imaparms 2.0

A handy Keep It Stupid Simple Swiss-army-knife-like tool for fetching and performing batch operations on messages residing on IMAP servers

What?

imaparms is a handy Keep It Stupid Simple (KISS) Swiss-army-knife-like tool for fetching and performing batch operations on messages residing on IMAP servers. That is: login to a specified server, fetch or perform specified actions (count, flag/mark, delete, etc) on all messages matching specified criteria in all specified folders, logout.

This tool was inspired by fetchmail and IMAPExpire and is basically a generalized combination of the two.

Why?

imaparms is intended to be used as a IMAP-server-to-local-Maildir Mail Delivery Agent (MDA, aka Local Delivery Agent, LDA, when used to deliver to the same machine) that keeps the IMAP server in question store as little mail as possible while preventing data loss. Which is to say, the main use case I made this for is as follows:

• you periodically fetch your mail to a local Maildir (or mbox) with this tool's imaparms fetch subcommand (which does what fetchmail --softbounce --invisible --norewrite --mda MDA does but >150x faster), then
• you backup your Maildir with rsync/git/bup/etc to make at least one other copy somewhere, and then, after your backup succeeds,
• you run this tool's imaparms delete subcommand to expire old already-fetched messages from the server (I prefer to expire messages --older-than some number of intervals between backups, just to be safe, but if you do backups directly after the fetch, or you like to live dangerously, you could delete old messages immediately), so that
• when/if your account get cracked/hacked the attacker only gets your unfetched mail (+ configurable amount of yet to be removed messages), which is much better than them getting the whole last 20 years or whatever of your correspondence. (If your personal computer gets compromised enough, attackers will eventually get everything anyway, so deleting old mail from servers does not make things worse. But see some more thoughts on this below.)

I used to use and (usually privately, but sometimes not) patch both fetchmail and IMAPExpire for years before getting tired of it and deciding it would be simpler to just write my own thingy instead of trying to make fetchmail fetch mail at decent speeds and fix all the issues making it inconvenient and unsafe to run IMAPExpire immediately after fetchmail finishes fetching mail.

Since bootstrapping into either of these setups requires some querying into actual IMAP folder names and mass changes to flags on IMAP server-side, imaparms provides subcommands for that too.

Also, you can run imaparms fetch with --any-seen --unflagged command line options instead of the implied --unseen --any-flagged options, which will make it use the FLAGGED IMAP flag instead of the SEEN IMAP flag to track state, allowing you to run it simultaneously with tools that use the SEEN flag, like fetchmail, and then simply delete duplicated files. I.e. if you are really paranoid, you could use that feature to check files produced by fetchmail and imaparms fetch against each other, see below.

Quickstart

Installation

• Install with:

  pip install imaparms
  

  and run as

  imaparms --help
  

• Alternatively, install it via Nix

  nix-env -i -f ./default.nix
  

• Alternatively, run without installing:

  python3 -m imaparms.__main__ --help
  

How to: fetch all your mail from GMail

imaparms is not intended as a backup utility (it is intended as a better replacement for fetchmail+IMAPExpire combination), but it can be used as one if you are willing to sacrifice either of SEEN or FLAGGED ("starred") IMAP flags for it.

(If you want to keep a synchronized copy of your mail locally and on your mail server without sacrificing any flags, you should use offlineimap, imapsync, or something similar instead.)

However, using imaparms for backups/mirroring is illustrative, so a couple of examples follow.

All examples on this page use maildrop MDA/LDA from Courier Mail Server project, which is the simplest commodity LDA with the simplest setup I know of. But, of course, you can use anything else. E.g., fdm can function as an LDA, and it is also pretty simple to setup.

Backup all your email from GMail

The following will fetch all messages from all the folders on the server (without changing message flags on the server side) and feed them to maildrop which will just put them all into ~/Mail/backup Maildir.

# setup: do once
mkdir -p ~/Mail/backup/{new,cur,tmp}

cat > ~/.mailfilter << EOF
DEFAULT="\$HOME/Mail/backup"
EOF

# repeatable part

# backup all your mail from GMail
imaparms fetch --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry --mda maildrop --all-folders --any-seen

For GMail you will have to create and use application-specific password, which requires enabling 2FA, see below for more info.

Also, if you have a lot of mail, this will be very inefficient, as it will try to re-download everything again if it ever gets interrupted.

