How to install/setup mutt with Gmail on CentOS and Ubuntu?

By
Sushant Mane
-
10869

Gmail Setup

In gmail, go click the gear icon, go to Settings, go to the tab Forwarding POP/IMAP, and click the Configuration instructions link in IMAP Access row.

Then click I want to enable IMAP. At the bottom of the page, under the paragraph about configuring your mail client, select Other. Note the mail server information and use that information for further settings as shown in the next section.

Before proceeding further visit https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps and check Turn on radio button.

Install mutt

CentOS

yum install mutt

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install mutt

Configure Mutt

Create

mkdir -p ~/.mutt/cache/headers
mkdir ~/.mutt/cache/bodies
touch ~/.mutt/certificates

Create mutt configuration file muttrc

touch ~/.mutt/muttrc

Open muttrc

vim ~/.mutt/muttrc

Add following configurations

set ssl_starttls=yes
set ssl_force_tls=yes
set imap_user = '
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 '
set imap_pass = 'PASSWORD'
set from='
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 '
set realname='Your Name'
set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/
set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX
set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts"
set header_cache = "~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir = "~/.mutt/cache/bodies"
set certificate_file = "~/.mutt/certificates"
set smtp_url = 'smtps://
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 :
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 :465/'
set move = no
set imap_keepalive = 900

Make appropriate changes, like change_this_user_name to your gmail user name and PASSWORD to your gmail password. And save the file.

Now you are ready to send, receive and read email using email client Mutt by simply typing mutt.

For the first time it will prompt to accept SSL certificates; press a to always accept these certificates.

Now you will be presented with your Gmail inbox.

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