Arch Linux

OakRaider4Life

Member

Registered: 2012-02-08

Posts: 98

Simple, lightwieght mail notification

In an attempt to cut down on my RAM footprint, I'm trying to cut out some of the background applications I run. One of the big ones I want to be able to close and leave closed until I need it is kmail. However, I still want some sort of lightweight method to receive notifications of incoming email, and have those notifications sent through my system notifications.

I've used applications such as popper and mail-notification in the past to do this, and they've been great, but both pull in more dependencies than I want to deal with (mail-notification pulls in evolution as one of its dependencies... not ideal). Does anyone know of a good, lightweight method to monitor emails and receive notifications?

My ideal solution would be some sort of simple script that polls my inbox and sends a system notification if I have new emails (and maybe includes the sender/subject). Kind of the same idea behind Archup, but for email polling rather than update notification.

All suggestions are welcome!

Mektub

Member

From: Lisbon /Portugal

Registered: 2008-01-02

Posts: 647

Re: Simple, lightwieght mail notification

I use

checkgmail-svn

(in AUR),

Dependencies perl-crypt-ssleay perl-gtk2-trayicon perl-libwww perl-xml-simple

But it monitors only gmail.

In your case it will depend on your mail provider.

Mekub

---

Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/johnbina

brianb

Member

From: Montreal, QC

Registered: 2012-02-17

Posts: 81

Website

Re: Simple, lightwieght mail notification

My really simple method is this:

I use mutt + urxvt, which I keep open in an xmonad workspace called "mail". In my muttrc, I have "set beep_new", and in my .Xresources, I have "URxvt*urgentOnBell: true", and in my xmonad.hs, I use UgencyHook to colorize a workspace containing an urgent/beeping window.

The result is that when I'm working on, say, "web", and a new mail arrives, my "mail" workspace lights up red (my chosen color) because mutt has "beeped" (urxvt becomes "urgent").

Actually, when I write it all out, it sounds pretty complex, but it's not: it's just a matter of two settings (muttrc, .Xresources), and then figuring out how to get your WM to notify you of urgent windows. (I think Awesome WM does this right out of the box.)

Of course, this would only "solve" your problem if you switched from kmail to mutt, which I'm not saying you should do... just thought I'd let you know my setup. I use mutt + gmail + offlineimap, and I have cronjob to run offlineimap (to sync mutt with gmail) every few minutes. This keeps resources pretty low.

Last edited by brianb (2012-07-07 14:47:55)

skeerly

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 20

Re: Simple, lightwieght mail notification

There are very simple scripts you can use:

Perl http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-s … count.html

Python http://martinbrook.posterous.com/python … inbox#more

I put one in my .xinitrc and call it with a sleep interval. I assign it to a variable that appears in my status bar.