... efficiently

To make the above efficient you have to sacrifice either SEEN or FLAGGED IMAP flags to allow imaparms to track which messages are yet to be fetched, i.e. either:

# mark all messages as UNSEEN
imaparms mark --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" unseen

# fetch UNSEEN and mark as SEEN as you go
# this can be interrrupted and restarted and it will continue from where it left off
imaparms fetch --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry --mda maildrop --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --unseen

or

# mark all messages as UNFLAGGED
imaparms mark --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" unflagged

# similarly
imaparms fetch --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry --mda maildrop --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --any-seen --unflagged

This, of course, means that if you open or "mark as read" a message in GMail's web-mail UI while using --unseen, or mark it as flagged ("star") it there while using --unflagged, imaparms will ignore the message on the next fetch.

How to: implement "fetch + backup + expire" workflow

The intended workflow described above looks like this:

# setup: do once
mkdir -p ~/Mail/INBOX/{new,cur,tmp}
mkdir -p ~/Mail/spam/{new,cur,tmp}
echo 0 > ~/.rsync-last-mail-backup-timestamp

cat > ~/.mailfilter << EOF
DEFAULT="\$HOME/Mail/INBOX"
EOF

cat > ~/.mailfilter-spam << EOF
DEFAULT="\$HOME/Mail/spam"
EOF

cat > ~/bin/new-mail-hook << EOF
#!/bin/sh -e
# index new mail
notmuch new

# auto-tagging rules go here

# backup
backup_start=\$(date +%s)
if rsync -aHAX ~/Mail /disk/backup ; then
    echo "\$backup_start" > ~/.rsync-last-mail-backup-timestamp
fi
EOF
chmod +x ~/bin/new-mail-hook

# repeatable part

# optionally, if needed
# imaparms mark ... --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" unseen

# every hour, fetch new and expire old mail from two GMail accounts
imaparms for-each --every 3600 \
    --host imap.gmail.com \
      --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]" \
      --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]" \
  -- \
    fetch --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --mda maildrop --new-mail-cmd new-mail-hook \; \
    fetch --folder "[Gmail]/Spam" --mda "maildrop ~/.mailfilter-spam" \; \
    delete --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --folder "[Gmail]/Spam" --folder "[Gmail]/Trash" \
      --older-than-timestamp-in ~/.rsync-last-mail-backup-timestamp \
      --older-than 7

# note how new spam does not invoke `new-mail-hook`

You can check your command lines by running with --very-dry-run option, for the command above it prints:

# every 3600 seconds, for each of
... user [e-mail] on host imap.gmail.com port 993 (SSL)
... user [e-mail] on host imap.gmail.com port 993 (SSL)
# do
... in '[Gmail]/All Mail': search (UNSEEN), perform fetch, mark them as SEEN
... in '[Gmail]/Spam': search (UNSEEN), perform fetch, mark them as SEEN
... in '[Gmail]/All Mail', '[Gmail]/Spam', '[Gmail]/Trash': search (SEEN BEFORE 1-Jan-1970) {dynamic}, perform delete

How to: implement the paranoid version of "fetch + backup + expire" workflow

The paranoid/double-backup workflow described above that uses fetchmail in parallel can be implemented like this:

# setup: do once

# include the setup from above

mkdir -p ~/Mail/INBOX.secondary/{new,cur,tmp}

cat > ~/.mailfilter-secondary << EOF
DEFAULT="\$HOME/Mail/INBOX.secondary"
EOF

cat > ~/bin/new-mail-hook-dedup << EOF
#!/bin/sh -e
# deduplicate
jdupes -o time -O -rdN ~/Mail/INBOX ~/Mail/INBOX.secondary

# continue as usual
exec ~/bin/new-mail-hook
EOF
chmod +x ~/bin/new-mail-hook-dedup

# repeatable part
secondary_common=(--host imap.example.com --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]")

# prepare by unflagging all messages
imaparms mark "${secondary_common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" unflagged

# run fetchmail daemon as usual, fetching new mail into the secondary maildir every hour
fetchmail --mda "maildrop ~/.mailfilter-secondary" -d 3600

# every 15 minutes, fetch new mail using FLAGGED for tracking state,
# expire messages marked both SEEN (by fetchmail) and FLAGGED (by imaparms)
imaparms for-each --every 900 "${secondary_common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" \
  -- \
    fetch --mda maildrop --new-mail-cmd new-mail-hook-dedup --any-seen --unflagged \; \
    delete --seen --flagged \
      --older-than-timestamp-in ~/.rsync-last-mail-backup-timestamp \
      --older-than 7

See also

See the usage section for explanation of used command line options.

See the examples section for more examples.

See notmuch for my preferred KISS mail indexer and Mail User Agent (MUA). Of course, you can use anything else, e.g. Thunderbird, just configure it to use the local Maildir as the "mail account". Or you could point your own local IMAP server to your Maildir and use any mail client that can use IMAP, but locally.

