popcorn-like email client for Linux?

[rich]

Rich_on 7-Jul-2006, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

Could you describe how you were able to delete unwanted messages
from the server with korn? Does it list messages that are on the
server,
message sizes, subjects, whom from, etc. and then allow you to select
which ones to delete after looking at them (or is this done through
filters you can set up)?

You deserve a reply but it is a sad one I am afraid.
I installed Korn to test it and it worked perfectly. Put a little icon in
the kicker showing the number of mails.
Then did a quick configure for my pop3 account. Again worked perfectly.
click on the icon and it lists options including a "view mail".
Choose this and you get a window showing the headers of the mail on the
server. Click on a header and you get content. Select and delete as
required.
Decided that this was a "keeper" and unfortunately tried to change the
account parameters to something more appropriate. Big mistake - Korn does
not work anymore. Uninstalled it in synaptic, reinstalled, still finds the
old, non-working settings. Re-wrote the whole Mepis installation from last
good backup (about 3 days ago) , prior to first Korn install, new install of
Korn and it still finds the broken settings from I do not know where.
I have spent hours on this since it seemed just the application I was
looking for.
Given up for the moment.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Rich_on 7-Jul-2006, (e-mail address removed) wrote:




You deserve a reply but it is a sad one I am afraid.
I installed Korn to test it and it worked perfectly. Put a little icon in
the kicker showing the number of mails.
Then did a quick configure for my pop3 account. Again worked perfectly.
click on the icon and it lists options including a "view mail".
Choose this and you get a window showing the headers of the mail on the
server. Click on a header and you get content. Select and delete as
required.
Decided that this was a "keeper" and unfortunately tried to change the
account parameters to something more appropriate. Big mistake - Korn does
not work anymore. Uninstalled it in synaptic, reinstalled, still finds the
old, non-working settings. Re-wrote the whole Mepis installation from last
good backup (about 3 days ago) , prior to first Korn install, new install of
Korn and it still finds the broken settings from I do not know where.
I have spent hours on this since it seemed just the application I was
looking for.
Given up for the moment.

Install strace, and use that to trace every "open" call. You've got a
config file hanging around, probably ~/.korn or ~/.korn/config or the like.

If one of my Linux systems was up, I'd look it up for you, but I won't
wade through the code.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[jmatt]

Given up for the moment.

Here's a few more, if you want to try rich.

fetchmail
http://fetchmail.berlios.de/
http://fetchmail.berlios.de/fetchmail-features.html
http://dir.filewatcher.com/d/Other/src/Applications/Internet/fetchpop-1.9-4.src.rpm.43079.html

Email Remover for Linux
http://eremove.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eremove

pop3spam
http://www.michnet.de/pop3spam/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pop3spam

pop3check
http://pop3check.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pop3check

p3c
http://sourceforge.net/projects/p3c

Qpopper
http://qpopper.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qpopper

POP Surgeon
http://popsurgeon.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/popsurgeon

 

[gian3000it]

Oh, I guess I was just feeling a little cranky. It just doesn't seem right
to dual boot back into Windows because you want to save 50MB on your hard
drive. I thought about writing a little POP3 client in Python that fit the
OPs requirements, but then there's the issue of an 80MB Python install )
Louis

You are totally right that it doesn't seem right to keep a windows
install just to boot a 125KB excutable. In one of my previous
posts, I wasn't exactly specific about my usage of win98. I
certainly did not expect that omitting my actual usage would
have produced all this. I have several uses for win98, besides
running popcorn on it, which is likely to happen 2-3 times per
month, for accounts I rarely use... I use linux as my daily
OS. But I also have win3.11 and dos 6.0 installed. On another pc,
an install of bsd too.

 

[gian3000it]

You deserve a reply but it is a sad one I am afraid. [SNIP]
Given up for the moment.

Thanks for your feedback.
Gianni

 

[gian3000it]

[interactive program to delete mail on the server]
http://freshmeat.net/projects/poppy/

Now we are talking! Thanks, Dave. I just downloaded
poppy and tried it out, and you were right on target,
that's exactly the kind of program I was looking for.

It's actually a set of three perl scripts and allows for
multiple pop/smtp servers, view mail on servers,
explore size, sender, etc. and delete what you don't
like and keep the rest for later download with your
favorite email client (or you can download it with
poppy). The two files I used to do what I needed
(just copy them and paste them to your home
directory - that's all is there with poppy!)
are 29KB and 27KB for a total of 56KB! Compare
that to 50MB (if I were to use popcorn with wine)!

So as of now, I'll use poppy, which is very flexible
and highly configurable), to do in linux what I used to
do with popcorn in MS windows.

Only two drawbacks here: 1) poppy is a console
thing, so no GUI interface; and 2) it does not allow
for secure connections (SSL, CRAM-MD5 auth, etc.)

So the search for a suitable GUI linux popcorn-like
substitute is still on. If you know of any, please post
it here.

