imap gmail fetch message macosx

Question

planning to use php imap functions, I'm trying to test the imap protocol from my local host, I didn't found telnet-ssl for mac but I can use openssl and get connected.

The problem is I can only login but I cannot select a mailbox, create a mailbox, get a list, … The only command I can run is capability which is not really useful.

Here is the command I typed (#) and answers I get (*)

# openssl s_client -connect imap.gmail.com:993

* CONNECTED(00000003)
* […]
* OK Gimap ready for requests from 77.xxx.xxx.xxx v7if3901328vdd.33

# a001 login myUserName myPassword

* OK myUserName firstname lastname authenticated (Success)



# a002 create testbox

* (nothing, I have to start a new session)

OR

# a002 list "*"
* (nothing, I have to start a new session)

OR

…

Not sure where the problem is,

Was someone able to fetch some mails successfully from gmail (or other) using imap on mac ? (I'm on osX10.6)

Answer 1

I think this may be a line-ending issue. Use the -crlf switch and it should work:

-crlf

    this option translated a line feed from the terminal into CR+LF as required
    by some servers.

This is the command I've always used to test Gmail IMAP, and it's worked fine for me from a Mac:

openssl s_client -crlf -connect imap.gmail.com:993

Also, your LIST command has bad syntax. You need two parameters, not one:

a002 list "" "*"

Answer 2

Use fetchmail and procmail to build a local mailbox. Create ~/.fetchmailrc containing...

set postmaster your_local_username
set syslog
set daemon 10
set logfile fetchmail.log

poll "imap.gmail.com" proto imap port 993
    user "[email protected]" password "password"
    is your_local_username here keep ssl

Then setup procmail to store the messages...

In your ~ folder, create .procmailrc containing...

SHELL=/bin/bash
DEFAULT=$HOME/.mail/Maildir/ 
MAILDIR=$HOME/.mail/Maildir/
LOCKFILE=$HOME/.mail/.lock
LOGFILE=$HOME/.procmail/log

You may need to make these folders too, I forget.

To begin fetch mail with procmail do:

fetchmail -kFm "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"

You can use something like mutt to read the mail, personally I don't read mail manually that I'm doing a fetchmail with, I would use it for email automation, which is what procmail is good at, essentially you can create 'recipes' to filter, process and redirect messages.

Wikipedia has a reasonable starting point for learning more about procmail. The man fetchmail and man procmail pages also have a lot of useful info.