This essay will consider strategy in the context of the computer game Civilisation IV (Civ4 as it’s commonly abbreviated and shall hereon be referred to as) and will attempt to address issues surrounding the definition of strategy, applicability of strategic theory, and how Civ4 and strategy in general relate to the real world. We shall do this by describing and comparing Mintzberg and Porter’s views on strategy, considering Ghoshal’s criticism of management theory, and then attempting to apply Baudrillard’s postmodern theories of simulacra to Civ4.

Defining Strategy

Before we can discuss the applicability of the term “strategy” to a game such as Civ4, we must first attempt to define strategy. Chambers Dictionary gives two definitions:

1. The process of, or skill in, planning and conducting a military campaign.
2. A long-term plan for future success or development.

One is the process of planning and carrying out a military campaign, whilst the other is the plan itself. Chambers excludes the process of planning for non-military activities, and that gives a hint to the word’s roots. According to Chambers, the word strategy is derived from the 17th century French word strategie, which itself is derived from the Greek strategia that is formed by combining stratos (army) and agein (to lead). So historically strategy has a strong military flavour and perhaps even now carries connotations of conflict and leadership, and yet we find strategy in businesses and boardrooms; places where war, in the literally sense at least, has never been waged. However, the second definition hints at some universally applicable definition of strategy that may be relevant to war, business, and even Civ4.

Defining what makes something “strategic” is also problematic. Mintzberg (1987, pp. 13-14) notes that notions of strategy are very subjective, depending on your perspective and on time: “what seems tactical today may prove strategic tomorrow” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 14) He then goes on to suggest we treat strategy less as a category and more as a scale “and simply refer to issues as more or less ‘strategic’” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 14), acknowledging that this strategic value can change with time and circumstances.

Mintzberg’s Definition of Strategy

Mintzberg (The Strategy Concept I: Five Ps For Strategy, 1987) also describes five different views that each emphasise different aspects of strategy:

• Plan
• Ploy
• Pattern
• Position
• Perspective

Mintzberg’s concept of strategy as plan (Mintzberg, 1987, pp. 11-12) is characterised by formulation “in advance of the action to which they apply, and they are developed consciously and purposefully”. In Civ4, the game is “won” by achieving one of a number of criteria. The criteria are defined by the games creators: they have provided several alternative ways of “winning” the game. These “victory conditions” are:

• Time Victory: highest scoring player after a set number of turns, normally when the game year reaches 2050AD;
• Conquest Victory: eliminating all rivals by destroying or capturing their cities;
• Domination Victory: control two thirds of available land and have a population 25% greater than any of your rivals;
• Cultural Victory: player controls three cities with Legendary Culture status;
• Space Race: building a space ship and successfully sending it to Alpha Centuri;
• Diplomatic Victory: winning the vote for the Diplomatic Victory Resolution in the United Nations. This requires the United Nations building to be built and the player elected Secretary-General to propose the Diplomatic Victory Resolution.

(2K Games, 2005, pp. 105 – 106)
A player can create a plan to achieve one of these conditions by deciding in advance what actions they will take throughout the game to enable them to meet the criteria.

One can even plan to deceive, perhaps by pretending to pursue a particular victory condition when that isn’t the intention. However, according to Mintzberg a ploy, or act of deception, is a form of strategy in itself, but Mintzberg also describes ploy as “really just a specific ‘maneuver’” and refers to “the real strategy” as the “plan… the real intention” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 12), and if the strategic ploy is really a plan to deceive, it would seem that the strategy is not the ploy, but the plan to misdirect. Hence, the inclusion of ploy in Mintzberg’s list can be debated, and Mintzberg perhaps realises the concept of ploy is not as important as the other Ps, as he only gave it two paragraphs at the end his discussion of plan (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 12). Mintzberg goes on to contrast plan and intended with emergent and realised strategy in terms of pattern.

