kcheckmail

The kcheckmail project is a handy biff utility written in Perl that aims to simplify email checking. The tool operates by forking into the background and connecting to an IMAP server to ping the 'From' and 'Subject' headers whenever it detects an unread email. To interact with the user, kcheckmail uses kdialog. This email checking utility is unique, and we could not find any similar tool or script. Thus, we decided to write it ourselves, hoping that someone else might find it useful.

Installing kcheckmail is straightforward. However, users will need to have a few Perl modules installed. Fortunately, they can obtain these modules by using apt-get, yum, or downloading from CPAN. Specifically, kcheckmail requires the following modules: Mail::IMAPClient, AppConfig, Array::Compare, and IO::Socket::SSL. Furthermore, as it makes use of the kdialog utility, it also needs the KDE window environment. Once installed, simply extract the kcheckmail-< version >.tar.gz file into the home directory.

Before running kcheckmail, users will need to modify the kcheckmail.pl and kcheckmail.conf files to match their server's settings. They can change the $file variable to point to the path of the config file. Kcheckmail.pl also accepts command-line arguments, although the conf file settings always override them. Users can use 'kcheckmail.pl --help' to learn more about the command-line arguments.

By default, kcheckmail will check the INBOX every 60 seconds when running in biff mode. To run in biff mode, execute 'kcheckmail.pl -mode xbiff.' In case the user has not input the password on the conf file or the command line, kdialog will prompt them for a password. This option is more secure. Moreover, users can execute 'kcheckmail.pl -mode display' to log in to their INBOX and learn the number of messages and new messages, if any. This function does not use kdialog (unless the user adds their password to the conf file or command line), rendering it independent of KDE, or even X-Windows. It can be useful in debugging mode, or for checking the inbox quickly.

The developers have commented quite well on the code, and users can quickly modify it to suit their requirements. Overall, kcheckmail is a handy email checking utility, especially for users who prefer Perl scripts.