mutt+gmail

Using mutt for sending emails via my gmail account has been something I wanted to do for a long time. After my last issue with my laptop, finally I decided to learn how to do it.

Thanks to these blogs I managed to get it working!!!

For the main setup, this link and this. For overcoming the authentication issue, this link. So you define a new password for an app in your google account as I use 2FA.

sudo aptitude install mutt

mkdir ~/.mutt

vim ~/.mutt/muttrc

This is the content of my file:

set from = "youremail@gmail.com"
set realname = "Name Surname"

# IMAP settings
set imap_user = "youremail@gmail.com"
set imap_pass = "your_new_app_password"

# SMTP settings
set smtp_url = "smtps://youremail@smtp.gmail.com"
set smtp_pass = "your_new_app_password"

# Remote Gmail folders
set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com/"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set postponed = "+[Gmail]/Drafts"
set trash = "+[Gmail]/Trash"

# Composition
set editor = "vim"
set edit_headers = yes
set charset = UTF-8

This is the error I had before getting the app password:

$ echo "Example mutt+gmail" | mutt -s "Testing mutt+gmail" youremail@gmail.com -a test.txt
SASL authentication failed
Could not send the message.
$ 

After that. Email sent fine without error and I can see it in my inbox!

$ echo "Example mutt+gmail v2" | mutt -s "Testing mutt+gmail v2" youremail@gmail.com -a books.ods 
$ 

The only thing I dont like is I need to have a password in a text file….

So let’s use chmod so, at least, only me can read the file.

~/.mutt$ chmod og-r muttrc
~/.mutt$ ls -ltr
total 4
-rw------- 1 yy yy 687 Oct 26 23:22 muttrc
~/.mutt$ 

Although, Ideally, I would prefer to use a certificate that is only valid for gmail, but I haven’t been able to find anything related to this.