Re: Password-less IMAP access: Public Key?

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 11:50:12AM -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I use ssh-agent to manage by keys for my ssh connections.  Is there
> any way to use the same setup for connecting to my IMAP folders?

I do this with fetchmail, so I have:

  poll mccoy.flatline.org.uk with proto IMAP
          plugin "ssh -2 -i /home/cjwatson/.ssh/id-imapd-flatline mccoy /usr/sbin/imapd" with auth ssh
          user 'cjw44' there is 'cjwatson' here
          options fetchall fetchlimit 40

(id-imapd-flatline is a passwordless single-purpose key; authorized_keys
at the other end uses the command="..." syntax to make sure it can't be
used for any other purpose. Being passwordless means it works fine with
fetchmail in a cron job.)

I've never tried to do this with mutt, but you might be able to manage
it using ssh port forwarding or something.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]