Mutt with GPG Password Protection

Question

I got Mutt working with the default IMAP password management configuration with this line in my config:

set imap_pass = XXXX

Which is obviously not secure. I looked at this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt#Passwords_management and http://www.mail-archive.com/mutt-users@mutt.org/msg36375.html

For guidance on how to encrypt the data. Neither solution worked for me though. The Arch linux one seems ideal because I would rather not use a wrapper everytime I start Mutt.

I did gpg --gen-key and set name to John Doe, email to JDoe@example.com and comment to XXX.

I created a file with this data

set EMAIL_PASS = random30digitpassword

I tried encrypting my file with

gpg -e -r "John Doe" ./password

Now if I want to decrypt it should just work without a prompt because I am the one with the keystore but alas if I execute this following command it still prompts for a password

gpg2 -dq password.gpg

Not only did that not work but with this as my Mutt config:

source "gpg2 -dq /home/John/password.gpg | "

set folder      = imaps://lavabit.com/
set imap_user   = JohnDoe@lavabit.com
set imap_pass   = $EMAIL_PASS
set spoolfile   = +INBOX

It complains that that path does not exist (and no password prompt comes up)

So I am pretty much stumped because it isn't working from two angles. Any ideas?

Answer 1

According to the mutt manual, user-defined variables should always have the my_ prefix. So, rename EMAIL_PASS with my_email_pass both in the encrypted file and in .muttrc.

Also, what happens when you type gpg -dq /home/John/password.gpg from the command line? Does it decrypt the password file?