steps of setting up Notmuch.
+All Notmuch commands have [[manual pages|manpages]]. Please refer to them for
+details.
+
## Prerequisites
In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in
To configure Notmuch, just run
- notmuch
+ notmuch
This will interactively guide you through the setup process, and save the
configuration to `$HOME/.notmuch-config`. If you'd like to change the
Notmuch needs a search database to operate. The next step is to run
- notmuch new
+ notmuch new
to index all your messages in the search database. The database will be stored
in `.notmuch` directory under your mail store. The database is not a replacement
## Delivering New Messages
+Notmuch itself does not receive messages. There is no IMAP or POP support. You
+will need to set up other tools, such as fetchmail, offlineimap, or mbsync, to
+receive the messages.
+
+There are two ways to deliver and index messages:
+
+* Use an external tool (such as offlineimap or mbsync) to deliver the messages
+ to your mail store, and run `notmuch new` to discover and index the newly
+ delivered messages (and any other changes in the mail store).
+
+* Use an external tool (such as fetchmail) receive the messages, and configure
+ the tool to use `notmuch insert` as a Mail Delivery Agent to deliver the
+ messages to your mail store and index them.
+
## Automation Via Hooks
## Backing up and Restoring the Database
## Removing Notmuch
+
+Did not like it after all? All you need to do is remove the database and the
+configuration file. The database is stored in the `.notmuch` directory under
+your mail store. And your mail store is at `notmuch config get database.path`.
+
+Note that the database is where the tags are stored. Everything else can be
+regenerated by indexing again, but the tags will be lost when the database is
+removed. Use the `notmuch dump` command to create a backup of the tags.