I wanted to try mail-notification out today so I installed it. Bah! Upon checking out the appy's configs I learned that SSL was disabled. I then found out that Debian doesn't have permission to include this (very necessary) functionality. Something about the SSL licensing.

No matter, because I also learned that there are work-arounds. Since I wanted to try the app and I'm not having a terminal blast my passwords right there for all to see I went for this solution. It didn't work but it was simple enough to use the commands in the script to make it happen.

Of course, I balked at the 114 packages I had to install to build mail-notification, but it's really no big deal to remove them afterward. Most, anyway.

After I went through the process I fired-up mail-notification from a terminal with a couple arguments which can be had quickly from the man page:

$ mail-notification -i -p -u

By running mail-notification this way you get to see output relevant to paranoia. With mail-notification built with ssl enabled (or, not disabled as is the case in debian) you can't see your passwords scroll by in your terminal-fu as the program polls your mail servers.

Satisfied, I added an autostart entry for the app so the next time I log into my desktop it will run automatically. I'll never have to think about it again.

Just a moment ago I was flashed notification of a new email from blah in account blah. Rockin'. Does what it says and says what it does. I dig that in a program.