Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Jose Romildo Malaquias]

Hello.

I am new to gnus (although I am a regular Emacs user)
and before I decide to adopt it as my main mail client,
I would like to clarify the following point.

In my Linux box, I use fetchmail for fetching email
messages from my provider, and procmail to deliver
it to different mailboxes (under $HOME/Mail) according
to a set of (procmail) rules.

Is it possible to have gnus *and* other email clients to
read the email messages in the different mailboxes, in a
consistent way? Up to now my preferred mail reader
is mutt, so I will not give up of it just now. I intend to
start using gnus, but occasionaly still use mutt (or
any other email client, for the matter). By consistent
I mean new messages first read in gnus will be seen as
read (not new) in mutt, and vice-versa.

Please, comment on this issue.

Regards,

Romildo

-- 
Prof. José Romildo Malaquias        romildo@uber.com.br
Departamento de Computação       malaquias@iceb.ufop.br
Univ. Federal de Ouro Preto  http://uber.com.br/romildo

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Kai Großjohann]

Jose Romildo Malaquias <romildo@uber.com.br> writes:

> Is it possible to have gnus *and* other email clients to
> read the email messages in the different mailboxes, in a
> consistent way? Up to now my preferred mail reader
> is mutt, so I will not give up of it just now. I intend to
> start using gnus, but occasionaly still use mutt (or
> any other email client, for the matter). By consistent
> I mean new messages first read in gnus will be seen as
> read (not new) in mutt, and vice-versa.

It is possible to achieve this by using an IMAP server.  This appears
to be somewhat overkill in your case, but I know of no other solution.

Hm.

Though Gnus _does_ maintain the unseen sequence in nnmh groups, so it
_might_ be possible to use MH as the common format.  But that does
not appear to be a very good solution.

Hm.

But what about nnmaildir?  Doesn't nnmaildir store the marks in the
server, too?  So this could be a solution.  I've never used
nnmaildir, so I'm not sure.  Anyone?

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Kevin D. Clark]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 989 bytes --]


kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Jose Romildo Malaquias <romildo@uber.com.br> writes:
> 
> > Is it possible to have gnus *and* other email clients to
> > read the email messages in the different mailboxes, in a
> > consistent way? Up to now my preferred mail reader
> > is mutt, so I will not give up of it just now. I intend to
> > start using gnus, but occasionaly still use mutt (or
> > any other email client, for the matter). By consistent
> > I mean new messages first read in gnus will be seen as
> > read (not new) in mutt, and vice-versa.
> 
> It is possible to achieve this by using an IMAP server.  This appears
> to be somewhat overkill in your case, but I know of no other solution.

I do this with great success.  Since I have this all written up, I
will distribute my notes (see attachment).

Regards,

--kevin
-- 
Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)
cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E)
alumni.unh.edu!kdc




[-- Attachment #2: 1/1 --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 4091 bytes --]

Motivations:
------------

I want the following features in my mail system:

  o  I want IMAP access so I can read my mail with multiple clients.
 
  o  I want standards-conforming encryption available to me so my
     passwords don't go over the wire in the clear. 

  o  I want my mail to get sorted into folders automatically.

  o  I want SPAM filtering (SpamBouncer, etc.).

  o  I want the system to be fast.


I pretty much had all of these features, except for the last one, when
I was running the University of Washington's IMAP server.  So, I
decided to migrate to courier-imapd.


How to do what I did:
---------------------

0:  Install procmail-3.22.  I found procmail-3.15.x to have serious
    bugs in handling the Maildir format, so I would strongly recommend
    *not* using this version.

1:  Get and install courier imapd.  If compiling from source, and 
    you want SSL support, you're going to have to mess around with
    CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS (and have OpenSSL).

    While this is compiling, take a look at the graphs here:

        http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/

2:  Configure authentication.  For now, I decided to use PAM.  I had to mess
    around with the /usr/lib/courier-imap/etc/authdaemonrc and configure it
    to use PAM before LDAP -- the server was trying to use LDAP first
    and wouldn't let me login.

3:  Make your Maildir and the folders that you want.

    (the server won't let you login if you don't have a Maildir
    either...) 

    Before you do this, you'll probably want to read the "maildirmake"
    man page.  You might have to muck with your MANPATH to do this.

    If you're impatient, here is what I did:

    $ /usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/maildirmake $HOME/Maildir/     

    $ /usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/maildirmake -f ietf-announce $HOME/Maildir
    $ /usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/maildirmake -f gnhlug $HOME/Maildir
    $ /usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/maildirmake -f gnhlug-announce $HOME/Maildir
    [etc.]

    (you can create folders through a IMAP client too)

    This has the effect of creating a special Maildir directory in
    $HOME/Maildir.  Courier imapd stores folders in "dot-files" --
    from the above commands a directory called $HOME/Maildir/.gnhlug
    is created.  (*)

    *  This has the next effect of this:  when you look at your
       folders in a IMAP client, you'll have folders named
       "INBOX.gnhlug".  Various people on the net suggest installing
       symlinks to get around this "problem", but I didn't do this.

4:  Configure your .procmailrc thusly:

    [...lots of spurious details omitted]
    
    # I don't even know if this next line is necessary -- YMMV
    MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir
    
    #   Procmail delivery rules:
    #     .../somefile    -> "somefile" is in mbox format
    #     .../foo/        -> Maildir format
    #     .../foo/.       -> MH format
    
    :0
    * ^TO.*IETF-Announce@
    $HOME/Maildir/.ietf-announce/
    
    :0
    * ^TO.*gnhlug@
    $HOME/Maildir/.gnhlug/
    
    # etc...
    
    # IT IS CRITICAL THAT THIS IS THE LAST RULE
    :0
    $HOME/Maildir/
    
5:  Do whatever you have to do to your mail system to get it to run
    incoming mail through procmail.