Comparison to

fetchmail

imaparms fetch

• fetches your mail >150 times faster by default (fetchmail fetches and marks messages one-by-one, incurring huge network latency overheads, imaparms fetch does it in (configurable) batches);
• fetches messages out-of-order to try and maximize messages/second metric when it makes sense (i.e. it temporarily delays fetching of larger messages if many smaller ones can be fetched instead) so that you could efficiently index your mail in parallel with fetching;
• only does deliveries to MDA/LDA (similar to fetchmail --mda option), deliveries over SMTP are not and will never be supported (if you want this you can just use msmtp as your MDA);
• thus this tool is much simpler to use when fetching to a local Maildir as it needs no configuration to fetch messages as-is without modifying any headers, thus fetching the same messages twice will produce identical files (which is not true for fetchmail, imaparms --mda MDA fetch is roughly equivalent to fetchmail --softbounce --invisible --norewrite --mda MDA);
• probably will not work with most broken IMAP servers (fetchmail has lots of workarounds for server bugs, imaparms fetch does not);
• is written in Python instead of C;
• has other subcommands, not just imaparms fetch.

fdm

Better explanation of what fdm does.

imaparms fetch

• uses server-side message flags to track state instead of keeping a local database of fetched UIDs;
• fetches messages out-of-order to try and maximize messages/second metric;
• does not do any filtering, offloads delivery to MDA/LDA;
• is written in Python instead of C;
• has other subcommands, not just imaparms fetch.

IMAPExpire

imaparms delete

• allows all UNICODE characters except \n in passwords/passphrases (yes, including spaces, quotes, etc);
• provides a bunch of options controlling message selection and uses --seen option by default for destructive actions, so you won't accidentally delete any messages you have not yet fetched even if your fetcher got stuck/crashed;
• provides GMail-specific options;
• is written in Python instead of Perl and requires nothing but the basic Python install, no third-party libraries needed;
• has other subcommands, not just imaparms delete.

offlineimap, imapsync, and similar

• imaparms fetch does deliveries from an IMAP server to your MDA instead of trying to synchronize state between some combinations of IMAP servers and local Maildirs (i.e. for imaparms fetch your IMAP server is always the source, never a destination);
• imaparms has other subcommands, not just imaparms fetch.

Some Fun and Relevant Facts

Note that Snowden revelations mean that Google and US Government store copies of all of your correspondence since 2001-2009 (it depends) even if you delete everything from all the servers.

And they wiretap basically all the traffic going though international Internet exchanges because they wiretap all underwater cables. Simply because they can, apparently? (If you think about it, there is absolutely no point to doing this if you are trying to achieve their stated signal-intelligence goals. Governments and organized crime use one-time-pads since 1950s. AES256 + 32 bytes of shared secret + some simple steganography and even if the signal gets discovered, no quantum-computer will ever be able to break it, no research into quantum-safe cryptography needed. So, clearly, this data collection only works against private citizens and civil society which have no ways to distribute symmetric keys and thus have to use public-key cryptography.)

Globally, >70% of all e-mails originate from or get delivered to Google servers (GMail, GMail on custom domains, corporate GMail).

Most e-mails never gets E2E-encrypted at all, (100 - epsilon)% (so, basically, 100%) of all e-mails sent over the Internet never get encrypted with quantum-safe cryptography in-transit.

So, eventually, US Government will get plain-text for almost everything you ever sent (unless you are a government official, work for well-organized crime syndicate, or you and all your friends are really paranoid).

Which means that, eventually, all that mail will get stolen.

So, in the best case scenario, a simple relatively benign blackmail-everyone-you-can-to-get-as-much-money-as-possible AI will be able organize a personal WikiLeaks-style breach, for every single person on planet Earth. No input from nefarious humans interested in exploiting personally you required. After all, you are not that interesting, so you have nothing to fear, nothing to hide, and you certainly did not write any still-embarrassing e-mails when you were 16 years old and did not send any nudes of yourself or anyone else to anyone (including any doctors, during the pandemic) ever.

It would be glorious, wouldn't it?

(Seriously, abstractly speaking, I'm kinda interested in civilization-wide legal and cultural effects of every embarrassing, even slightly illegal and/or hypocritical thing every person ever did relentlessly programmatically exploited as blackmail or worse. Non-abstractly speaking, why exactly do governments spend public money to make this possible? After all, hoarding of exploitable material that made a disaster after being stolen worked so well with EternalBlue, and that thing was a fixable bug, which leaked blackmail is not.)

That is to say, as a long-term defense measure, this tool is probably useless. All your mail will get leaked eventually, regardless. Short-term and against random exploitations of your mail servers, this thing is perfect, IMHO.

