providing imap_pass but not from ~/.muttrc

[Cameron Simpson]

On 13Jun2019 14:26, Larry Rosenman <ler at lerctr.org> wrote:
>I do the following trick:
>
>source "gpg -q --textmode -d ~/.neomutt/passwords.gpg  |"
>
>where the passwords.gpg file sets my_ vars for all my
>passwords.

Doesn't that require interaction on each mutt startup? I appreciate that 
this has the password nicely encrypted when idle and doesn't display 
them on the command line or in environment variables.

I've got various mail credentials in my .fetchmailrc (I now use getmail, 
but whatever), so I've got scripts to fetch them from it. Should port it 
to the getmail config some time.

So, the muttrc config line which presages accessing my phone IMAP 
account:

  source 'cs-mutt-imap-settings cs-iphone-cc'

cs-mutt-imap-settings is this script:

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  # Read clause form .fetchmailrc, recite mutt IMAP settings.
  #   - Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au> 26sep2015
  #

  set -ue

  clause=$1
  shift

  fetchmailclause "$clause" \
  | awk '$1 == "user" { user=$2 }
         $1 == "pass" { pass=$2 }
         $1 == "via"  { via=$2 }
         END          { print "set imap_user='\''" user "'\''"
                        print "set imap_pass='\''" pass "'\''"
                        print "set my_imap_host='\''" via "'\''"
                      }
        '

and fetchmailclause is this script:

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  # Pull out a single clause from a .fetchmailrc file.
  # The parsing's a little simplistic but it works fairly well.
  #    - Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au> 09sep2003
  #

  rc=$HOME/.fetchmailrc
  start=skip    # vs poll

  cmd=$0
  usage="Usage: $cmd [-f fetchmailrc] [clause]"

  badopts=

  [ "x$1" = x-f ] && { rc=$2; shift; shift; }

  [ $# = 0 ] && exec awk '$1 == "spoll" || $1 == "skip" { print $2 }' "$rc"

  clause=$1; shift
  [ $# = 0 ] || { echo "$cmd: extra arguments after clause: $*" >&2; 
  badopts=1; }

  [ $badopts ] && { echo "$usage" >&2; exit 2; }

  exec sed -ne '
          y/    / /
          s/$/ /
          '"    /^ *skip  *$clause /b start
          /^ *poll  *$clause /b start
          d
          :start
          n
          y/    / /
          s/   */ /g
          s/^ //
          s/ $//
          /^#/b start
          /^$/b start
          /^skip /d
          /^poll /d
          p
          b start" "$rc"

So if the OP already has the credentials sitting around elsewhere they 
could automate getting them.

This approach does have the downside that credentials are still in files 
in the clear though.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>