Pattern is defined as “consistency in action, whether or not intended” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 12). Whereas plan depends on an intention, pattern does not: “plans may go unrealized, while patterns may appear without preconception” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 13). This allows us to differentiate between intended (plan) and emergent (unplanned pattern) strategies, both of which combine to create a realized strategy as depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Deliberate and Emergent Strategy (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 14)

This is instantly familiar, as games of Civ4 take a long time and as circumstances change one is forced to adapt to new situations, creating a realised strategy that is a blend of intended and emergent strategies. This may mean that a player adopts a new strategic position within the game as the game progresses.

Mintzberg’s idea of position owes a lot to strategy’s military roots. He describes position as “a means of locating an organization in… an environment” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 15) which is comparable with military ideas about locating an army in its environment: one of Sun Tzu’s five governing factors of war was Earth, which “comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passages; the chances of life and death” (Tzu, p. 1) or the ground upon which an army fights. Although, Mintzberg discusses position in terms of niches and product-market domains (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 15), the interpretation of environment can be broader than the organisation’s product positioning. For example, the PEST framework breaks an organisation’s environment down into political, economic, social, and technological contexts that can explore an organisation’s place in an environment beyond product positioning (Rollinson, 2008, pp. 34-41). Within Civ4 the geographic sense of positioning is most obvious, but it can also be used to describe what strategic niche a player occupies, such as do they focus on technological advantages, sheer size of territory and quantity of cities, or military power. In the case of military power as a strategic niche or position, this should not be confused with an aggressive perspective.

An aggressive perspective that informs a player’s actions is an example of strategy as perspective. Strategic perspective encompasses the idea of vision or “an ingrained way of perceiving the world” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 16), but more than that: it is “shared by the members of an organisation” so they are “united by common thinking and/or behaviour” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 17). Naturally, this common thinking will inform decisions that are taken and so can lead to strategy as plan (and ploy), position, and pattern.

However, there is a subtler interaction of these different views on strategy. An order can be placed on these concepts, that perspective leads to plan, which leads to pattern, which leads to position, for example, but Mintzberg claims that “ while various relationships exist between the different definitions, no one relationship, nor any single definition for that matter, takes precedence over the others” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 20). That is, there is no single way approaching or establishing strategy, that, for example, a plan can establish pattern just as easily as pattern can inform a plan. In this respect, Mintzberg’s Five Ps theory resembles Porter’s views on strategic position as an integrated system.

Porter’s Definition of Strategy

Porter’s idea of strategy is very easy to apply to Civ4. He argues that strategy isn’t so much a plan as a system of interrelated and complementary activities that form a position within a market: “Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities” (Porter, 1996, p. 68), however he first discusses what strategy is not.

Porter argues that operational effectiveness is distinct from strategy (Porter, 1996, pp. 61 – 64), and this is mirrored in Civ4: the speed at which a player’s cities can construct buildings and units does confer a strategic advantage and is necessary to compete with rivals, but in itself does not bring the player closer to victory. Instead it is how the player decides to use this advantage, what positioning they use it to adopt, that determines their strategy.

In Civ4, operational effectiveness can be measured in terms of the amount of production units a city produces. Efficiency can be viewed as maximising the production output of a city. A city’s output can be increased through the construction of buildings that yield bonuses, tile improvements, or fine tuning the tiles the city’s workers are using for maximum effect (rather than trusting the computer). Rivals can also achieve similar levels of operational effectiveness by researching the same technologies, building the same buildings, and maximising city tile usage and it is for this reason that Porter argues operational effectiveness is not strategy, because efficiency can be easily matched and in the long term offers no real strategic advantage as a result.

Civ4 offers a number of different approaches allowing for players to adopt different strategic positions. The approaches are the victory conditions, which each encourage a different strategic position to be adopted. (2K Games, 2005, pp. 105 – 106) The means to achieve these victory conditions can be split into three major areas: military, culture, and technology, and how the player balances each of these areas helps strategically differentiate that player from rivals.