GMail: Some Fun and Relevant Facts

GMail docs say that IMAP and SMTP are "legacy protocols" and are "insecure". Which, sure, they could be, if you reuse passwords. But them implying that everything except their own web-mail UI is "insecure" is kinda funny given that they do use SMTP to transfer mail between servers and signing in with Google prompts exists. I.e. you can borrow someone's phone, unlock it (passcode? peek over their shoulder or just get some video surveillance footage of them typing it in public; fingerprint? they leave their fingerprints all over the device itself, dust with some flour, take a photo, apply some simple filters, 3D-print the result, this actually takes ~3 minutes to do if you know what you are doing), ask Google to authenticate via prompt. Done, you can login to everything with no password needed. And Google appears to give no way to disable Google prompts if your account has an attached Android device. Though, you can make Google prompts ask for a password too, but that feature needs special setup. Meanwhile, "legacy" passwords are not secure, apparently?

So to use imaparms with GMail you will have to enable 2FA in your account settings and then add an application-specific password for IMAP access. I.e., instead of generating a random password and giving it to Google (while storing it in a password manager that feeds it to imaparms), you ask Google to generate a random password for you and use that with imaparms.

To enable 2FA, even for very old accounts that never used anything phone or Android-related, for no rational reasons, GMail requires specifying a working phone number that can receive SMS. Which you can then simply remove after you copied your OTP secret into an authenticator of your choice. Sorry, why did you need the phone number, again?

Ah, well, Google now knows it and will be able track your movements by buying location data from your network operator. Thank you very much.

In theory, as an alternative to application-specific passwords, you can setup OAuth2 and update tokens automatically with mailctl, but Google will still ask for your phone number to set it up, and OAuth2 renewal adds another point of failure without really adding any security if you store your passwords in a password manager and use --passcmd option described below to feed them into imaparms.

That is to say, I don't use OAuth2, which is why imaparms does not support OAuth2.

Usage

imaparms [--version] [-h] [--markdown] [--debug] [--dry-run] [--very-dry-run] [--auth-allow-login | --auth-forbid-login] [--auth-allow-plain | --auth-forbid-plain] [--plain | --ssl | --starttls] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--user USER] [--pass-pinentry | --passfile PASSFILE | --passcmd PASSCMD] [--store-number INT] [--fetch-number INT] [--batch-number INT] [--batch-size INT] [--every SECONDS] [--every-add-random ADD] {list,count,mark,fetch,delete,for-each} ...

A handy Keep It Stupid Simple (KISS) Swiss-army-knife-like tool for fetching and performing batch operations on messages residing on IMAP servers. Logins to a specified server, performs specified actions on all messages matching specified criteria in all specified folders, logs out.

• optional arguments:

  • --version : show program's version number and exit
  • -h, --help : show this help message and exit
  • --markdown : show help messages formatted in Markdown

• debugging:

  • --debug : print IMAP conversation to stderr
  • --dry-run : connect to the servers, but don't perform any actions, just show what would be done
  • --very-dry-run : print an interpretation of the given command line arguments and do nothing else

• authentication settings:

  • --auth-allow-login : allow the use of IMAP LOGIN command (default)
  • --auth-forbid-login : forbid the use of IMAP LOGIN command, fail if challenge-response authentication is not available
  • --auth-allow-plain : allow passwords to be transmitted over the network in plain-text
  • --auth-forbid-plain : forbid passwords from being transmitted over the network in plain-text, plain-text authentication would still be possible over SSL if --auth-allow-login is set (default)

• server connection: can be specified multiple times

  • --plain : connect via plain-text socket
  • --ssl : connect over SSL socket (default)
  • --starttls : connect via plain-text socket, but then use STARTTLS command
  • --host HOST : IMAP server to connect to (required)
  • --port PORT : port to use (default: 143 for --plain and --starttls, 993 for --ssl)

• authentication to the server: either of --pass-pinentry, --passfile, or --passcmd are required, can be specified multiple times

  • --user USER : username on the server (required)
  • --pass-pinentry : read the password via pinentry
  • --passfile PASSFILE, --pass-file PASSFILE : file containing the password on its first line
  • --passcmd PASSCMD, --pass-cmd PASSCMD : shell command that returns the password as the first line of its stdout

• batching settings: larger values improve performance but produce longer command lines (which some servers reject) and cause more stuff to be re-downloaded when networking issues happen

  • --store-number INT : batch at most this many message UIDs in IMAP STORE requests (default: 150)
  • --fetch-number INT : batch at most this many message UIDs in IMAP FETCH metadata requests (default: 150)
  • --batch-number INT : batch at most this many message UIDs in IMAP FETCH data requests; essentially, this controls the largest possible number of messages you will have to re-download if connection to the server gets interrupted (default: 150)
  • --batch-size INT : batch FETCH at most this many bytes of RFC822 messages at once; RFC822 messages larger than this will be fetched one by one (i.e. without batching); essentially, this controls the largest possible number of bytes you will have to re-download if connection to the server gets interrupted while imaparms is batching (default: 4194304)

