# Good simple console email client

## WarMachine

Wow there's a lot out there, many clients just too complex and confusing, all I need is to send and receive email from my ISP's POP3 server.  I've tried mutt and pine.  Simple is key here, thanks for any advice.

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## vargen

Isn't pine easy enough??

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## MJN222

If you're looking for real baseline functionality you could try

```
telnet pop3server 110
```

That's about as basic as you get   :Wink: 

Seriously though, what about mutt and/or pine is too complex for you? Those are the two simplest mail clients I can think of. Granted, they do have some other features built-in, but if you're not going to be using them they don't get in the way (at least not for me   :Smile: )

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## WarMachine

well I can't get mutt to quit wanting to use sendmail, I just want to send it through my ISP's mail server, I can't even find where to set anything about receiving messages in pine

mutt and pine are both loaded with options I don't need or want, here's all the optiotns I need:

set it to receive and send to/from my ISP's server, my username+pass, and to not delete the messages from the server upon downloading, that's IT.

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## MJN222

I can't really think of any other console based mail clients off the top of my head.

It sounds like telneting to your mailserver and reading the messages there might work for your purposes (it sounds like you just want to be able to check your mail from this machine from time to time and do your "heavy" mailing from another box, obviously this is just speculation)

if that doesn't work you might want to look at setting up mutt or pine to do this for you(I know you don't want to use these, but I dont' know what else there is available - you could write a simple program to go out to your webserver and fetch the messages and/or send one out...and tie it together with a script to run your favorite editor if you wanted to send mail out...not too difficult if you're a coder, a bit daunting otherwise)

For more info on configuring mutt to work with remote pop3 and/or imap servers take a look here

http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-4.html#ss4.10

I would think pine has similar functionality, try digging around that site if you want to use pine.

Sorry I can't help you out more, if you find a mail client that fits your description let me know, I'm curious if there is one that "lightweight"

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## WarMachine

I can't believe just waiting and using outlook express on my windows machine is the simplest solution to this  :Sad: 

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## loveshack

 *WarMachine wrote:*   

>  I can't even find where to set anything about receiving messages in pine
> 
> 

 

::shrugs:: You seem dead set against using Pine, but since you say you can't figure out how to use it to check your mail, I'll go ahead and give you my own methods of doing so. Now admittedly, setting this up might take an investment of a few minutes of your time...but seriously, after that, you can send/recieve to/from your ISP's server, using your username and password, and not having the message deleted from the server wtihout paying any attention to the other options in Pine. It might not be your perfect solution, but the features you don't want really will stay completely and 100% out of your way. 

Anyway, now for the time investment (the short version. The much better version is in a post by beowulf). Start by getting some necessary programs: 

```
emerge pine fetchmail procmail
```

Now, run some simple configuration

```
 nano -w ~/.procmailrc 
```

and insert the following into it:

```
SHELL=/bin/bash

MAILDIR=$HOME/mail

DEFAULT=$HOME/.mbox

```

Then, 

```
nano -w ~/.fetchmailrc
```

and insert

```
set postmaster "root"

set no bouncemail

set no spambounce

set properties ""

set daemon 340

poll "your.pop.server" 

protocol pop3

username "your_user_name" 

password "your_password"

fetchall

keep

mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"

```

Now, using a method of your choice, get fetchmail to start up whenever you log in. In fact, go ahead and run the "fetchmail" command to get it going. It will download your mail to your system every 340 seconds (though obviously you can change it in the .fetchmailrc file) 

Lastly, start up Pine, go to the Setup menu, and then the Config section. Set your personal-name to be your name, your user-domain to be your domain (the part after the @ in your e-mail address), set smtp-server to be your ISP's smtp-server (see? No sendmail involved), and make the inbox-path be the path to your mailbox (mine is /home/willia4/.mbox).

You can now use Pine to send and recieve e-mail using only your ISP's servers. You will also keep all mail on your ISP's server. You can also freely ignore any option in Pine you don't want to use (it has no paperclip to get in the way).

I realize that this is probably a lot more work than you seem to be willing to put into it... :Smile:  But come on! Anything's better than OE on Windows! 

And I figure (or hope, rather) that someone will be along to correct the way I have mail-handling set up on my sytem. It was a real trial-by-fire to get it to work at all and is rather touchy. The way I've described it work for me and I just hope they work for you. Though, again, I don't really expect you to feel like going to the trouble.  :Smile:  But you said you couldn't figure out how to get Pine to recieve mail, so I figured I'd let you know! 

As an aside, Pine can directly download messages from a POP server (without having to go through the hassle of using fetchmail and procmail). More information on that is available in this FAQ. However, that's not really a job Pine was meant to do, so it's not as powerful. I'm not sure that it'll let you keep the messages on the server, for example. Someone else might know the answer to that, but it's outside my range of experience. 

Anyway, I hope you find something that can keep you away from OE, even if it isn't Pine.

P.S.

Sorry for the long post, he writes after clicking "Preview"...

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## therandomor

elm is a command line mail program that i have used for years.  it's kinda hard to find now...

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## devon

 *therandomor wrote:*   

> elm is a command line mail program that i have used for years.  it's kinda hard to find now...

 

It is masked, but elm is in portage.

```
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -p elm

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/ispell-3.2.06-r5

[ebuild  N   ] net-mail/mailbase-0.00-r5

[ebuild  N   ] net-mail/elm-2.4_rc100
```

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## gnac

Has anyone tried Elmo?

http://elmo.sourceforge.net/

It looks like what you want, (direct connect to smtp/pop).  I don't know about leaving messages on server, I just started looking for a client myself so I can check my personal mail from work without having *mail installed at home.

```
ssh home

$elmo

...

