[NOTE!] oama is the successor of mailctl; for rationale and details, see the discussion

The Oauth2 credentials are kept in the Gnome keyring or in GNU PG encrypted files.

Many IMAP/SMTP clients, like msmtp, fdm, isync, neomutt or mutt can use OAuth2 access tokens but lack the ability to renew and/or authorize OAuth2 credentials. The purpose of oama is to provide these missing capabilities by acting as a kind of smart password manager. In particular, access token renewal happens automatically in the background transparent to the user.

oama has a simple configuration system. The minimum information you need to provide are client_id and client_secret and select the method of storing the oauth credentials.

When you run oama at the first time it will create the initial config file what you need to edit. This YAML file is commented explaining your options, just follow the instructions there.

If you used mailctl until now you need to start from scratch. First uninstall mailctl then remove all config and data files:

rm -fr ~/.local/var/mailctl
rm -fr ~/.config/mailct

If you used the gnome keyring then you might also want to remove the old credentials from it.

Before oama is fully operational you need to create the necessary configuration files. See details in Configuration.

Invoking oama without any arguments print a help message listing the available commands:

OAMa - OAuth credential manager with store/lookup, renewal, authorization.

Usage: oama [--version] [--debug] COMMAND

  OAMa is an OAuth credential manager providing store/lookup, automatic renewal
  and authorization operations. The credentials are stored either in the Gnome
  keyring or in files encrypted by GnuPG. OAMa is useful for IMAP/SMTP or other
  network clients which cannot authorize and renew OAuth tokens on their own.

Available options:
  -h,--help                Show this help text
  --version                Show version
  --debug                  Print HTTP traffic to stdout

Available commands:
  access                   Get the access token for email
  renew                    Renew the access token of email
  authorize                Authorize OAuth2 for service/email
  printenv                 Print the current Environment

More detailed help for individual commands can also be generated by appending -h after the command. Shell completion for bash, zsh and fish shells are provided.

After configuration, you must run the authorize command. That is an interactive process involving a browser since during it, you need to login and authorize access to your email account. oama will lead you through this process.

Corporation/Organization/Institution accounts might be treated differently by the service provider. In such cases, not passing a login hint might be useful, see below.

Invoke oama with no login hint:

oama authorize google <[email protected]> --nohint

Invoke oama using your proper organizational email:

oama authorize microsoft <[email protected]>

Then visit the https://localhost:8080/start page to perform the steps below:

• Click "Sign in with another account"
• Click "Sign-in options"
• Click "Sign in to an organization"
• Put in the correct domain name which matches your organization address above
• Log in with your credentials at the organization.

All transactions and exceptions are logged to syslog. If your OS using systemd you can inspect the log with a command like below:

journalctl --identifier fdm --identifier oama --identifier msmtp -e

Each release contains compiled executables of oama which should work on most Linux distributions. Currently Linux/x86_64 and Linux/aarch64(arm64) binaries are provided. Select the version you want to download from releases.

For Archlinux users there is also a package on AUR: oama-bin

To build oama from source you need a Haskell development environment, with ghc 9.4.8 or higher. Either your platform's package system can provide this or you can use ghcup. Once you have the ghc Haskell compiler and cabal etc. installed, follow the steps below:

Clone this repository and invoke cabal:

git clone https://github.com/pdobsan/oama
cd oama
cabal update
cabal install --install-method=copy

That installs oama into the ~/.cabal/bin/ directory.

Please, report any problems, questions, suggestions regarding oama by opening an issue or by starting a discussion.

For bug reports attach the complete output of the oama printenv command. Do not remove lines, get confidential values redacted by replacing them with XXXXXX. Send also error messages and related syslog entries.

oama is released under the 3-Clause BSD License, see the file LICENSE.