• polling/daemon options:

  • --every SECONDS : repeat the command every SECONDS seconds if the whole cycle takes less than SECONDS seconds and <cycle time> seconds otherwise (with a minimum of 60 seconds either way); i.e. it will do its best to repeat the command precisely every SECONDS seconds even if the command is fetch and fetching new messages and --new-mail-cmd take different time each cycle; this prevents the servers accessed earlier in the cycle from learning about the amount of new data fetched from the servers accessed later in the cycle
  • --every-add-random ADD : sleep a random number of seconds in [0, ADD] range (uniform distribution) before each --every cycle (default: 60); if you set it large enough to cover the longest single-server fetch, it will prevent any of the servers learning anything about the data on other servers; if you run imaparms on a machine that disconnects from the Internet when you go to sleep and you set it large enough, it will help in preventing the servers from collecting data about your sleep cycle

• subcommands:

  • {list,count,mark,fetch,delete,for-each}
    • list : list all available folders on the server, one per line
    • count : count how many matching messages each specified folder has
    • mark : mark matching messages in specified folders in a specified way
    • fetch : fetch matching messages from specified folders, feed them to an MDA, and then mark them in a specified way if MDA succeeds
    • delete : delete matching messages from specified folders
    • for-each : perform multiple other subcommands while sharing a single server connection

imaparms list

Login, perform IMAP LIST command to get all folders, print them one per line.

imaparms count [--all-folders | --folder NAME] [--not-folder NAME] [--older-than DAYS] [--newer-than DAYS] [--older-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--newer-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--older-than-mtime-of PATH] [--newer-than-mtime-of PATH] [--from ADDRESS] [--not-from ADDRESS] [--any-seen | --seen | --unseen] [--any-flagged | --flagged | --unflagged] [--porcelain]

Login, (optionally) perform IMAP LIST command to get all folders, perform IMAP SEARCH command with specified filters in each folder, print message counts for each folder one per line.

• optional arguments:

  • --porcelain : print in a machine-readable format

• folder search filters:

  • --all-folders : operate on all folders (default)
  • --folder NAME : mail folders to include; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-folder NAME : mail folders to exclude; can be specified multiple times

• message search filters:

  • --older-than DAYS : operate on messages older than this many days, the date will be rounded down to the start of the day; actual matching happens on the server, so all times are server time; e.g. --older-than 0 means older than the start of today by server time, --older-than 1 means older than the start of yesterday, etc
  • --newer-than DAYS : operate on messages newer than this many days, a negation of--older-than, so everything from --older-than applies; e.g., --newer-than -1 will match files dated into the future, --newer-than 0 will match files delivered from the beginning of today, etc
  • --older-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages older than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages newer than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --older-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages older than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages newer than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --from ADDRESS : operate on messages that have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-from ADDRESS : operate on messages that don't have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times

• message flag filters:

  • --any-seen : operate on both SEEN and not SEEN messages (default)
  • --seen : operate on messages marked as SEEN
  • --unseen : operate on messages not marked as SEEN
  • --any-flagged : operate on both FLAGGED and not FLAGGED messages (default)
  • --flagged : operate on messages marked as FLAGGED
  • --unflagged : operate on messages not marked as FLAGGED

imaparms mark (--all-folders | --folder NAME) [--not-folder NAME] [--older-than DAYS] [--newer-than DAYS] [--older-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--newer-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--older-than-mtime-of PATH] [--newer-than-mtime-of PATH] [--from ADDRESS] [--not-from ADDRESS] [--any-seen | --seen | --unseen] [--any-flagged | --flagged | --unflagged] {seen,unseen,flagged,unflagged}

Login, perform IMAP SEARCH command with specified filters for each folder, mark resulting messages in specified way by issuing IMAP STORE commands.