In Porter’s view, the strategy is the system of unique activities chosen to support the key strategic themes that define the position (Porter, 1996, pp. 64 – 65). Creating this activity system requires tradeoffs: “Tradeoffs occur when activities are incompatible. Simply put, a trade-off means that more of one thing necessitates less of another.” (Porter, 1996, p. 68) Thus the only activities to be undertaken are those that support the strategic position, and Porter suggests that deciding what not to do is just as crucial as deciding what activities to pursue. (Porter, 1996, pp. 68 – 70) The benefit that tradeoffs give to the organisation is fit. Fit is the self reinforcing and complementing nature of closely linked activity systems that creates the strategic advantage and “locks out imitators by creating a chain that is strong as its strongest link” (Porter, 1996, p. 70).

Tradeoffs, and a strong fit, make a position harder to imitate because rivals may be unwilling or unable to make the same tradeoffs. Research in Civ4 is a good example, because it takes time to research new technologies. If a player wants to imitate a rivals position by copying their technology it will be very hard, if not impossible, to do so because to achieve that position the rival made tradeoffs when deciding what technology to research. The imitating player did not make the same tradeoffs, and the end result is that the imitating player will never be able to catch up with the rival, because the tradeoffs mean the rival has a head start on the imitating player that can easily be maintained.

So Porter, in summary, defines strategy as a series of interlinking activities that when taken as a whole support a market position and defy imitation by virtue of the tradeoffs required to achieve a strong fit.

It may seem that Mintzberg and Porter have differing views on strategy, but in fact there are many similarities. Porter’s argument that strategy is essentially a position is obviously compatible with Mintzberg’s own view of position, but the similarity goes further. The system of activities is an example of strategy through pattern, consistent action, and, as Porter suggests a process of actively decided what activities to pursue, this suggests a deliberate plan as well. In a general sense, Porter’s approach works best when everyone in the organisation shares the vision for the strategic position, or when, in Mintzberg’s words, they share “common thinking and/or behaviour” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 17) and the same perspective. Therefore, we can say that Porter’s view of strategy and Mintzberg’s definitions support each other.

It can be tempting then, to suggest this may be a correct view of strategy, and that they are relevant to the practice of business.

Theory and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Ghoshal discusses the effect of theory on practice, and argues that theory is negatively affecting practice. He reasons this is because management theory avoids issues of ethics and morality, is based on negative assumptions drawn from a particular ideology (liberalism), and has attempted to adopt the scientific model of investigation and “since morality, or ethics, is inseparable from human intentionality, a precondition for making business studies a science has been the denial of any moral or ethical considerations in our theories” (Ghoshal, 2005, pp. 76-77)

He argues that, as it’s a social science, management theories and practice cannot be untangled because “a management theory – if it gains sufficient currency – changes the behaviour of managers who start acting in accordance with the theory” (Ghoshal, 2005, p. 77) and so bad theories become true, even if they were initially wrong, by virtue of the self-fulfilling prophecies they encourage (see Figure 2).

For example, if a theory encourages a manager to distrust his employees, this will affect the way the manager interacts with his employees; the employees will pick up on the manager’s expectations from behavioural cues and respond accordingly, leading to validation of the original assumption, even if it was incorrect.

Figure 2 Model of the self-fulfilling prophecy effect (Rollinson, 2008, p.119)

The result is a set of amoral theories that relieve managers of any moral or ethical obligation and place them in a position where they compete with internal and external stakeholders: “In strategy courses, we have presented the “five forces” framework to suggest that companies must compete not only with their competitors but also with their suppliers, customer, employees, and regulators” (Ghoshal, 2005, p. 75).

