Using procmail on MUTT/IMAP

[flickerfly]

I've been playing with using mutt to check my IMAP mailbox. I like the flexibility it gives, but I want to filter messages into folders. How do I do that with this combination? Can procmail handle IMAP?
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[adsmith]

I don't really see how you could do this, assuming you want it all to happen on the client.

Normally, procmail is called through a local .forward, so it catches incoming mail on demand. For it to deal with IMAP folders, you'd have to do periodic polling, e.g., with fetchmail, then use procmail to sort, and somehow push the changes back to the imap server (I don't think procmail can do this, but not sure -- I'll look into it).

To sort them yourself with relatively minimal effort, you could use "hooks" in mutt, but then you still have to be the one sorting at first.


Best solution: If you have shell access on the IMAP server, then just set up a normal ".forward -> procmail -> sorted inboxes" thing there.

[adsmith]

actually, I can think of one way:
write a perl script using dev-perl/Mail-IMAPClient and dev-perl/Procmail
which does:

[raf]

Hi,

A bit off topic, but close enough not to warrent a new thread!

I've decided to venture into setting up e-mail on my box. Until now I have just used thunderbird, but then I cannot check my e-mail from work easily AND cannot send e-mail from scripts. So, can you tell me if I have this (seems complilcated list) right before I start?

Use fetchmail to poll my isp for my e-mail. Run in daemon mode.
Use procmail to filter my e-mail into the various mailboxes.
Use pine (or mutt?) to read and compose my e-mail.
Use sendmail to send my e-mail through my isp to its destination

If configured properly, will all this allow me to send email from scripts?


-Raf

[adsmith]

sure, but I'd recommend postfix, qmail, or exim as your mail server, instead on sendmail. [ Only sendmail gurus love sendmail, everyone else hates it, and if you were already a sendmail guru, you wouldn't ask this question ]

Actually, if your outgoing mail always relays through your ISP, you probably don't even need something like sendmail/postfix/qmail/exim, just a mail forwarder, like ssmtp.

Once you have this running, it's easy to set up an IMAP server for remote usage (like dovecot, courier, or cyrus. NOT uw-imap, which sucks). Or, you can just use pine/mutt through ssh.

[raf]

Great! Thanks for your answer.

Yes my mail would always go through my ISP, so I'm glad you said I don't need to use sendmail. I once tried to "quickly" set it up, well it was anything BUT quick. I ended up giving up as I didn't need it that badly.

-Raf

[darkphader]

I use postfix and cyrus-imap (and fetchmail to collect from my accounts). Cyrus comes with sieve which handles the filtering of incoming mail.
I had used courier with maildrop in the past but for me cyrus is the best performing imap server and there's no need to install separate filtering software like procmail or maildrop.
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[raf]

Hi adsmith,

One more question. Once I have fetchmail, procmail, nbsmtp, and mutt setup what is the general procedure for writing (and sending) mail through a script?

Thanks,
Raf

[adsmith]

emerge mailx (provides the simple "mail" program, which does command-line email), and put something like

[raf]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply. Will this mail command go through my smtp to my isp and back through fetchmail? Or is it a "local" command to a user on the system?

Thanks,
Raf

[adsmith]

it will go through whichever MTA you installed, so probably (but depending on the behavior of your MTA), if you give it user@myhost.org, it will go through your ISP, but if you give it user@localhost, it will stay local. no promises, though... just send a couple emails with different permutations and check the headers when you get them back. mail will have the same bvehavior transport as mutt or whatever; this all dpends on the MTA.

[depontius]

I revamped the email on my LAN a few months back. I now have:

fetchmail - grabs the email from my ISP, and passes it off to
postfix - runs as a local mail hub, sending outgoing mail using my ISPs relay
............- also accepts mail from fetchmail, and passes deliveries to lmtp
procmail - I tweaked the ebuild to make it act as an lmtp server, plus it filters as the user
xinetd - listens on the lmtp (2003) port and invokes procmail in lmtp mode
dovecot - imap server

The big difference in my setup is using procmail as an lmtp server. The default ebuild doesn't do that, I had to make a little tweak. (I forget exactly what, but I can check, tonight.) So postfix passes off local mail to port 2003, causing xinetd to wake procmail, which does global .procmailrc stuff, then changes itself to the user and runs the user's .procmailrc, delivering the mail as desired. I wanted to use the procmail lmtp daemon so I could completely chroot postfix. I have lmtp listening on loopback, so even if it has to run as root, it's not listening on a visible port.
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[adsmith]

interesting setup -- it's almost identical to mine, but slightly more complicated

Why do you use procmail in such a complicated way? are you doing something special with it beyond what you say here? and which chroot problems does this circumvent compared to the traditional setup?

E.g., I just have .forward -> procmail (actually perl's Mail::Procmail, which is easier to configure for my uses) on a user-by-user basis. What is the advantage of the whole port 2003 thing here?

[depontius]

[adsmith]

okay, thanks for the info. maybe I'll try that some lazy day (though I think it's a bit paranoid, even for me)