```

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## Liathus

i have to agree with some of the others.   Pine is the defacto command line email client.  Yes it has a lot of options... but that doesnt mean you need to use them.

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## patroclo7

I use elmo every day... and it is really a nice app... easy to configure... fast... The ideal mail console client for a single-user workstation which uses remote pop3 and smtp (also with authentication) servers: probably the most common situation for desktop users. The ncurses interface is nice.

Alas, the actual version is not in portage and the version actually in portage is really old. You need to compile it on your own (however, it's really simple).

The actual version is not in portage due to a compatibility problem with gpgme. But there is a patch to solve the problem, and the next version will be patched and will be in portage.  :Smile: 

I think that elmo is a very important, not enough known app in order to show to newbies the beauty and the usability of the console  :Smile:  The main reason why newbies prefer graphical email-clients as kmail or thunderbird or sylpheed (sylpheed is nice  :Smile:  ) is not that they prefer graphical apps, but that postfix+fetchmail+mutt+procmail is TOO MUCH for a single user desktop. They are perfectly right in refusing them.

As an all-in-one console email client, elmo has at the moment no alternative. Support it!

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## drathos

 *therandomor wrote:*   

> elm is a command line mail program that i have used for years.  it's kinda hard to find now...

 

i thought it was a dead project until this morning when i saw a new release listed on freshmeat.net..

check it out..  first release in two and a half years.

don't know why gentoo is stuck with a 2.4 release candidate.

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## LokiCoki

Hey loveshack!  Thanks a lot for the quick pine setup tip.  That's excactly what I was looking for.

It worked perfectly!

Just a little detail, in .fetchmailrc, you cannot put both fetchall and keep because you would keep downloading the same emails over and over again!!  :Smile: 

Here's my .fetchmailrc :

```
set postmaster "root"

set no bouncemail

set no spambounce

set properties ""

set daemon 240

poll "your.server.here"

protocol imap

username "yourusername"

password "yourpassword"

no fetchall

keep

mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"
```

You just replace "fetchall" by "no fetchall" which will retrieve only new messages.  In fact, the option "no fetchall" is the option by default so you don't even have to put it in your .fetchmailrc

Thanks again loveshack!

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## LokiCoki

Ok, I said it worked perfectly, but I spoke a bit to fast.

There are a couple points that need to be modified.

First of all, the .procmailrc file was useless for me.  I delete the one I had created.  In my .fetchmailrc, I replaced the line 

```
mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"
```

 with the following: 

```
mda "/usr/bin/procmail /etc/procmailrc"
```

Now, what happens is that when i ran fetchmail, a .maildir directory was automatically created.  Then, everything worked fine (it worked fine before as well, but for someone who just installed procmail, there is no need to create the .procmailrc file in the home directory, the one in /etc/ does the trick perfectly).

Then, the [bold]crucial[/bold] step!  In your .pinerc config file, there is an option somewhere near the end of the file where you can tell pine the location of your maildir (the default location for pine is Maildir, which is not the same as the default for procmail which is .maildir).  You have (around line 306):

```
maildir-location=.maildir
```

And you can leave the inbox-path (around line 29) blank.

I got it to work that way.  Seems complicated, but when you start from "emerge pine fetchmail procmail" without any config files, the set up is in fact pretty straightforward.

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## stahlsau

"email" is my favorite client. It's in portage, too  :Wink: 

No hassle to set-up, and to write an email you just type 

```
email -s "subject" recipient1,recipient2,...
```

Then it opens $EDITOR and lets you write... I love it!

*edit: fixed a little of my horrible english  :Wink: 

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## ashibaka

 *gnac wrote:*   

> Has anyone tried Elmo?
> 
> http://elmo.sourceforge.net/
> 
> It looks like what you want, (direct connect to smtp/pop).  I don't know about leaving messages on server, I just started looking for a client myself so I can check my personal mail from work without having *mail installed at home.
> ...

 Thank you for this and bumping for other mutt haters.

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## Spiffster

 *ashibaka wrote:*   

> Thank you for this and bumping for other mutt haters.

 

Is there such a thing as a mutt hater?

I can understand that some people need something simple, and mutt may be overkill in some situations, but I really don't understand if people can actually hate it  :Wink: 

I have been using mutt for the past 5-7 years, and I really enjoy it. From time to time I need some feature, and I usually find it in mutt, either trough the built-in help or with a little googling. I have a description of my setup (including config-files etc) at http://symlink.dk/linux/config/mutt/. This includes procmail for sorting mails into different mailboxes, and fetchmail for getting mail from a pop3/ssl server.

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## ashibaka

 *Spiffster wrote:*   

> Is there such a thing as a mutt hater?

 Yeah, I despise the way it refuses to send mail and the developers are actually uppity about it. They've invented a whole nonsensical religion about dividing up the simple task of ISP e-mail into separate programs, which I've never seen discussed talking about Thunderbird or Sylpheed or any other mail client. From a common-sense standpoint, SMTP is not bloat, sendmail is bloat.

elmo took some time to get working (it appears that development was never finished) but at least I can hook it up to actually send an e-mail when I'm done writing it.

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## bugg_tb

At home I use thunderbird to fetch, and store my mail in its relative folders, and at work I can ssh into my compter, what I am interested to know is with any of the programs listed above is it possible to read you thunderbird mail store from the command line?

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