Whilst Ghoshal focuses on morality, in doing so he highlights the wider issue of theory that does not reflect reality, which in Ghoshal’s view is a result of incorrect and unchallenged assumptions. This gives us a stepping stone to question the relevance of strategic theory at all. After all, assuming the purpose of theory is to improve our understanding or how effective we are, what is the value of theory if it makes organisations perform worse rather than better?

The Irrelevance of Theory

Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation, 1995) offers some insight that helps us address the relevance of theory. He argues that we are living in a hyperreal age, where we mistake simulation for reality. He describes simulacra, which are representations of real things, and describes three orders of simulacra:

1. An accurate representation of something real; a placeholder for it
2. An imitation of something real that replaces the original and real; A copy of something real
3. A representation that is detached from the original and the real; the absence of anything real; An imitation of reality that is mistaken for reality itself

(Baudrillard, 1995, p. 6)

Baudrillard presents Disneyland as “a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra” (Baudrillard, 1995, p. 12). It is a “play of illusions and phantasms” that is taken at face value rather than recognising the “excessive number of gadgets necessary to create the … effect” (Baudrillard, 1995, p. 12). However, Disneyland is not the simulation, it merely “functions as cover for a simulation of the third order” (Baudrillard, 1995, p. 12). In fact, Disneyland is a “deterrence machine set up to rejuvenate the fiction of the real” (Baudrillard, 1995, p. 12). That is, the juxtaposition of something that is acknowledged to be fake (Disneyland) with the simulation (American culture), so that in comparison the simulation seems real and natural.

Crogan (Remembering (Forgetting) Baudrillard, 2007) suggests a “consideration of games in term of Baudrillard’s notion of the deterrence machine” (Crogan, 2007, p. 409) so that we can examine their assumptions and in what way they distort the reality they dissimulate. This leads us to a comparison between Disneyland and America and Civ4 and strategy theory. Thus, we can suggest that Civ4 is a deterrence engine, a simulation acknowledged to be false in order to be juxtaposed and contrasted against the real practice of strategy, which is in actual fact hyperreal! A simulation that has no bearing on the real, but is nevertheless unquestioningly accepted as the real.

As Mintzberg says, “It is important to remember that no-one has ever seen a strategy or touched one” (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 16), and Grandy and Mills (2004) support this hypothesis. They argue that the “perceived ‘control’ of…organizations is a movement into the third phase of simulation” (Grandy & Mills, 2004, p. 1162) and that strategy discourse masks the absence of any form of reality in the representation: “the acceptance and unquestioning of its existence and significance masks the absence of reality” (Grandy & Mills, 2004, p. 1163).

Grandy and Mills (2004, pp. 1161-1162) argue that the simulation of strategy start with the first-order simulacra of the “organisational” and “corporate” worlds, which are imperfect representations of the natural world as they differ “from the entirety of the natural world” and are used “as a way of viewing the world” (Grandy & Mills, 2004, p. 1162). They then argue that “models of these first-order simulacra are second-order simulacra” (Grandy & Mills, 2004, p. 1162) that simplify reality by suggesting that “organizational life can be understood through strategy and strategic management”. In Baudrillard’s view it is an “evil appearance” (Baudrillard, 1995, p. 6) because it oversimplifies reality, thus distorting it. “Attempts to prescribe ‘generic’ strategies to firms are exemplary of the world-wide application of second-order simulacra” (Grandy & Mills, 2004, p. 1162), for example, frameworks such as PEST, SWOT, and the Five Forces are all second-order simulacra because they grossly oversimplify reality. Finally, we arrive at the third-order simulacra, already described, as discourse about the models, second order simulacra, emerges severing the link to reality in the process and becoming hyperreal.

