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devin
Asked: 2009-05-10 09:56:25 +0800 CST

Configuring mutt to send e-mail over an SSH tunnel

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I want to be able to send email from mutt through an SSH tunnel I can SSH into the SMTP server, but I don't know how to tell mutt how to use the tunnel to send e-mail.

Can someone help me out, please?

ssh smtp ssh-tunnel mutt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Using remote SMTP is described here: https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/wikis/MuttFaq/Sendmail

    So with the tunnel you'd set up your SMTP to localhost, but with the tunnel port. Eg. you create tunnel 8025->25 on remote:

    ssh -L8025:smtp.example.com:25 serv.example.com

    And in Mutt configuration (.muttrc) you put:

    set smtp_url="smtp://username@localhost:8025/"

    BTW. Using remote POP/IMAP here: https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/wikis/MuttFaq/RemoteFolder

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  2. You don't need to have ssh with local port forwarding running on your own. Both mutt and Neomutt have config option tunnel.

    tunnel
    Type: string
    Default: (empty)

    Setting this variable will cause mutt to open a pipe to a command instead of a raw socket. You may be able to use this to set up preauthenticated connections to your IMAP/POP3/SMTP server. Example:

    set tunnel="ssh -q mailhost.net /usr/local/libexec/imapd"

    Note: For this example to work you must be able to log in to the remote machine without having to enter a password.

    When set, Mutt uses the tunnel for all remote connections. Please see “account-hook” in the manual for how to use different tunnel commands per connection.

    example:

    neomutt -F /dev/null \
  -e 'set tunnel="ssh host.example.com' \
  [email protected] \
  < /tmp/msg
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