6:  Test.  Test.  Test.

6a: If you happen to be snarfing your mail off of another IMAP server
    (in my case, uwash-imapd) and putting it into this server, you
    might find procmail's "formail" to be useful.  Alternatively, you
    might find fetchmail's "--folder" and "--keep" options to be
    useful.  Caveat programmer... 

7:  You're running your own IMAP server -- you might want to take a
    moment to consider "how is my mail getting backed up?".




Acknowledgements:
-----------------

Obviously, I would like to thank the people who put courier-imapd,
procmail, and fetchmail together -- these are industrial-strength,
high-quality tools.

I would also like to thank Bob Bell (GNHLUG member), Fred Yankowski,
and Keith T. Garner (both of the Linux Users Of Northern Illinois) for
letting me bounce ideas off them when I was running into procmail
problems.

THE END

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Jorge Godoy]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Though Gnus _does_ maintain the unseen sequence in nnmh groups, so it
> _might_ be possible to use MH as the common format.  But that does
> not appear to be a very good solution.

I use nnml for my groups. I can read messages perfectly with, e.g.,
Sylpheed. I haven't, of course, tried moving messages or removing or
replying them because it would desync the .overview, .marks files from
what is in the directory. 



-- 
Godoy.     <godoy@ieee.org>

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Kai Großjohann]

Jorge Godoy <godoy@ieee.org> writes:

> I use nnml for my groups. I can read messages perfectly with, e.g.,
> Sylpheed. I haven't, of course, tried moving messages or removing or
> replying them because it would desync the .overview, .marks files from
> what is in the directory. 

The original poster wanted the marks to be updated.  That is, after
you read a message with Sylpheed, Gnus should see it marked as read,
and vice versa.

Or maybe I misunderstood.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Jorge Godoy]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> The original poster wanted the marks to be updated.  That is, after
> you read a message with Sylpheed, Gnus should see it marked as read,
> and vice versa.

I don't think mutt can access IMAP servers either... So I think that
the problem might be somewhere between what you understood and what I
answered :-) 


-- 
Godoy.     <godoy@ieee.org>

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Kai Großjohann]

Jorge Godoy <godoy@ieee.org> writes:

> I don't think mutt can access IMAP servers either... So I think that
> the problem might be somewhere between what you understood and what I
> answered :-) 

Mutt does grok IMAP.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[David Z Maze]

Jorge Godoy <godoy@ieee.org> writes:
> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> The original poster wanted the marks to be updated.  That is, after
>> you read a message with Sylpheed, Gnus should see it marked as read,
>> and vice versa.
>
> I don't think mutt can access IMAP servers either... So I think that
> the problem might be somewhere between what you understood and what I
> answered :-) 

Mutt does, in fact, have built-in IMAP support.  I use it to read mail
without incorporating it into Gnus with some regularity, since ifile
for me is sloooooow (but insanely useful).

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Jose Romildo Malaquias]

Kai Großjohann wrote:

>Jorge Godoy <godoy@ieee.org> writes:
>  
>
>>I use nnml for my groups. I can read messages perfectly with, e.g.,
>>Sylpheed. I haven't, of course, tried moving messages or removing or
>>replying them because it would desync the .overview, .marks files from
>>what is in the directory. 
>>    
>>
>
>The original poster wanted the marks to be updated.  That is, after
>you read a message with Sylpheed, Gnus should see it marked as read,
>and vice versa.
>
>Or maybe I misunderstood.
>  
>
I (the original poster) want the marks to be updated, as Kay explained,
when reading messages with another mail client, and also I want the
other mail client should also see as read the messages read with
gnus.

Maybe it would be feasible to write some script to be run when
starting/exiting gnus (or mutt) that check the messages that
were read with gnus (or mutt) and automatically mark them as
read in mutt (or gnus). Would that script be easy to write?
What do you gnus user think about this idea?

Regards.

Romildo

-- 
Prof. José Romildo Malaquias        romildo@uber.com.br
Departamento de Computação       malaquias@iceb.ufop.br
Univ. Federal de Ouro Preto  http://uber.com.br/romildo

Re: Reading mail with GNUS and other mail clients

[Kai Großjohann]

Jose Romildo Malaquias <romildo@uber.com.br> writes:

> I (the original poster) want the marks to be updated, as Kay explained,
> when reading messages with another mail client, and also I want the
> other mail client should also see as read the messages read with
> gnus.
>
> Maybe it would be feasible to write some script to be run when
> starting/exiting gnus (or mutt) that check the messages that
> were read with gnus (or mutt) and automatically mark them as
> read in mutt (or gnus). Would that script be easy to write?
> What do you gnus user think about this idea?

Recent Gnusae have a .marks file in each groups which keeps the
marks, and that file should be fairly easy to manipulate.

But my guts tell me that this is a fragile solution, and if I were
you, I would try other things first.

First of all, an IMAP server should be easy to install on a Linux
machine, and it would do just what you need (you could use any client
which groks IMAP, not just Gnus and mutt -- Mozilla would also
work).  The only problem with the IMAP server is that you need to get
the messages into the server in the first place.  For this you
normally have to configure your MTA (exim, postfix, sendmail, ...)
correctly.  But Cyrus (an IMAP server) also provides the possibility
to pipe messages through the `deliver' program that comes with Cyrus,
and that will also put them into the server.  So you have a fallback
if the configuration of the MTA is too difficult.

The second idea is nnmaildir.  Maybe it Just Works, with no additional
configuration required.  But I don't know.  The potential problem here
is the format in which marks are stored.  It is not standardized I
think, so you might have to read up on it for a while, or ask an
nnmaildir expert.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)