Introducing offlinemsmtp
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Tags:
offline, msmtp, email, mutt
I use a program called mutt for managing my email. A lot of the time, I want to download all of my messages and use mutt offline (for example, when I'm on the train commuting to work). In these cases, I also want to be able to queue email messages to send once I get back online. Even when I am online, sometimes the process of sending the message can take a while (with a large attachment, for example), and I don't want mutt to freeze while the email is being sent.
For downloading messages for viewing offline, I use a program called mbsync which is part of the isync project. However, I could not find a program to replace msmtp (the program that is normally used to send email from within mutt). So, naturally I wrote my own program to handle this:

offlinemsmtp has two components:
- A daemon which listens for changes to the configured outbox folder on the local filesystem. When a new message appears in the outbox folder, offlinemsmtp sends the email immediately if the server is available. At a configurable interval, offlinemsmtp attempts to send the emails that are still in the folder (due to not having been sent earlier).
- An enqueuer for adding mail messages to the outbox folder.
Once you have configured both of these components, offlinemsmtp is a drop-in replacement for msmtp in mutt. So, if your sendmail configuration was:
set sendmail = "msmtp -a personal"
with offlinemsmtp it would become:
set sendmail = "offlinemsmtp -a personal"
You can find more information about offlinemsmtp and its configuration options at the project's GitHub page.
offlinemsmtp version 0.3.5, is available via PyPi and the AUR.