CLI Email of the Future: Office 365 and QUB
This is a quick record of the steps taken to setup a local email copy, index, and reading. A list of software used is below, some are optional.
- GetMail : Mail Retriever
- notmuch : Local Mail Indexer
- alot : Mail User Agent (MUA)
- w3m* : a text based web browser and pager
- pass* : The unix password manager
- Daemontools* : Process supervision toolkit
* Optional.
Debian/Ubuntu
All the software should be available via apt.
sudo apt install getmail notmuch alot w3m pass daemontools
Fedora
Get the latest sources of getmail from the offical site. Extract, build, and install:
tar xvf getmail-<version>.tar.gz
cd getmail-<version>
python2 setup.py build
sudo python2 setup.py install
You can use the distrubtion repository for the rest.
sudo dnf install notmuch alot pass w3m
GetMail
Talks to Office365 via IMAP over TLS. Gets all the emails and stores them locally. Make sure to create the direcotries needed:
mkdir -p ~/mail/staff/{cur,new,tmp}
$HOME/.getmail/getmailrc
[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = outlook.office365.com
port = 993
username = <STAFF ID>@ads.qub.ac.uk
password_command = ("/usr/bin/pass", "qub/staff")
mailboxes = ALL
[destination]
type = Maildir
path = ~/mail/staff/
[options]
read_all = False
verbose = 1
message_log = ~/.getmail/staff.log
notmuch
Indexes the local Maildir, and allows you to apply tags and search mail.
$HOME/.notmuch-config
[database]
path=/home/user/mail/staff
[user]
name=<My Name>
primary_email=<My Email>@qub.ac.uk
[new]
tags=unread;inbox;
ignore=
[search]
exclude_tags=deleted;spam;
[maildir]
synchronize_flags=true
Once you’ve created the config, run notmuch new to create the database.
alot
A terminal-based mail user agent (MUA) based on notmuch mail indexer.
You’ll need to setup sending accounts.
$HOME/.config/alot/config
[accounts]
[[staff]]
realname = <My Name>
address = <My Email>@qub.ac.uk
alias_regexp = <My Email>\+.+@qub.ac.uk
gpg_key = <GPG Key>
# TODO: Setup msmtp
# sendmail_command = msmtp --account= -t
# TODO: Figure out the right location.
# sent_box = maildir:///~/mail/staff/Sent
# draft_box = maildir://~/mail/staff/Drafts
mailcap
Mailcap is a file the defines what should happen when a specific file type is opened in alot (or other MUAs). In this case we want to render text/HTML types using w3m. A CLI browser and web rendering engine.
$HOME/.mailcap
text/html; w3m -dump -o document_charset=%{charset} '%s'; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
Work flow
Manually
getmail && notmuch new && alot
Automated
Touch $HOME/.getmail/do-not-run if you want to prevent getmail from running. This might be to save power or you just don’t want emails coming in.
We have also used setlock to prevent multiple instances running at once. This is to prevent strange things from happening.
crontab -e
*/10 * * * * [ -f $HOME/.getmail/do-not-run ] || /usr/bin/setlock -n $HOME/.getmail/run.lock /usr/bin/getmail && notmuch new
Future
Syncing the unread/read flags via IMAP. Might need to change over to OfflineIMAP or something?
Sending email
- Inital: 2020 January 15th
- Updated: 2020 March 20th
- Added fedora steps and syntax highlighting.
- Added basic alot account config.
15 Jan 2020 | Tags ( guide )