Shell Script to .muttrc – How to Pass a Variable

bashmuttshell-script

I'd like mutt (mutt-kz, actually — I'd love to migrate to neomutt but that's a bigger project) to get my SMTP password from pass so I don't have to keep it stored in cleartext in my config file, but I'm not sure how to properly pass the password into my .muttrc.

This is what I have in .muttrc:

source ~/.mutt/pass.sh|
set smtp_pass = $my_pass

And then .mutt/pass.sh contains:

#! /bin/bash
my_pass=$(pass Example/user)

If I add echo ${my_pass} to pass.sh and run it from the command line, it does echo my password.

When I launch mutt-kz I'm prompted to unlock my pass gpg key, so something is working, but when I try to send mail from Mutt it asks for my SMTP password and fails if I don't provide it the message isn't sent: ("SASL authentication failed")

So … how do I correctly pass the variable from my shell script to my .muttrc?

Best Answer

The program ~/.mutt/pass.sh must produce output that looks like

set my_pass = swordfish

So it can be something like

#!/bin/sh
echo "set my_pass = swordfish"

Note that if your password contains certain special characters (\'" and whitespace), you'll need to quote it. For example, if your password is in the text file ~/passwords/smtp.txt, you can use:

#!/bin/sh
~/passwords/smtp.txt sed 's/["$`\\]/\\&/g; s/^/set my_pass = "/; s/$/"/'

For the password sword\fish, this prints set my_pass="sword\\fish".

If you use Gnome-keyring to store your passwords then you can use the secret-tool utility to read your password from the keyring. For example, this is what I use for an Office 365 password (with a password that doesn't contain any special character that needs quoting):

source 'printf "set imap_pass="; secret-tool lookup https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/login |'

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You could switch to esmtp, there it is pretty trivial:

identity myself@gmail.com
        hostname smtp.googlemail.com:25
        username "myself@gmail.com"
        password "secret"
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identity mysecondaccount@gmail.com
        hostname smtp.googlemail.com:25
        username "mysecondaccount@gmail.com"
        password "evenmoresecret"
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Mutt GPG – How to Encrypt for Only One Specific Recipient

In muttrc, use

set crypt_opportunistic_encrypt = yes

From $ man 5 muttrc

crypt_opportunistic_encrypt
      Type: boolean
      Default: no

      Setting this variable will cause Mutt to automatically enable
      and disable encryption, based on whether all message recipient
      keys can be located by mutt.

      When this option is enabled, mutt will determine the encryption
      setting each time the TO, CC, and BCC lists are edited.  If
      $edit_headers is set, mutt will also do so each time the
      message is edited.

      While this is set, encryption settings can't be manually
      changed.  The pgp or smime menus provide an option to disable
      the option for a particular message.

      If $crypt_autoencrypt or $crypt_replyencrypt enable encryption
      for a message, this option will be disabled for the message.  It
      can be manually re-enabled in the pgp or smime menus.  (Crypto
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This also inspects cc:ed addresses for validity. Unfortunately, as per the second-last paragraph, this overrides many useful settings. For example, I have set pgp_autoinline = yes, which is deprecated, but necessary for sending to older clients¹, which don't support PGP/MIME.

¹ For example, Android's K-9 + APG. AFAIK this is the only FOSS Android email client that reads PGP-encrypted email at all, but only in a limited fashion. (EDIT: K-9 + openkeychain now supports PGP/MIME.)

Best Answer

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