• folder search filters (required):

  • --all-folders : operate on all folders
  • --folder NAME : mail folders to include; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-folder NAME : mail folders to exclude; can be specified multiple times

• message search filters:

  • --older-than DAYS : operate on messages older than this many days, the date will be rounded down to the start of the day; actual matching happens on the server, so all times are server time; e.g. --older-than 0 means older than the start of today by server time, --older-than 1 means older than the start of yesterday, etc
  • --newer-than DAYS : operate on messages newer than this many days, a negation of--older-than, so everything from --older-than applies; e.g., --newer-than -1 will match files dated into the future, --newer-than 0 will match files delivered from the beginning of today, etc
  • --older-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages older than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages newer than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --older-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages older than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages newer than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --from ADDRESS : operate on messages that have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-from ADDRESS : operate on messages that don't have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times

• message flag filters (default: depends on other arguments):

  • --any-seen : operate on both SEEN and not SEEN messages
  • --seen : operate on messages marked as SEEN
  • --unseen : operate on messages not marked as SEEN
  • --any-flagged : operate on both FLAGGED and not FLAGGED messages (default)
  • --flagged : operate on messages marked as FLAGGED
  • --unflagged : operate on messages not marked as FLAGGED

• marking:

  • {seen,unseen,flagged,unflagged} : mark how (required):
    • seen: add SEEN flag, sets --unseen if no message flag filter is specified
    • unseen: remove SEEN flag, sets --seen if no message flag filter is specified
    • flag: add FLAGGED flag, sets --unflagged if no message flag filter is specified
    • unflag: remove FLAGGED flag, sets --flagged if no message flag filter is specified

imaparms fetch [--all-folders | --folder NAME] [--not-folder NAME] --mda COMMAND [--new-mail-cmd CMD] [--older-than DAYS] [--newer-than DAYS] [--older-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--newer-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--older-than-mtime-of PATH] [--newer-than-mtime-of PATH] [--from ADDRESS] [--not-from ADDRESS] [--any-seen | --seen | --unseen] [--any-flagged | --flagged | --unflagged] [--mark {auto,noop,seen,unseen,flagged,unflagged}]

Login, perform IMAP SEARCH command with specified filters for each folder, fetch resulting messages in (configurable) batches, feed each batch of messages to an MDA, mark each message for which MDA succeeded in a specified way by issuing IMAP STORE commands.

• folder search filters:

  • --all-folders : operate on all folders (default)
  • --folder NAME : mail folders to include; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-folder NAME : mail folders to exclude; can be specified multiple times

• delivery settings:

  • --mda COMMAND : shell command to use as an MDA to deliver the messages to (required for fetch subcommand) imaparms will spawn COMMAND via the shell and then feed raw RFC822 message into its stdin, the resulting process is then responsible for delivering the message to mbox, Maildir, etc. maildrop from Courier Mail Server project is a good KISS default
  • --new-mail-cmd CMD : shell command to run if any new messages were successfully delivered by the --mda

• message search filters:

  • --older-than DAYS : operate on messages older than this many days, the date will be rounded down to the start of the day; actual matching happens on the server, so all times are server time; e.g. --older-than 0 means older than the start of today by server time, --older-than 1 means older than the start of yesterday, etc
  • --newer-than DAYS : operate on messages newer than this many days, a negation of--older-than, so everything from --older-than applies; e.g., --newer-than -1 will match files dated into the future, --newer-than 0 will match files delivered from the beginning of today, etc
  • --older-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages older than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages newer than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --older-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages older than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages newer than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --from ADDRESS : operate on messages that have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-from ADDRESS : operate on messages that don't have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times

• message flag filters:

  • --any-seen : operate on both SEEN and not SEEN messages
  • --seen : operate on messages marked as SEEN
  • --unseen : operate on messages not marked as SEEN (default)
  • --any-flagged : operate on both FLAGGED and not FLAGGED messages (default)
  • --flagged : operate on messages marked as FLAGGED
  • --unflagged : operate on messages not marked as FLAGGED

• marking:

  • --mark {auto,noop,seen,unseen,flagged,unflagged} : after the message was fetched:
    • auto: seen when only --unseen is set (default), flagged when only --unflagged is set, noop otherwise
    • noop: do nothing
    • seen: add SEEN flag
    • unseen: remove SEEN flag
    • flagged: add FLAGGED flag
    • unflagged: remove FLAGGED flag

imaparms delete (--all-folders | --folder NAME) [--not-folder NAME] [--older-than DAYS] [--newer-than DAYS] [--older-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--newer-than-timestamp-in PATH] [--older-than-mtime-of PATH] [--newer-than-mtime-of PATH] [--from ADDRESS] [--not-from ADDRESS] [--any-seen | --seen | --unseen] [--any-flagged | --flagged | --unflagged] [--method {auto,delete,delete-noexpunge,gmail-trash}]

Login, perform IMAP SEARCH command with specified filters for each folder, delete them from the server using a specified method.

