Because I setup my own mail server, this is going to be really easy. There is no need to change my business code to BCC a secret address, which is not very nice.

The steps are simple.

Add the line to /etc/postfix/main.cf

sender_bcc_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sender_bcc

Write your sender_bcc file

business@address.com  bcc@example.com

Generate the hash.

cd /etc/postfix
postmap sender_bcc

This will generate a .db file.

Reload postfix

postfix reload

Then all your email sent from business@address.com will automatically bcc’d to bcc@example.com.

1. Create a multipart/alternative email envelope.

from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
alter = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg = MIMEMultipart()

This will create an envelope that will contain all 3 mentioned parts. In mutt’s view:

1                     [multipa/alternativ, 7bit, 16K] 
2 ├─>                 [text/plain, base64, utf-8, 0.1K] 
3 ├─>                 [text/html, base64, utf-8, 0.1K]  
4 ca.crt                              [applica/octet-stre, base64, 1.5K]

Some MIME type is truncated, but you get the idea.

2. Unicode
You will have to append the coding part in the source file.

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

The second line must exist.

Then a unicode title and text:

from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# msg and alter is derived from the previous example
msg['Subject'] = u'中文'
text = u'正在用Python写东西'
alter.attach(MIMEText(text, 'plain', 'utf-8'))

msg.attach(alter)

Appending HTML just change the plain to html when you call MIMEText against HTML content.

3. Add attachments
Mind the relative / absolute path from the location you execute the script. It’s recommend to use absolute path.

from os.path import basename, dirname, realpath

# assuming I will attach all the files in the same location as the script itself, also a file from other relative path.
cwd = dirname(realpath(__file__))
files = ['myfile.bin', 'herfile.bin', '../other/dir/s.bin']

for f in files:
        # use absolute path
        with open(cwd + '/' + f, "rb") as fil:
            msg.attach(MIMEApplication(
                fil.read(),
                Content_Disposition='attachment; filename="%s"' % basename(f),
                Name=basename(f)
            ))

4. Message ID.
Some SMTP server supports adding message id to your email on a specific port, e.g. 25. But when you use starttls to connect the SMTP or use a different port, e.g. 587, Message-Id may not be added automatically. So your email probably won’t be received as it’s required in RFC 2822.

One way to get around that is to generate your own message id. Then you could use starttls() to send your emails securely.

from email.utils import make_msgid

# Inherit the msg from above example.
msg['Message-Id'] = make_msgid('example.com')

smtp = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.example.com', 587)
smtp.starttls()
smtp.login('sender@example.com', 'emailpassword')
smtp.sendmail(sender, to, msg.as_string().encode('utf-8'))
smtp.quit()

Note that the message id it generated will use the host name of your current machine if you do not specify.

I don’t like keeping email clients open, it consumes my workspace and technically more memory space. I’d love to take a desktop widget that tells me “you have a new mail”.

Recently I came across an application called Mailnag, a python written programme which uses GTK3+ library (gi.repository) to notify the user new emails.

Mailnag is intuitive to use and it must be working very well. I didn’t test it though. I personally don’t like GNOME 3 too much but I love the old GNOME 2. Is there a programme that we can use in GTK2?

Sure we do.

A programme called mail-notification pops up during my Google search. It is a little programme that only pops up if new email is received. The main Linux distributions should have it collected in their repositories.

Configuration can be launched via System->Preference->Look and Feel in Fedora 20, you also need to add mail-notification to Startup Applications for automatic boot.

It is nearly a year that I haven’t used Windows as my in-production OS, instead I’ve used either RedHat sponsored Linux distro (Fedora) or a RHEL-copy CentOS.

sudo yum install mutt

Now it is the fun part.

By default, your mutt will read info from ~/.muttrc or ~/.mutt/muttrc. Since I have several email addresses needed to be setup, I use the second one.

mkdir -p ~/.muttrc/accounts

Which creates requested folders.

Go to ~/.mutt/accounts/ and create your email account file (you may name it as your like, but keep track of the file name) like the following way:

# Uni Email Setting, file name: university
set from = "abcdef@esp.tld"
set realname = "Your Name Here"
# IMAP settings here
set imap_user = "abcdef"
set imap_pass = ""       # Password is empty here so you'll key-in passwords everytime you wish to access your email account
set folder = "imaps://imap.mail.tld:993"
set spoolfile = "imaps://imap.mail.tld:993/Inbox"   # For gmail users, you need to set your spoolfiles to "+INBOX"
set imap_check_subscribed
set mime_forward=yes
set mime_forward_rest=yes

#SMTP settings
set smtp_url = "smtp://abcdef@smtp.esp.tld:587/"
set smtp_pass = ""

set mail_check = 120
set timeout = 300
set imap_keepalive = 300
# You can set the postponed/record to "+Drafts" or "Sent" correspondently below.
set postponed = "imaps://imap.mail.tld:993/Inbox.Drafts"
set record = "imaps://imap.mail.tld:993/Inbox.Sent"
set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers

You can also put your GnuPG keys under your account if you have multiple keys for multiple emails for some reason. You need to copy the content over under each of your account setting. Remember to substitute your public key identifier in the config files.

You can create similar ones with gmail, assume that you have read the comments above.

Now we put some general information into our muttrc:

vim ~/.mutt/muttrc

set editor = "vim"
set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir=~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates
set move = no
set include
set sort = 'threads'
set sort_aux = 'reverse-last-date-received'
set auto_tag = yes
ignore "Authentication-Results:"
ignore "DomainKey-Signature:"
ignore "DKIM-Signature:"
alternative_order text/plain text/html *
auto_view text/html
bind editor  complete-query
bind editor ^T complete
bind editor  noop
set hostname = desktop.luxing.im
set sig_on_top = yes

# Create a statusbar shows the information in localtime.
set pager_format="%4C %Z %[!%b %e at %I:%M %p]  %.20n -- %s%* -- (%P)"

# Accounts and Shortcuts
source ~/.mutt/accounts/acadia
macro index  'source ~/.mutt/accounts/yeah!'
macro index  'source ~/.mutt/accounts/126!'


# move spam to Spam/ from: http://chrisjrob.com/2011/03/23/configuring-mutt-for-spam/
macro index S "unset resolveNset resolve=INBOX.Spam" "file as Spam"
macro pager S "=INBOX.Spam" "file as Spam"

macro index H "unset resolveNset resolve=INBOX" "file as Ham"
macro pager H "=INBOX" "file as Ham"

# return to inbox by pressing .
macro index . "=INBOX" "Inbox"

set pager_format="%4C %Z %[!%b %e at %I:%M %p]  %.20n  %s%* -- (%P)" # show the corresponding local time of the email.
set pgp_use_gpg_agent = yes

You need to adjust your accounts corresponding to your settings.

If you put sensitive information like your passwords into your account, remember to chmod 600 for security concern.