Package: exmh Version: 1:2.8.0-5 Severity: normal I've run into this problem numerous times when setting up a new computer, and usually I'm in such a hurry to get my email working that I just hackishly work around it and don't investigate what's going on.
This time I had some energy/time, so here goes: On my latest attempt at setting up exmh on a computer, I had the "sox" package installed, which sets up "/usr/bin/play -t au %s" as the default mailcap that exmh wants to use to play "drip.au" 12 times (for 12 folders with unseen messages, IIUC). However, that hangs on the first "drip" if exmh is run in the background because the "play" command wants stdin/stdout. Maybe a separate bug is in order to "sox" to fix their /usr/lib/mime/packages/ file. However, when I deleted sox , and removed all mention of it from /etc/mailcap, the problem got worse, as exmh then tries to start up my video player app (!) 12 times to play drip.au . In that case, exmh isn't usable until I close the video-player app 12 times. My thinking is that /usr/bin/run-mailcap can't really be relied on to play audiofiles in a way that makes sense for what exmh wants to do here, and that exmh's default behavior should be to not attempt this (or find a different way). (It seems like what exmh wants here is something like "audio/basic/no-interface" in mailcap -- does mailcap have something like that"?) -- System Information: Debian Release: 7.7 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (990, 'oldstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages exmh depends on: ii mime-support 3.59 ii nmh [mh] 1.5-release-0.2 ii tcl8.4 [tclsh] 8.4.19-5 ii tcl8.5 [tclsh] 8.5.11-2 ii tk8.4 [wish] 8.4.19-5 ii xterm 278-4 Versions of packages exmh recommends: pn recode <none> Versions of packages exmh suggests: pn compface <none> pn expect <none> ii file 1:5.22+15-2+deb8u1 ii gnupg 1.4.12-7+deb7u6 pn mh-book <none> -- no debconf information
