This article describes an old-school email client setup.

Why is an email solution from the 1990s still useful in the 2020s?

Emails are downloaded and saved locally.
The standardized file format for emails can be read by nearly all email clients.
Making local backups of emails is easily possible.
Downloading emails solves "out of space" issues with email account providers.

Procmail
Fetchmail
Mutt
External Links

Procmail

Procmail is a simple mail delivery agent (MDA).
If a given regular expression is matched,
the mail is delivered into the specified mailbox.

Installation:

sudo apt install procmail

Specify the local mail directories:

$HOME/.procmailrc

MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/default/
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail.log

:0
* ^TO_johndoe@gmx\.net
johndoe@gmx.net/

:0
* ^From.*johndoe@gmx\.net
johndoe@gmx.net/.Sent/

Ensure the directories exist:

mkdir -p $HOME/Mail/default
mkdir -p $HOME/Mail/johndoe@gmx.net

Fetchmail

Fetchmail is a mail retrieval agent (MRA).

Installation:

sudo apt install fetchmail

Configure the email account:

$HOME/.fetchmailrc

poll imap.gmx.net
    protocol imap
    username "johndoe@gmx.net"
    password "secretpassword"
    ssl
    folders INBOX,Sent,Gesendet
    keep
    mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"

Because the file contains passwords,
ensure that only the file owner can read it:

chmod 0600 $HOME/.fetchmailrc

Download new emails:

fetchmail

Download all emails:
(might create duplicates)

fetchmail --all

Mutt

Mutt is a terminal-based mail user agent (MUA), an email client.

Installation:

sudo apt install mutt

View and search downloaded emails:

mutt -f $HOME/Mail/johndoe@gmx.net/

Contents

Procmail

Fetchmail

Mutt

External Links