Strategy and Civilisation IV

So to conclude, strategy is a problematic term to describe having a multitude of possible meanings that we explored using Mintzberg’s Five Ps and Porter’s ideas on strategic positioning. Ghoshal suggests that such theories can be damaging as they propagate incorrect assumptions leading to negative self-fulfilling prophecies in practice, which leads us to Baudrillard who we use to help us examine the relevance of strategy to the real or natural world. We also drawing on Crogan’s discussion of Baudrillard and video games and Grandy and Mills discussion of strategy as simulacra. Thus, we are lead to conclude that Civ4, which fits the theories we examined, is a simulation of strategy, as per Baudrillard, but also a deterrence machine that helps to reaffirm the hyperreal discourse of strategy in business. Finally, having established the hyperreality of strategy, we are left with a final question, which we leave to the reader to answer: Is it worth studying strategy, and if not have we just wasted a semester studying it?

Bibliography

2K Games. (2005, October 25). Civilisation 4 Manual. 2K Games. Retrieved January 10, 2010, from http://steampowered.com/Manuals/3900/manual.pdf

Baudrillard, J. (1995). Simulacra and Simulation. (S. F. Glaser, Trans.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Crogan, P. (2007). Remembering (Forgetting) Baudrillard. Games and Culture , 2 (4), 405-413.

Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices. Academent of Management Learning and Education , 4 (1), 75 – 91.

Grandy, G., & Mills, A. J. (2004). Strategy as Simulacra? A Radical Reflexive Look at the Discpline and Practice of Strategy. Journal of Management Studies , 41 (7), 1153-1170.

Mintzberg, H. (1987). The Strategy Concept I: Five Ps For Strategy. California Management Review , 30 (1), 11-24.

Porter, M. E. (1996). What Is Strategy? Harvard Business Review , 74 (6), 61 – 78.

Rollinson, D. (2008). Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach (4th ed.). Harlow, Essex, United Kingdom: Pearson Education.

Tzu, S. (n.d.). The Art of War. Retrieved January 24, 2010, from http://www.artofwarsuntzu.com/Art%20of%20War%20PDF.pdf”

Table of Figures

Figure 1 Deliberate and Emergent Strategy (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 14)

Figure 2 Model of the self-fulfilling prophecy effect (Rollinson, 2008, p.119)

I needn’t have worried though, as I was soon introduced to Dave, Phil, and Will. Dave and Phil (@Immunda) are both studying the University of Nottingham, and Will (@erebusstyx) is studying at Nottingham Trent University. Since we all share an interest in computing, it was interesting to compare the different ways computing and its related disciplines are taught at our respective institutions.

The evening kicked off with a presentation from Nick about Aware Monitoring. Unfortunately, due to being in a basement room, there was no internet access and no live demon as a result. However, there were plenty of screenshots and they showed a very polished looking and full featured service.

Simon Oxley (@soxley) then gave a talk about the cloud. He gave a brief history of the origins of cloud computing starting from old mainframes to the internet. He then discussed issues of trust and security and their implications for cloud computing.

This set the stage for an interesting panel discussion. The discussion focussed on issues of security and trust in the cloud, particularly regarding business data in the cloud. A very controversial issue as the discussion easily could have gone on past 20:30 where the discussion was brought to a close.

Overall, I left feeling glad I went and looking forward to December’s NottTuesday, and in fact the only low point during the evening was catching the train back home: I was delayed while the station brought up a new train to replace the original one which had broken down.

I went through all the settings but couldn’t get it to sound.

Eventually I found the solution on this forum: when selecting what alarm sound to play, on the multiple choice menu,

A screenshot of the Alarm Sound Menu on my HTC Hero

use the volume control to adjust the Alarm Volume (this is different from Ringer Volume). Turn up the alarm volume to the desired level and test the alarm again.

Adjusting the Android Alarm Volume

It should work now.

This works for the HTC Hero, and I expect will be the same for other phones using the Sense UI. It may also work for other Android phones, based on my fiddling with the Android emulator. Does it work for you? Why not tell us what phone it worked for in the comments below.

