Crony Akatsuki

Virgin (Neo)Mutt User Meet Mblaze

24-10-2023

We have all heard of (Neo)Mutt when it comes to managing e-mail in the terminal right? What would you do if I told you there is an even better and more UNIX way to manage mail on the terminal? Well there is and it’s called mblaze.

In this post I will explain to you how to setup mblaze for managing your email, but for that we will 2 more additional software to manage our mail with mblaze. OpenSMTPD the openbsd fast mail server for getting local mail from services like crontab and sending mail with, and isync for downloading our mail from our remote server’s either selfhosted or gmail.

1. OpenSMTPD

First we will setup OpenSMTP for local mail, and we will also relay’s that allow us to send e-mail from our selfhosted or gmail mail server’s for example. Make sure to install opensmtpd from your package maanager.

Edit /etc/smtpd/smtpd.conf

table aliases file:/etc/mail/aliases
table credentials file:/etc/mail/credentials

listen on 127.0.0.1

action "local_mail" maildir "/home/%{user.username}/.local/share/Maildir/local" alias <aliases>
action outbound_selfhost relay host smtp+tls://selfhost@subdomain.domain.com:587 auth <credentials>
action outbound_gmail relay host smtp+tls://gmail@smtp.gmail.com:587 auth <credentials>

match for local action "local_mail"
match mail-from "selfhost@domain.com" for any action outbound_selfhost
match mail-from "username@gmail.com" for any action outbound_gmail

Next you will need to update aliases in file /etc/mail/aliases under the comment # Well-known aliases -- these should be filled in! to your main user account on your system.

Now we will also setup the passwords in the /etc/mail/credentials, Note for gmail you will need to setup app password for it to be usable with this method and enable smtp in gmail.

selfhost selfhost:selfhost_password
gmail gmail:gmail_password

Also make sure to run sudo chmod 600 /etc/mail/credentials to make sure the password’s aren’t readable if you aren’t running as sudo.

2. isync

Now we will setup isync to get our e-mail from our server’s. In this example there is both settings for a selfhosted server and a gmail one.

Edit $HOME/.mbsyncrc

IMAPStore selfhost-remote
Host subdomain.domain.com
Port 993
User selfhost@domain.com
PassCmd "Command for password" or Pass password
SSLType IMAPS
CertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

MaildirStore selfhost-local
Path ~/.local/share/Maildir/selfhost/
Inbox ~/.local/share/Maildir/selfhost/INBOX
SubFolders Verbatim

Channel selfhost
Far :selfhost-remote:
Near :selfhost-local:
Create Both
Expunge Both
Patterns * !"[Gmail]/All Mail" !"*fts-flatcurve*" !"*virtual*"
SyncState *
Create Both

IMAPStore gmail-remote
Host imap.gmail.com
Port 993
User gmail@gmail.com
PassCmd "Command for password" or Pass password
SSLType IMAPS
CertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

MaildirStore gmail-local
Path ~/.local/share/Maildir/gmail/
Inbox ~/.local/share/Maildir/gmail/INBOX
SubFolders Verbatim

Channel gmail
Far :gmail-remote:
Near :gmail-local:
Create Both
Expunge Both
Patterns * !"[Gmail]/All Mail" !"*fts-flatcurve*" !"*virtual*"
SyncState *
Create Both

Then you can run mbsync -V gmail/selfhost to sync a specific account or you can run mbsync -a to sync all your account’s.

3. mblaze

Now we will start working on the most juicy part, setting up mblaze for basic usage. First we will setup a basic mblaze profile for our local account.

Edit $HOME/.mblaze/profile

Local-Mailbox: user
FQDN: "Generate using command mgenmid"
Maildir: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/local
Outbox: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/local/Sent/
Drafts: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/local/Drafts/
Reply-From: user
# You don't need this, it just makes it easier to see date
Scan-Format: %c%u%r %-3n    %10d    %17f %t %2i%s

And now we are ready for using mblaze for managing our local mail with mblaze. Now for the rest of this blog I will show how I manage multiple account’s using a scipt and a couple function’s. I will also link a video that will show you in more detail things for using mblaze for managing your mail which was my inspiration for making this post.

4. Multiple profiles management

You can do this in a lot of ways with mblaze since it is very easily scriptable, but I do it with a script that copies over a preconfigure profile from $HOME/.config/mblaze

example selfhost mblaze config $HOME/.config/mblaze/selfhost

Local-Mailbox: User Name <user@domain.com>
FQDN: "Generate using command mgenmid"
Maildir: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/selfhost
Outbox: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/selfhost/Sent/
Drafts: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/selfhost/Drafts/
Reply-From: User Name <user@domain.com>
Scan-Format: %c%u%r %-3n    %10d    %17f %t %2i%s

example gmail mblaze config $HOME/.config/mblaze/gmail

Local-Mailbox: user <user@gmail.com>
FQDN: "Generate using command mgenmid"
Maildir: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/gmail
Outbox: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/gmail/[Gmail]/Sent Mail
Drafts: /home/USER/.local/share/Maildir/gmail/[Gmail]/Drafts
Reply-From: user <user@gmail.com>
Scan-Format: %c%u%r %-3n    %10d    %17f %t %2i%s

For the local profile, just copy the config saved to $HOME/.mblaze/profile to $HOME/.config/mblaze/local.

Now onto the script and functions I use with my zsh.

mprofile

#!/bin/sh

profiles=$(find "$HOME"/.config/mblaze -type f -exec basename "{}" \;)
currentMaildir=$(grep "^Maildir:" "$HOME"/.mblaze/profile | cut -d: -f 2 | sed 's/ //g')

[ -z "$1" ] && basename "$(grep -w "$currentMaildir" -l -R "$HOME"/.config/mblaze)" && exit 0
[ "$1" = "-l" ] && printf '%s\n' "$profiles" && exit 0

profile="$1"

if printf '%s\n' "$profiles" | grep -qw "$profile"; then
  cp "$HOME"/.config/mblaze/"$profile" "$HOME"/.mblaze/profile
else
  printf '%s\n' "This profile doesn't exist"
fi

The script is able to print the current profile when run without argument, listing all available profiles using -l and setting the profile by providing it’s name.

functions

# mblaze functions

# Get new mail for current profile
mnew () {
  maildir=$(grep "^Maildir:" $HOME/.mblaze/profile | cut -d: -f 2 | sed 's/ //g')
  profile=$(basename $maildir)
  if [ "$profile" = "local" ]; then
    mlist -s "$maildir"| msort -dr | mseq -S
  else
    mbsync -V $profile
    mlist -s "$maildir"/INBOX | msort -dr | mseq -S
  fi
}

# Get full mail for current profile including threads
mall () {
  maildir=$(grep "^Maildir:" $HOME/.mblaze/profile | cut -d: -f 2 | sed 's/ //g')
  sent=$(grep "^Outbox:" $HOME/.mblaze/profile | cut -d: -f 2 | sed 's/ //g')
  profile=$(basename $maildir)
  if [ "$profile" = "local" ]; then
    mlist "$maildir" | mthread -r -S "$maildir" | mseq -S
  else
    mbsync -V $profile
    mlist "$maildir"/INBOX | mthread -r -S "$sent" | mseq -S
  fi
}

For the rest of usage of mblaze, I really recommend to use man mblaze since the software is really well documented, or you can also watch this video I took the inspiration from for this setup.

Conclusion

Hope you have had a good read, and I hope you will maybe try out this mail setup, or create your own even better setup for your self.