I am attaching an excerpt from the poppy manual,
which nicely describes the features needed in a
popcorn-like linux client (aside from GUI and secure
connection):

Poppy retrieves mail headers one by one from a mail server
using the POP3 or IMAP mail transfer protocol and then
allows you to perform simple tasks on those messages.
It will individually read the header to each mail mes-­
sage on the POP3/IMAP server and then allow you to view,
save, delete or reply to these messages.

Most POP3 mail readers simply download and delete
all emails from the mail server or download them and
don't delete them at all.
There is usually no way to tell the mail server afterwards
to delete only specific emails. Poppy allows you to go in
and delete emails specifically. This way one could read
all their email from one location, say work, and then
delete all but the important message so that they can
later download them all, say from home. This is espe­
cially nice since you are able to make the best use out of
your high speed internet connections to improve the time
spent on your low speed connection.

Most other POP3 mail readers download all your mail first
and then let you
view each one. If you get large emails it can take a long
download period before you can read your mail. Also, on
unreliable connections, it is sometimes impossible to
download your email when someone sends you a large email
if the long download aborts. Using Poppy you can read
just the headers to see which are important and then read
the interesting ones and possible delete any exsessively
large ones. You can then later use your main mail program
to download the bulk of email during idle computer use.

And lastly, you can create simple replies to the original
author of the email if you have defined an SMTP host to be
used to relay the message. Poppy can even use a different
From address for each mail account you have.

 

[gian3000it]

So, on the other hand, keeping win98 installed and /rebooting/ just
to run this one program that actually does run well using wine (as I
understand it) is a /necessary/ waste of resources?

I have plenty of other good reasons for dual booting win98. I
don't know how you came up with the idea that I kept it installed
"just to run this one program?"

I'd like to know how many minutes, hours and days of your life you'd
be wasting by rebooting that old 486 over and over again just to run a
single program, and if it was worth saving 50 megs worth of hd space
that you would have instantly recouped by just scratching win98 (which
I seem to recall was no party running on a 486, btw) from it.

I think you just come from a different perspective. I certainly don't
want to get into a debate here. That would be a waste of time...

And you were thinking /what/, security wise, when you come to the
conclusion that win98 was all in line with this idea?

If it were me, I'd get an ISP who understands IMAP instead, then you
could use pretty much any email client you wanted without having to
download anything more than headers.

I have a few IMAP accounts... Both IMAP and pop3 have their pros
and cons. I like the advantages of both. Each has its own optimized
use. For instance, the yahoo account you see in my headers is just
for usenet groups. I think I accessed it last about 1 1/2 years ago...
Perfect use for a yahoo account... I need one to post here, but I
don't care for replies other than the ones posted on the ngs. Just an
example.

Still not getting how rebooting to use win98 is less waste of your
time, or how keeping it installed is less waste of resources.

Well, that's the way you feel.

I, for one, am still pretty confused, but to each his or her own.

Exactly.

 

[gian3000it]

Here's a few more, if you want to try rich.

fetchmail
http://fetchmail.berlios.de/
http://fetchmail.berlios.de/fetchmail-features.html
http://dir.filewatcher.com/d/Other/src/Applications/Internet/fetchpop-1.9-4.src.rpm.43079.html

Email Remover for Linux
http://eremove.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eremove

pop3spam
http://www.michnet.de/pop3spam/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pop3spam

pop3check
http://pop3check.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pop3check

p3c
http://sourceforge.net/projects/p3c

Qpopper
http://qpopper.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qpopper

POP Surgeon
http://popsurgeon.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/popsurgeon

Thanks for your suggestions. I downloaded them all...

I'll briefly review my experience with them here.
Pop Surgeon, at first the most promising, couldn't be
compiled because of something wrong with the sources
(apparently, no file for ./configure).

Fetchmail is, well, fetchmail - nothing to do with something
like popcorn. Same for fetchpop.

Eremove is an interesting, little GUI, gtk-based program. Just
60KB, but does just one account at a time (you have to enter
manually the info for each account each time), and does not
allow for secure connections.

Pop3spam is console based and filter based. You enter
the filter parameters and it removes unwanted emails from
the server. Nothing to do with accessing and reviewing emails
on the server before downloading.

Pop3check and p3c are console based with far less features
and configurability than poppy, suggested earlier by the
other poster. Qpopper is a pop3 server, not a client.

So far, poppy, though console based and with no secure
logging capabilities, is by far the most capable one and
the closest thing to popcorn I've come across.

 

[Rick Moen]

Followups set. And, if I may ask, what the hell did this have to do
with Linux setup?

That was exactly my premise when I posted my inquiry here.
The crux is *which* linux program...
A lot of windows users have had no experience with programs
such as popcorn, so inevitably some of the suggestions that
were given here were not, let's say, on target.

This is also why it's... suboptimal to say "Is there a Linux program
like $FOO?" A lot of us longtime Linux users, who will in general be
your best helpers, will be relatively unlikely to have any clue what
$FOO is.

For example, I kept seeing people say "Is there any Linux program like
Nero?", and I'd have immediately said "k3b or gcombust" if the querent
had bothered to say "(I refer, in case people aren't familiar with Nero,
to polished graphical tools for mastering, copying, and burning data CDRs.)"

I should hasten to say that you _did_ actually explain roughly what
functionality you're seeking.