EDIT: (13/03/2010 09:10) Made introduction a bit clearer about the nature of the problem (alarm goes off but without sound) and added final paragraph about what phones this may work for (potentially all Android phones if the emulator is anything to go by)

I was using the eclipse AVD and SDK manager to upgrade, and since it wasn’t working I went looking for an alternative.

One idea suggested on Google’s Adding SDK Components page was to cd into the tools directory and run the android command on the command line, but this didn’t work either as it couldn’t find the correct path for the SWT folder:

Starting Android SDK and AVD Manager
SWT folder 'lib\x86_64' does not exist.
Please set ANDROID_SWT to point to the folder containing swt.jar for your platform.


This was rubbish as it did exist, and setting ANDROID_SWT in my environment variables didn’t work either.

Out of sheer desperation, I downloaded the latest SDK tools, deleted my old SDK and installed from scratch.
The latest SDK tools release (revision 3) doesn’t come with any pre-packaged Android platform, but it does come with a new standalone SDK updater: SDK Setup.exe on Windows.

I initially had the same issue with the new update tool, but unlike previous versions this had the option to force the updater to use HTTP instead of HTTPS. Since the problem was with SSL, I forced it to use HTTP and lo’ and behold, it worked perfectly!

I followed the set up instructions in my copy of Android Application Development (which are pretty much the same as the instructions on the Android Dev site), but when I tried to run a simple Hello World type app on my handset I had problems.

I would plug my phone in, as per the instructions, but it wouldn’t be detected. Eclipse is supposed to recognise my phone as valid build target and be able to install and run the app on my phone via USB, but it didn’t.

To be clear, the phone had debug via USB enabled and apart from not being detected by Eclipse worked fine when mounting the SD card as removable USB storage.

Running ADB from the command line also indicated a problem: I ran adb devices with my phone connected, but no devices were listed.

I already had the most up to date driver from Google, but there seemed to be something wrong.

I found a guide to installing ADB via Google, and despite doing everything that was suggested, including the instructions in the “Im not getting a notification of Android ADB when i plug in my USB” [sic], but nothing changed.

However, I installed USBDeview as suggested and looked at the drivers. They all appeared to be present and correct, but I noticed the ADB driver wasn’t shown as being connected when the phone was plugged in. This further confirmed my suspicion that the problem was dodgy drivers.

Eventually I found a way of getting working drivers installed, although it’s far from a standard approach.

First you need to use USBDeview to remove the existing drivers. I found there were 3: one with a device name: “Android Phone”; another as with no device name but labelled “ADB Interface” in the descripton; and another that again had no device name but was described as “USB Mass Storage Device”.

Then you need to install PdaNet for Android, an application that allows you to use your Android phone as a USB modem, which comes with a version of the ADB drivers that work fine for me.

My hunch is that it’s something to do with me running 64-bit XP (I also cannot install HTC Sync because of issues I think related to XP x64) although why these drivers should work while the official ones don’t I can’t imagine.

The drivers are installed when you install the program, and you don’t need to keep the program installed once the drivers are working, you can remove it and the drivers will remain.

One slightly tricky bit I encountered: When I was installing, XP defaulted to installing the Google drivers that weren’t working for me.

To get around this, when the PdaNet installer displays a prompt asking you to click yes when the drivers have installed (which may prompt XP to (re)install the Google drivers) go into device manager, find the ADB driver in the list, usually under ADB Interface, and bring up the properties window. Select the update driver option.

This will start the Hardware Update Wizard. Tell Windows not to connect to the internet to search for updates and click next.
On the next screen, select “Install from a list or specific location” and click next.
On the screen that follows, select “Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install” and click next.

You will now see a list of available drivers. One will be Google’s and the other the one we want.
It is labelled HTC Dream Composite ADB Interface. It isn’t digitally signed, but don’t worry about that
(Disclaimer: it works for me and I’ve had no problems so far, but that doesn’t mean it will definitely work for you)

Now, simply continue with the driver installation, and once the driver installation is complete ADB should work fine. At this point it doesn’t matter if PdaNet installs correctly or not (something caused it to fail for me, but ADB still works fine)

I was recently doing some housekeeping on my websever: removing archived software downloads that I no longer needed and looking for any problems when I found one that initially had me stumped. Looking at the size of my home directory, I found it was around 600mb with no immediately obvious reason as to why.

