NAME

       mu-init - initialize the mu message database

SYNOPSIS

       mu [COMMON-OPTIONS] init [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

       mu  init  is  the subcommand for setting up the mu message database. After mu init has completed, you can
       run mu index

INIT OPTIONS

   -m, --maildir maildir
       Use maildir as the root-maildir.

       By default, mu uses the MAILDIR environment; if it is not set, it uses ~/Maildir if  it  is  an  existing
       directory. If neither of those can be used, the --maildir option is required; it must be an absolute path
       (but ~/ expansion is performed).

   --my-address email-address-or-regex
       Specifies  that  some  e-mail  address  is  a personal address. The option can be used multiple times, to
       specify all your addresses.

       Any message in which at least one of the  contact  fields  contains  such  an  address  is  considered  a
       `personal'  message;  this  can  then  be used for filtering in mu-find(1), mu-cfind(1) and mu4e, e.g. to
       filter-out mailing list messages.

       email-address-or-regex can be either a plain e-mail address (such as foo@example.com), or  a  basic  PCRE
       regular-expression  (see pcre(3) for details), wrapped in / (such as /foo-.*@example\.com/). Depending on
       your shell, the argument may need to be quoted.

       A note of warning for mu4e users: any regular-expressions used with --with-address are also used by mu4e.
       Unfortunately, PCRE regular expressions are not generally compatible with Emacs regular expressions.  For
       instance, (foo|bar) in PCRE syntax has  as its Emacs equivalent.

       The  good  news  is that mu4e can automatically translate the regular-expressions, if you allow it to, by
       installing the pcre2el Elisp package. See the mu4e documentation for further details.

   --ignored-address email-address-or-regex
       Specifies that some e-mail address is to be ignored from the  contacts-cache  (the  option  can  be  used
       multiple times). Such addresses then cannot be found with mu-cfind(1) or in the Mu4e contacts cache.

       my-email-address can be either a plain e-mail address or a regexp, just like for the --my-address option.

   --max-message-size size
       Specifies the maximum size for an e-mail message. Usually, the default of 100000000 bytes should be fine.

   --batch-size size
       The  number  of  changes after which they are committed to the database; decreasing the value reduces the
       memory requirements, at the cost of make indexing substantially slower. Usually, the  default  of  250000
       should be fine.

       Batch-size 0 is interpreted as `use the default'.

   --support-ngrams
       Whether  to  enable  support  for  using  ngrams  in  indexing  and query parsing; this can be useful for
       languages without explicit word breaks, such as Chinese/Japanese/Korean.  See  NGRAM  SUPPORT  below  for
       details.

   --reinit
       Reinitialize the database from an earlier version; that is, create a new empty database with the existing
       settings. This cannot be combined with the other init options.

   --muhome
       Use a non-default directory to store and read the database, write the logs, etc.  By default, mu uses the
       XDG  Base  Directory  Specification  (e.g.  on  GNU/Linux this defaults to ~/.cache/mu and ~/.config/mu).
       Earlier versions of mu defaulted to ~/.mu, which now requires --muhome=~/.mu.

       The environment variable MUHOME can be used as an alternative to --muhome. The latter has precedence.

NGRAM SUPPORT

       mu's underlying Xapian database supports `ngrams', which improve searching for languages/scripts that  do
       not  have  explicit  word  breaks,  such  as  Chinese,  Japanese  and Korean. It is fairly intrusive, and
       influences both indexing and query-parsing; it is not enabled by default, and is recommended only if  you
       need to search for messages written in such languages.

       When  enabled,  mu  automatically  uses  ngrams  automatically.  Xapian  environment  variables  such  as
       XAPIAN_CJK_NGRAM are ignored.

EXIT CODE

       This command returns 0 upon successful completion, or a non-zero exit code otherwise.

       0.  success

       2.  no matches found. Try a different query

       11. database schema mismatch. You need to re-initialize mu, see mu-init(1)

       19. failed to acquire lock. Some other program has exclusive access to the mu database

       99. caught an exception

EXAMPLE

              $ mu init --maildir=~/Maildir --my-address=alice@example.com --my-address=bob@example.com --ignored-address='/.*reply.*/'

REPORTING BUGS

       Please report bugs at https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues.

AUTHOR

       Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>

COPYRIGHT

       This manpage is part of mu 1.12.9.

       Copyright  ©  2008-2025  Dirk-Jan  C.  Binnema.  License   GPLv3+:   GNU   GPL   version   3   or   later
       https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.  This  is  free  software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

       mu-index(1), mu-find(1), mu-cfind(1), pcre(3)

                                                                                                      MU INIT(1)