What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian? Open to all approaches and combinations XD Thanks. -- Liam
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:29:09PM -0000, Liam E. wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian?
"MUA and POP retriever." For ultra lightweight, use bsd-mailx For features, use alpine or mutt For retriever, getmail or mpop. Fetchmail is way too slow.
On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 09:54:11AM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:29:09PM -0000, Liam E. wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian?
"MUA and POP retriever."
For ultra lightweight, use bsd-mailx
For features, use alpine or mutt
For retriever, getmail or mpop. Fetchmail is way too slow.
You'll want a text editor with that. vi is already there, or get vim. Or use nano or pico if you don't like features. Or use cat, if you are really cool. If you decide to use emacs (not so lightweight), you can also use emacs mail within emacs, rather than getting a separate mail client. For a few extra features, use "M-x butterfly" in emacs. https://xkcd.com/378/ - Greg
On 9/12/16 4:54 PM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:29:09PM -0000, Liam E. wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian? "MUA and POP retriever."
For ultra lightweight, use bsd-mailx
For features, use alpine or mutt
For retriever, getmail or mpop. Fetchmail is way too slow.
I always use imap, for many reasons, including using multiple client machines simultaneously while keeping the authoritative version on the server. Use an imap backup to mbox files, which does efficient delta updates, then a local client on those. sdw
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Liam E. <liame@mail2tor.com> wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian?
On any BSD or Linux, neomutt with mbox [1] serves simple use[r]s. You can go more minimal for lols but there's not much point to it. But if you want to move to more volume, a programmable backend, and extra crypto, which you eventually will and should just do from day one, you need fetchmail, msmtp, maildrop, and gpg with maildir. Beware most every other imap/pop and smtp client cannot do cert pinning (and optional checking) at all, let alone right or flexibly. (You might be able to get it added in neomutt if you ask them and help now.) And most of them suck badly at flexibly handling many accounts, unless you code around it. (Fetchmail / msmtp would be willing.) [1] For technical reasons I do not recommend mbox, unfortunately most users see it, incorrectly, as simple, so there it is listed.
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:38:24PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Liam E. <liame@mail2tor.com> wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian?
On any BSD or Linux, neomutt with mbox [1] serves simple use[r]s. You can go more minimal for lols but there's not much point to it.
But if you want to move to more volume, a programmable backend, and extra crypto, which you eventually will and should just do from day one, you need fetchmail,
Please! As I said, use getmail or mpop! Fetchmail is barely maintained these days, besides being an order of magnitude slow (per email downloading, without any pipelining, unlike both getmail -and- mpop).
msmtpa,
I'm almost certain mutt has smtp built in, and mutt can be used from the command line to construct and send emails without having to run interactively either. Why add a separate program into the mix unnecessarily? (Note, now I see below you mention cert pinning.)
maildrop,
This is a modernish and more importantly maintained procmail replacement. Recommended if you want its features, but technically optional.
and gpg
gpg of course
with maildir.
I still find mbox "folders" substantially quicker, even with an SSD. I expect notmuch-mutt will remove that particular block to using Maildir, and loop mounted Maildir hierarchy in a single (zip compressed) file would handle my objection to the storage bloat - that or ZFS of course.
Beware most every other imap/pop and smtp client cannot do cert pinning (and optional checking) at all, let alone right or flexibly.
Mutt ?
(You might be able to get it added in neomutt if you ask them and help now.) And most of them suck badly at flexibly handling many accounts, unless you code around it. (Fetchmail / msmtp would be willing.)
Ditch fetchmail already.
[1] For technical reasons I do not recommend mbox, unfortunately most users see it, incorrectly, as simple, so there it is listed.
For users who want to have to know the minimum, handle the least problems, Maildir is most likely a better, more trouble free "seamless" option, I agree.
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:59 PM, Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:
per email downloading, without any pipelining
Think about that for a while.
but technically optional.
As before, the whole paragraph was optional for simple use[r]s.
I still find mbox "folders" substantially quicker, even with an SSD. I expect notmuch-mutt will remove that particular block to using Maildir
The app is largely separate to mbox vs maildir on fs comparisons.
and loop mounted Maildir hierarchy in a single (zip compressed) file
Someone likes corruption.
would handle my objection to the storage bloat
The content is the same size. Most users weren't born on unix and thus don't grok inode love, management, and etre.
that or ZFS of course.
You wouldn't like it, it's not that 'quick' and loves RAM which isn't 'minimal'.
Ditch fetchmail already.
For now, not happening. My next tool survey is at least a year and devel time away. I gave one set, others gave others, use whatever you like, there's more than one use case and way.
On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 01:59:04PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 11:38:24PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Liam E. <liame@mail2tor.com> wrote:
What is the most minimal setup for command-line mail on a system like Debian?
On any BSD or Linux, neomutt with mbox [1] serves simple use[r]s. You can go more minimal for lols but there's not much point to it.
But if you want to move to more volume, a programmable backend, and extra crypto, which you eventually will and should just do from day one, you need fetchmail,
Please! As I said, use getmail or mpop! Fetchmail is barely maintained these days, besides being an order of magnitude slow (per email downloading, without any pipelining, unlike both getmail -and- mpop).
mutt (and neomutt presumably) supports imap natively pretty well, at least on my freebsd box (mutt 1.6.0). It used to be fairly buggy but it worked well the last time I used it for a couple weeks. But then you are limiting yourself to filtering on the server side with something like imapfilter, a program actually I like, but maildrop is nice too... So many good options! :P John
participants (6)
-
grarpamp -
Greg Newby -
John Newman -
Liam E. -
Stephen D. Williams -
Zenaan Harkness