I have hardly any files in my home directory, so I quickly located the problem to ~/Mailbox/.Sent/cur, which is, as the path suggests, related to my email server. It looked like copies of my sent mail was being stored and not deleted.

Curiously, the mailbox directory is used by Dovecot, but Dovecot doesn’t handle sending mail so why would it be storing sent mail? Particularly as Dovecot wouldn’t have access to outgoing mail to store it. Some googling turned up nothing, which further suggested Dovecot wasn’t the issue.

Since the problem was with outgoing mail, I then turned my attention to Postfix, my smtp server, which would have access outgoing mail, but again, as with Dovecot, found no information on configuring Postfix to store outgoing mail.

At this point I had no obvious theory to go with, so I started looking at the files themselves for something to go on. There were 374 of these files (which I counted using the technique in this post) and as I started looking at the contents I realised they were copies of my automated backup emails.

These backup emails are sent using Mutt via a bash script running on a cron job that executes once a day. It just so happens that I’ve had this set up running around just over a year, so the number of these stored emails supports the theory that Mutt is the perpetrator

To confirm Mutt was creating these files, I used Mutt to send a mail and then checked to see if it appeared in the directory. It did.

Therefore, it seems I have a copy of every single email sent via Mutt since setting up my email system. This arrangement is good for archiving, but bad for disk usage.

The Solution
So I looked into Mutt’s configuration and found an option in Mutt’s configuration file (.muttrc) that controls the storing of sent mail: set copy.

set copy = yes will enable storing sent mail
set copy = no will disable storing sent mail

However, this isn’t optimal, as I would like to save Mutt’s recently sent email (as a lot of it is auto generated by the server and is my only copy if it never reaches the intended recipient) but delete anything older than a certain period.

You can achieve this using the find command

find . -ctime +90 -exec rm -f -v '{}' \;

This command searches in the current directory for files that are older than 90 days (using -ctime +90) and then executes the command rm -f -v on each result by using -exec rm -f -v '{}' \ (the '{}'\ tells find to run the command on each result).

Now that I had a command that did what I want, I set up a cron job to run nightly to execute the command in the correct directory:

00 03 * * * root cd /home/chris/Maildir/.Sent/cur; find . -ctime +90 -exec rm -f -v '{}' \;

This job runs as root every day at 3am. I added a cd command to enter the correct directory, but I could have just as easily put the path in the argument of the find command. Indeed, if you want to run this command on several directories, it would be better to list each directory as an argument to find, but in my case where I only wanted to run this on a single directory I found using a separate cd command more legible.

With that done, I now have a much smaller archive of sent mail that is automatically cleaned up for me without me having to do anything.

• find
• wc

We’ll use the find command to locate all the files (and exclude directories and other non-files) and then the wc command to count the files.

Find has many options, but we will only be using the type option:
find . -type f

The . indicates the directory to search in and can be replaced with any absolute or relative path. This command will also find files in subdirectories. To exclude subdirectories you can use:

find . ! -name . -prune -type f

The ! -name . -prune will ignore any directories that are not the current one.

The find command will give us a list of all the files we want to count, to count the number of entries in that list we must pass the output to wc to count it.

By default, wc will count words, newlines, and bytes. Since the output from find is a list of files, each separated by a newline, we can tell wc to only count newlines by using the -l argument: wc -l
Combining this into a single command, we get the final command to find count the number of files in a directory excluding sub-directories:
find . ! -name . -prune -type f | wc -l

(Of course, if you want to include sub-directories, simply remove the ! -name . -prune arguments and use:
find . -type f | wc -l instead)