Email from the shell: mutt and alpine

Reading mail in a terminal is faster than any webmail client once your fingers know it, and it works over a 3G tether from a train. Two clients are installed: mutt, which is a scalpel, and alpine, which is a menu.

There is no mail server on this box. Nothing is delivered locally, /var/mail stays empty, and cron cannot email you its output. Both clients here are used the way you would use Thunderbird: they connect to your own provider over IMAP and send through its SMTP server.

mutt

Create ~/.mutt/muttrc (mode 0600 — it names your account):

set realname  = "Your Name"
set from      = "you@example.com"

# Reading: IMAP over TLS
set folder     = "imaps://imap.example.com/"
set spoolfile  = "+INBOX"
set postponed  = "+Drafts"
set record     = "+Sent"
set imap_user  = "you@example.com"

# Sending: SMTP over TLS
set smtp_url   = "smtps://you@example.com@smtp.example.com:465/"

# Keep a local copy of the mailbox so reopening is instant
set header_cache     = "~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir = "~/.mutt/cache/bodies"

set sort = threads
set sort_aux = reverse-last-date-received

mkdir -p ~/.mutt/cache
chmod 700 ~/.mutt
chmod 600 ~/.mutt/muttrc

Run mutt. It will ask for your password twice — once for IMAP, once for the first send.

Not storing your password in a plain file

You can put set imap_pass = "..." in the config, and you should not: it is a plaintext password in your home directory on a shared machine. Either let mutt prompt you each session, or keep it encrypted:

gpg --quick-generate-key "you@example.com"     # once, if you have no key
printf 'set imap_pass = "yourpassword"\n' > /tmp/p
printf 'set smtp_pass = "yourpassword"\n' >> /tmp/p
gpg -e -r "you@example.com" -o ~/.mutt/pass.gpg /tmp/p
shred -u /tmp/p

Then in muttrc:

source "gpg -dq ~/.mutt/pass.gpg |"

You unlock the key once per session instead of typing the password every time, and nothing readable sits on disk.

App passwords

Gmail, Outlook and most large providers will not accept your normal password from a mail client any more. Generate an app-specific password in your provider's account settings and use that. It also means revoking access from this box later is one click and does not disturb anything else.

Keys worth memorising

j / k: Next / previous message.
Enter: Read. q goes back.
m: Compose. r reply, g reply to all, f forward.
d / u: Mark deleted / undelete. $ applies the changes.
c: Change folder. ? lists your folders.
/: Search. l limits the view to matches, l then all restores it.
s: Save the message to a folder.

HTML mail

Most mail is HTML now. Render it inline with a text browser rather than giving up. Create ~/.mailcap:

text/html; w3m -dump -T text/html -o display_link_number=1 %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html

and add to muttrc:

auto_view text/html
alternative_order text/plain text/enriched text/html

Attachments

In a message, v lists the attachments; s saves the highlighted one. When composing, a attaches a file from your home directory — which is the easy way to mail yourself something you have built on the box.

alpine

Alpine is the friendlier option: everything is a menu and the commands are listed along the bottom of the screen at all times. It is the direct descendant of pine, which is what most people's first email client actually was.

Run alpine, then press S (Setup) and C (Config). The fields to fill in:

Personal Name: Your Name
User Domain: example.com
SMTP Server: smtp.example.com:587/tls/user=you@example.com
Inbox Path: {imap.example.com:993/ssl/user=you@example.com}INBOX

E exits the config screen and Y saves. Settings live in ~/.pinerc, so you can edit that file directly once you know what you want.

Navigation is > and < to move in and out of screens, C to compose, Ctrl-X to send. Alpine's composer is the same editor as nano, which is the other reason people found it easy.

Which one

Use alpine if you want to read your mail today. Use mutt if you are going to live in it — its filtering, threading and macro system are why people who use mutt keep using mutt twenty years later.

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