Preface :

This is a little story about how I read my emails on my smartphone with Mutt. This is mainly intended as documentation for myself. I don’t claim that this is the perfect solution, but it works great for me 😀

If you think my setup is stupid, you are probably right 😉

My mail setup at $HOME :

At home, on a small computer with debian GNU/Linux installed, I use a combination of fetchmail/postfix/procmail to get my email and store it locally in maildir format. With syncthing I synchronize this maildir with other devices.

My smartphone setup :

On my smartphone I use postmarketOS with Sxmo.

Syncthing : Installation

I’ve installed syncthing on my smartphone with apk add syncthing and created the file /etc/conf.d/syncthing to make syncthing run as user jan (default user on my smartphone).

shift6mq [~]$ cat /etc/conf.d/syncthing
# /etc/conf.d/syncthing
SYNCTHING_USER=jan

I’ve used rc-update add syncthing to enable syncthing at boot time.

Syncthing : Setup

The configuration page of syncthing is at http://127.0.0.1:8384. With firefox, I’ve configured syncthing to share /home/jan/Maildir between my smartphone and home.

muttrc

To be able to send email when I’m not at home, I’ve added the following to my ~/.muttrc

# rechtstreeks SMTP server aanspreken
set my_email = "blabla@blabla.bla"
set my_password = "ZeerGeheimPaswoord"
set ssl_starttls=yes
set smtp_url="smtp://$my_email@blabla.bla:2525/"
set smtp_pass="$my_password"

Because the screen of a smartphone is limited, I’ve also added set folder_format="%2C %t %N %f" to ~/.muttrc.

Notifications

To get notifications when new mail arrives, I’ve added the following to ~/.config/sxmo/hooks/sxmo_hook_start.sh

# mail notification
MAILDIR=~/Maildir
inotifywait -m $MAILDIR/new -e moved_to |
    while read path action file; do
        FROM=$(grep '^From:' $path$file | cut -d' ' -f2- | cut -d'<' -f1)
        SUBJECT=$(grep '^Subject' $path$file | cut -d' ' -f2-)
        sxmo_notificationwrite.sh random "sxmo_terminal.sh mutt" $path$file "E-mail $FROM - $SUBJECT"
        sxmo_vibrate 200 65535
    done &

Screenshot of mutt in action