On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 01:31:57PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 08:58:06AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > I just tried running mutt 'remotely' by mounting ~/.muttrc and my main
> > mail directory ~/Mail using sshfs and running a local copy of mutt.
> > This makes handling attachments and HTML E-Mail much faster and easier
> > than running mutt on the remote system via ssh.
>
> SSHFS is a horrible hack (albeit a clever one that has many
> convenient uses). Unfortunately I've forgotten the details, but I
> know that several important file system semantics do not work
> with it, and IMO you should not use this for anything you consider
> important that needs reliability.
>
I've decided that sshfs isn't going to provide what I want.
> You're probably better off using (local) IMAP over SSH with your Mutt
> mailboxes. That is, you can ssh into your mail server and run imapd
> locally (rather than having it listen to incoming connections), and
> Mutt supports this.
>
I've never got on well with IMAP and mutt.
I've discovered that I can extend my existing hack/bodge/clever script
that I already use for viewing HTML mails using Firefox (when simply
using lynx isn't good enough).
What I do for HTML to Firefox is to have a script that is called
(using ~/.mailcap) to copy the HTML E-Mail to my web server's
DocumentRoot and then run Firefox to view the file. This works for a
remote 'connected by ssh' client as well as locally because Firefox
uses a remote Firefox to display the file. Thus I get to view the
HTML in a local Firefox (i.e. on the ssh client) and, as I have copied
the file back to the client (using rsync) it all works fast and locally.
What I then realised was that Firefox can view PDFs and JPGs and
similar so the same can be done for viewing PDF and JPG attachments
'locally' on the remote ssh client. It works too! :-)
My ~/.mailcap (on the machine where mutt is running) has:-
text/html; /home/chris/bin/muttfox %s
text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html
application/pdf; /home/chris/bin/muttfox %s
image/jpeg; /home/chris/bin/muttfox %s
... and the script muttfox is:-
#!/bin/bash
#
#
# muttfox: script called by mutt via mailcap to use firefox to view HTML,
and
# also some types attachments, currently:- PDF, JPG
#
# It is necessary for HTML files because /usr/bin/firefox exits
# before firefox has actually loaded the HTML file, this is especially
# true when it's remote but it also happens when running locally.
#
# It's not actually necessary for PDF and JPG files but it speeds up
# remote (i.e. running mutt via ssh) viewing considerably because it
# doesn't run the viewing program across the X connection. It works
# OK for local files so everything works the same.
#
# The temporary file to be viewed by Firefox is copied to directory
# /srv/mutt on esprimo if running locally or to the same place on the
# remote system if running via ssh. The copy to the remote system is
# done via an ssh reverse tunnel on port 50022 using a passwordless key
# and rrsync at the remote end to make it reasonably secure.
#
dir=/srv/mutt/
#
#
# if there's no DISPLAY variable then Firefox can't run, so skip the whole
thing
#
if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]
then
chmod 0644 $1
if [ -n "$SSH_CLIENT" ]
then
rsync -e 'ssh -p 50022 -i /home/chris/.ssh/np_id_rsa' $1
localhost:$(basename $1)
else
cp $1 $dir$(basename $1)
fi
/usr/bin/firefox http://localhost/mutt/$(basename $1)
fi
#
#
# Clear out any old files left by this script, doing it here saves adding
# a special crontab task
#
find $dir -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
It works beautifully so now I can view PDF and other attachments
'fast' when I'm running mutt via ssh. I have to wait for the file to
copy but once that has happened scrolling, searching, etc. all work as
with a local file (which it is of course). It just relies on
Firefox's ability to view various file formats (or to find a program
that will do it).
--
Chris Green