• folder search filters (required):

  • --all-folders : operate on all folders
  • --folder NAME : mail folders to include; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-folder NAME : mail folders to exclude; can be specified multiple times

• message search filters:

  • --older-than DAYS : operate on messages older than this many days, the date will be rounded down to the start of the day; actual matching happens on the server, so all times are server time; e.g. --older-than 0 means older than the start of today by server time, --older-than 1 means older than the start of yesterday, etc
  • --newer-than DAYS : operate on messages newer than this many days, a negation of--older-than, so everything from --older-than applies; e.g., --newer-than -1 will match files dated into the future, --newer-than 0 will match files delivered from the beginning of today, etc
  • --older-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages older than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-timestamp-in PATH : operate on messages newer than the timestamp (in seconds since UNIX Epoch) recorded on the first line of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --older-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages older than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --newer-than-mtime-of PATH : operate on messages newer than mtime of this PATH, rounded as above (can be specified multiple times)
  • --from ADDRESS : operate on messages that have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-from ADDRESS : operate on messages that don't have this string as substring of their header's FROM field; can be specified multiple times

• message flag filters:

  • --any-seen : operate on both SEEN and not SEEN messages
  • --seen : operate on messages marked as SEEN (default)
  • --unseen : operate on messages not marked as SEEN
  • --any-flagged : operate on both FLAGGED and not FLAGGED messages (default)
  • --flagged : operate on messages marked as FLAGGED
  • --unflagged : operate on messages not marked as FLAGGED

• deletion method:

  • --method {auto,delete,delete-noexpunge,gmail-trash} : delete messages how:
    • auto: gmail-trash when --host imap.gmail.com and the current folder is not [Gmail]/Trash, delete otherwise (default)
    • delete: mark messages as deleted and then use IMAP EXPUNGE command, i.e. this does what you would expect a "delete" command to do, works for most IMAP servers
    • delete-noexpunge: mark messages as deleted but skip issuing IMAP EXPUNGE command hoping the server does as RFC2060 says and auto-EXPUNGEs messages on IMAP CLOSE; this is much faster than delete but some servers (like GMail) fail to implement this properly
    • gmail-trash: move messages to [Gmail]/Trash in GMail-specific way instead of trying to delete them immediately (GMail ignores IMAP EXPUNGE outside of [Gmail]/Trash, you can then imaparms delete --folder "[Gmail]/Trash" (which will default to --method delete) them after, or you could just leave them there and GMail will delete them in 30 days)

imaparms for-each [--all-folders | --folder NAME] [--not-folder NAME] ARG [ARG ...]

For each account: login, perform other subcommands given in ARGs, logout.

This is most useful for performing complex changes --every once in while in daemon mode. Or if you want to set different --folders for different subcommands but run them all at once.

Except for the simplest of cases, you must use -- before ARGs so that any options specified in ARGs won't be picked up by for-each. Run with --very-dry-run to see the interpretation of the given command line.

All generated hooks are deduplicated and run after all other subcommands are done. E.g., if you have several fetch --new-mail-cmd CMD as subcommands of for-each, then CMD will be run once after all other subcommands finish.

• positional arguments:

  • ARG : arguments, these will be split by ; and parsed into other subcommands

• folder search filters (this will set as defaults for subcommands):

  • --all-folders : operate on all folders
  • --folder NAME : mail folders to include; can be specified multiple times
  • --not-folder NAME : mail folders to exclude; can be specified multiple times

Notes on usage

Message search filters are connected by logical "AND"s so, e.g., --from "github.com" --not-from "[e-mail]" will act on messages which have a From: header with github.com but without [e-mail] as substrings.

Note that fetch and delete subcommands act on --seen messages by default.

Specifying --folder multiple times will perform the specified action on all specified folders.

Examples

• List all available IMAP folders and count how many messages they contain:

  • with the password taken from pinentry:

    imaparms count --ssl --host imap.example.com --user [e-mail] --pass-pinentry
    

  • with the password taken from the first line of the given file:

    imaparms count --ssl --host imap.example.com --user [e-mail] --passfile /path/to/file/containing/[e-mail]
    

  • with the password taken from the output of password-store utility:

    imaparms count --ssl --host imap.example.com --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]"
    

  • with two accounts on the same server:

    imaparms count --porcelain \
             --ssl --host imap.example.com \
             --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]" \
             --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]"
    
    

Now, assuming the following are set:

common=(--ssl --host imap.example.com --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]")
common_mda=("${{common[@]}}" --mda maildrop)
gmail_common=(--ssl --host imap.gmail.com --user [e-mail] --passcmd "pass show mail/[e-mail]")
gmail_common_mda=("${{gmail_common[@]}}" --mda maildrop)

• Count how many messages older than 7 days are in [Gmail]/All Mail folder:

  imaparms count "${gmail_common[@]}" --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --older-than 7
  

• Mark all messages in INBOX as not SEEN, fetch all not SEEN messages marking them SEEN as you download them so that if the process gets interrupted you could continue from where you left off:

