setting up a simple email to SMS system using Kmail

[Randy Conn]

Hi,

I just setup Gnokii and an email to SMS system on a Debian laptop.  I have to say that the Gnokii part was the easiest part of the whole process.  I bought a used Nokia 6610i and a CA-42 data cable.  All I had to do was connect the phone,  tail /var/log/messages,  and change the dev setting in the gnokiirc to match.

I use Mozilla (Thunderbird and Suite) and Kmail, but all of my searches talked about using more Unix like tools, so I started off trying to figure how to configure fetchmail, procmail, exim4, fdm, retchmail.
I learned a few things, but didn't get anywhere.

Debian has a package called mailtextbody which simply returns the body of an email message.  I started looking at Kmail, and Settings->ConfigureFilters takes you to the heart of it.   To start my test, I  set FilterCriteria to "Subject contains SMS", then set a filter action of PipeThrough, and in the box I started with mailtextbody > /tmp/test.txt     After that success, I put mailtextbody | gnokii --sendsms myphonenum and any email sent to me with SMS in the subject has the body forwarded to my phone!  All I have to do now is pick exactly which emails to forward, but that is easy.  The only other setting to change to finish this system is to go to ModifyAccount and tick Enable interval mail checking and pick a suitable checking interval.

I hope this helps.

Randy