Codingdomain.com

Automatic download

Running getmail

It's time to test the configuration.

First getmail needs to be tested. Run the following commands to test getmail, and see what happens:

Testing getmail:

getmail --dont-delete                   # if you use ~/.getmail/getmailrc
getmail --dont-delete --rcfile filename # if you have separate v4 files

If everthing went file, you should find your e-mail messages in the folder ~/.maildir/new/.

If getmail indicates something is wrong, or your messages are not stored at all, verify your getmail configuration and check the maildrop log. I've placed those in ~/.getmail/maildrop.log.

Enable the cronjob

Finally, the automatic downloading can be enabled with a cronjob. Run crontab -e in the console to edit the crontab. You can also run kcron in KDE.

Crontab with getmail-3 command: "crontab -e"

# download my e-mail every half hour:
15,45 * * * *    getmail --quiet

Crontab with getmail-4 command: "crontab -e"

# download my e-mail every half hour:
15,45 * * * *    getmail --quiet --rcfile "rc_vdboor@hotmail" --rcfile "rc_vdboor@codingdomain"

Running getmail-3 manually is very easy, just type getmail. Using multiple rc-files with getmail-4 makes it more complex, but you might like this script:

getmail-4 helper script:

#!/bin/sh

ignore_warnings='DeprecationWarning|FutureWarning|HeaderParser|%s at 0x'

for account in vdboor@hotmail vdboor@gmail vdboor@codingdomain
do
  if [ "$1" = "--quiet" ]
  then
    getmail --quiet --rcfile "rc_$account" 2>&1 \
          | grep -vE "$ignore_warnings" 1>&2
  else
    echo ""
    getmail --rcfile "rc_$account" \
          | grep -vE "getmail version|GNU GPL|$ignore_warnings" \
          | sed -e 's/SimplePOP3Retriever:/Checking /'
  fi
done

This script can be saved as ~/bin/getallmail for example. Use chmod +x ~/bin/getallmail to enable the execution permissions. You can also replace the cron command with the script off course:

Crontab with script: "crontab -e"

# download my e-mail every half hour:
15,45 * * * *    ~/bin/getallmail --quiet

This will download the e-mail automatically twice each hour.

Final Recap

By using Maildrop, all e-mail messages are sorted automatically and checked for any signs of spam. With the configured IMAP server, e-mail messages can be shared between different e-mail clients.

Whenever you switch to another desktop, you'll see the same e-mail messages. Most webmail applications have build-in support for IMAP, so it's very easy to view the same e-mail messages with webmail as well. But most important: I hope it an exciting yourney! ;-)

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