  # setup: do once
  imaparms mark "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" unseen
  
  # repeatable part
  imaparms fetch "${common_mda[@]}" --folder "INBOX"
  
  

• Similarly to the above, but use FLAGGED instead of SEEN. This allows to use this in parallel with another instance of imaparms using the SEEN flag, e.g. if you want to backup to two different machines independently, or if you want to use imaparms simultaneously in parallel with fetchmail or other similar tool:

  # setup: do once
  imaparms mark "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" unflagged
  
  # repeatable part
  imaparms fetch "${common_mda[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --any-seen --unflagged
  
  # this will work as if nothing of the above was run
  fetchmail
  
  # in this use case you should use both `--seen` and `--flagged` when expiring old messages to only delete messages fetched by both imaparms and fetchmail
  imaparms delete "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --older-than 7 --seen --flagged
  
  

• Similarly to the above, but run imaparms fetch as a daemon to download updates every hour:

  # setup: do once
  imaparms mark "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" unseen
  
  # repeatable part
  imaparms fetch "${common_mda[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --every 3600
  
  

• Fetch all messages from INBOX folder that were delivered in the last 7 days (the resulting date is rounded down to the start of the day by server time), but don't change any flags:

  imaparms fetch "${common_mda[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --any-seen --newer-than 7
  

• Fetch all messages from INBOX folder that were delivered from the beginning of today (by server time):

  imaparms fetch "${common_mda[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --any-seen --newer-than 0
  

• Delete all SEEN messages older than 7 days from INBOX folder:

  Assuming you fetched and backed up all your messages already this allows you to keep as little as possible on the server, so that if your account gets cracked/hacked, you won't be as vulnerable.

  imaparms delete "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX" --older-than 7
  

  (--seen is implied by default)

• DANGEROUS! If you fetched and backed up all your messages already, you can skip --older-than and just delete all SEEN messages instead:

  imaparms delete "${common[@]}" --folder "INBOX"
  

  Though, setting at least --older-than 1, to make sure you won't lose any data in case you forgot you are running another instance of imaparms or another IMAP client that changes message flags (imaparms will abort if it notices another client doing it, but better be safe than sorry), is highly recommended anyway.

• Fetch everything GMail considers to be Spam for local filtering:

  # setup: do once
  mkdir -p ~/Mail/spam/{new,cur,tmp}
  
  cat > ~/.mailfilter-spam << EOF
  DEFAULT="\$HOME/Mail/spam"
  EOF
  
  imaparms mark "${gmail_common[@]}" --folder "[Gmail]/Spam" unseen
  
  # repeatable part
  imaparms fetch "${gmail_common_mda[@]}" --mda "maildrop ~/.mailfilter-spam" --folder "[Gmail]/Spam"
  
  

• Fetch everything from all folders, except INBOX and [Gmail]/Trash (because messages in GMail INBOX are included [Gmail]/All Mail):

  imaparms fetch "${gmail_common_mda[@]}" --all-folders --not-folder "INBOX" --not-folder "[Gmail]/Trash"
  

• GMail-specific deletion mode: move (expire) old messages to [Gmail]/Trash and then delete them:

  In GMail, deleting messages from INBOX does not actually delete them, nor moves them to trash, just removes them from INBOX while keeping them available from [Gmail]/All Mail.

  To work around this, this tool provides a GMail-specific --method gmail-trash that moves messages to [Gmail]/Trash in a GMail-specific way (this is not a repetition, it does require issuing special IMAP STORE commands to achieve this):

  imaparms delete "${gmail_common[@]}" --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --older-than 7
  

  (--method gmail-trash is implied by --host imap.gmail.com and --folder not being [Gmail]/Trash, --seen is still implied by default)

  Messages in [Gmail]/Trash will be automatically removed by GMail in 30 days, but you can also delete them immediately with:

  imaparms delete "${gmail_common[@]}" --folder "[Gmail]/Trash" --any-seen --older-than 7
  

  (--method delete is implied by --host imap.gmail.com but --folder being [Gmail]/Trash)

• Every hour, fetch messages from different folders using different MDA settings and then expire messages older than 7 days, all in a single pass (reusing the server connection between subcommands):

  imaparms for-each "${gmail_common[@]}" --every 3600 -- \
    fetch --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --mda maildrop \; \
    fetch --folder "[Gmail]/Spam" --mda "maildrop ~/.mailfilter-spam" \; \
    delete --folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" --folder "[Gmail]/Spam" --folder "[Gmail]/Trash" --older-than 7
  
  

  Note the -- and \; tokens, without them the above will fail to parse.

  Also note that delete will use --method gmail-trash for [Gmail]/All Mail and [Gmail]/Spam and then use --method delete for [Gmail]/Trash.