using getmail with gmail

Short answer: … well, the short answer is mostly unprintable. The long answer is … well, long: [...]

1. apt-get install getmail4
2. mkdir ~/.getmail
3. Edit ~/.getmail/getmailrc, and put in something like:
   

   [retriever]
   type = SimplePOP3SSLRetriever
   server = pop.gmail.com
   username = gmail username
   
   [destination]
   # this can be changed to Maildir, etc. RTFM.
   type = Mboxrd
   path = ~/.getmail/inbox
   
   [options]
   # this makes it pick up where it left off
   # instead of downloading everything each time.
   read_all = False

4. touch ~/.getmail/inbox


5. run getmail. It'll prompt you for a password.

1. gmail tracks the last date you've downloaded from so subsequent getmails will get different counts of messages. If you want to start over, go to Settings→Forwarding and Pop there's a "Status" option which lets you reset the date.
2. It appears to only download a subset of your messages at a time. So reset the POP date once, then run getmail a few times.
3. getmail seems to eat a lot of CPU for reasons that are not apparent to me. strace indicates it's stating the same Python modules over and over... ah, software.