From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/80637 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Johnny Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Taming hotmail (or how to handle pop3 accounts in Gnus) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:04:50 +0000 Message-ID: <871uskgqm5.fsf@gmx.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1323022425 5599 80.91.229.12 (4 Dec 2011 18:13:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 18:13:45 +0000 (UTC) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M28919@lists.math.uh.edu Sun Dec 04 19:13:37 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from util0.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.18]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RXGZB-0002Bc-KC for ding-account@gmane.org; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:13:33 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by util0.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1RXGY9-0001C2-1y; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:12:29 -0600 Original-Received: from mx2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.33]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1RXGY6-0001Bo-B9 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:12:26 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx2.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1RXGY5-0002H3-7s for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:12:26 -0600 Original-Received: from mailout-eu.gmx.com ([213.165.64.45]) by quimby.gnus.org with smtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1RXGY3-0004Oe-7m for ding@gnus.org; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:12:23 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 04 Dec 2011 18:12:17 -0000 Original-Received: from 78-86-131-176.zone2.bethere.co.uk (EHLO deusexmachina) [78.86.131.176] by mail.gmx.com (mp-eu006) with SMTP; 04 Dec 2011 19:12:17 +0100 X-Authenticated: #57368918 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1/6Nz12lPz6G+lMMyKaRVhqr2Msz1z9Am4FLTHQol E+fk4JuGapKQc/ User-Agent: Gnus/5.110018 (No Gnus v0.18) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 X-Spam-Score: -1.9 (-) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:80637 Archived-At: Dear list, '---------- LONG STORYLINE (short story below) ---------- I am writing you out of (yet) another unpleasant experience in my relationship with hotmail. As hotmail does not provide imap services, as far as I am aware, I have so far relied on the pop service. I still like to keep my mails online, in case I have a casual encounter with someone elses machine for accessing my mails. A convenient solution has been to use gmx (I think also gmail provides this) to set it up to pop my hotmail and leave the mails on the server and exclusively access the popped gmx version of hotmail. Of course, this leaves the hotmail server in a sad state (unsorted, unfiltered, undeleted and generally filthy), but at least the mails /could/ be retrieved from there if necessary. This trinity (hotmail -pop> gmx <-imap-> gnus) worked out fine until one day... Suddenly gmx stopped autofetching from hotmail, and I am now forced to use their web interface and click around, in particular on "check new mail" for the synch to take place. I don't know why this happened and have been unable to coerce gmx into it's previous submissive state. Out of this expereience, and a general quest to be in control of my own data, I am considering drastic measures, such as *fetchmail* to pop all hotmails (keeping them on the server as well of course, just in case) into a local maildir. This will enhance management capabilities I am sure (I raised a previous query on inserting missing fields in heades (aka re-parenting) in mails, but that doesn't seem to work through imap), but at the same time will limit me to access my organised mails in a convenient way (e.g. the imap on gmx which kept / keeps all mails and are synched to gnus). Clearly, I will be limited to access the local maildir when (surprise!) I have access to the local machine. This can be relived by ssh to some extent, but it clearly requires the machine to be up and running, which may not always be ideal. I have also seen the discussions here about offlineimap and dovecot which looks relevant for any imap accounts, and the idea is thus something like: '---------- SHORT STORYLINE STARTS HERE ---------- - IMAP mails: *offlineimap* and *dovecot* to keep a local copy in sync with a remote server - POP mails: *fetchmail* to keep a local copy, but leave the mails on the remote server as is (not possible to sync) Then set all up through a nnml backend in gnus and viola! (or at least, so I think...) Before I set out on this quest however, is there any ideas or advice from the experience here on how to efficiently and flexibly handle multiple e-mail accounts through both POP and IMAP (with a preference for having synchronised mailboxes accessible on-line, if possible also for POP)? Thanks for any ideas! -- Johnny