- Look, I need to add a client Linux server to monitoring urgently. Accesses given.
- And what's the problem? Can't connect? Or are the rights in the system insufficient?
- No, I'm connecting normally. And there are superuser rights. But there is almost no place. And constantly the message about mail climbs on the console.
- So check this mail.
- How?! The server outside is not directly accessible!
- Launch the client directly on the server. If you don’t have it, install it, you have rights.
- There is almost no place there anyway! In general, a full-fledged application with a graphical interface will not start there.
I had to look at a colleague and demonstrate to him a simple and effective way to solve the problem. A method that he knew about, but never used. And in a stressful situation, I simply could not remember.
Yes, a fully functional mail client, which without any sorcery can be launched in the console, exists. And for a very long time. It is called Mutt .
Despite the considerable age of the project , it is actively developing, and today it supports working with services such as Gmail and Yandex.Mail . And also knows how to work with Microsoft Exchange servers. Great stuff, isn't it?
Here, for example, looks like working with GMail:
Mutt also has:
- The address book;
- message processing automation;
- various types of display;
- the ability to mark letters of different categories in different colors;
- change the look and colors of the interface in principle;
- support for encryption and digital signatures;
- macros for complex actions;
- Aliases for mailing addresses and mailing lists;
- the ability to enable spell checking;
- and much more.
Moreover, a significant part of these opportunities was realized many, many years ago. Due to the lack of a graphical interface, Mutt weighs almost nothing, and at the same time it’s difficult for me to name an email client that allows you to configure itself just as flexibly.
Unfortunately, recommending this wonderful email client to an ordinary user is not worth it. Well, except in the case when you do not like him much for something. And there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the flexibility of tuning has a downside - tuning is by no means a single click and requires some knowledge. Most ordinary users do not have them as unnecessary.
Secondly, Google, Yandex, Microsoft and other vendors consider mail exclusively as an integral part of their products and services and
Thirdly, it is extremely difficult to find a person who works exclusively in the console. And it's not that users need a graphical interface. There are simply tasks that are inconvenient or even impossible in the console. For example, a photograph was sent to you by mail. Mutt will allow you to save it to disk, but viewing it without starting the graphics subsystem will not work without black magic and a shamanic tambourine. Most ordinary users simply will not waste their time on this, especially when they have a computer or smartphone on which this is done quickly and conveniently. For these reasons, Mutt is in demand except for geeks who want to feel a rebellious-hacker spirit, to challenge society.
But this does not make the client a less convenient tool for specialists who know exactly how, where and why it can be applied. For example, Mutt can, without starting the application, call from the command line with parameters to perform various tasks. The simplest example is the generation and sending of email messages. This allows you to use it when writing scripts.
In the case, which I mentioned at the beginning of the article, it took only reading mail from the local storage, which was implemented long before the founding of Google.
Installing and starting Mutt without performing any settings (which took just a couple of minutes) immediately revealed a huge number of exactly the same letters from the superuser, and reading one of them to choose from was the culprit of this mess: a script that was unsuccessfully written by the resigned system administrator of the server owners. The problem of lack of space and annoying messages in the console were immediately resolved.
An attentive reader, of course, will immediately tell me that it would be more correct to run the du utility to find out what is the place, look at the system logs, and thus identify the source of the problem. I agree, this is a completely correct approach. But in my case, it’s faster to still start the mail client, especially since the system itself offers to do this.
So why did I write all this?
Besides, to know everything, of course, is impossible, but what you already know is easy to forget if you do not use this knowledge. Therefore, sometimes it is not a sin to recall.
In addition, the fact that a good tool is wonderful, and the more of them, the better.
Besides, sometimes, if the system asks you to check your mail, you just need to check your mail.
Thanks for attention.
What else is useful to read on the Cloud4Y blog
→ Pentesters at the forefront of cybersecurity
→ The path of artificial intelligence from a fantastic idea to the scientific industry
→ 4 ways to save on backups in the cloud
→ Configure top in GNU / Linux
→ How to create a smart electric bike
Subscribe to our Telegram channel so as not to miss another article! We write no more than twice a week and only on business.