A few basic nnimap problems

["Bjørn Mork" <bjorn@mork.no>]

I am slow...

I have spent some time now trying to just get a basic nnimap connection
going on a test account, so that I am able to experiment a bit without
risking anything.

The problems are:

1. nnimap seems to default to "imaps", so you actually have to configure
 some none-default setting to get a connection on any sane server (using
 STARTTLS on port 143)

2. setting  (nnimap-stream 'starttls) doesn't help either, as this
 requires some odd binary I didn't have:
 "Unable to open server nnimap+example.net due to: Searching for program: no such file or directory, gnutls-cli"
 Note that I do have openssl, and have no problems using it to initiate
 a STARTTLS session:

 $ openssl s_client -starttls imap -connect example.com:143 -no_ssl2 -ign_eof
 CONNECTED(00000003)
 [..]
 SSL-Session:
     Protocol  : TLSv1
     Cipher    : AES256-SHA
 [..]
 ---
 . OK CAPABILITY completed


3. Even after doing "apt-get install gnutls-bin", starttls is still
 no-go:  "Unable to contact example.com:nil via (quote starttls)"


4. Giving up STARTTLS and using (nnimap-stream 'network) does not make
  much difference.  Similar error


5. Going for (nnimap-stream 'shell), which I *know* works since I use
  that for my regular mail, also gives a few problems.  The
  imap-shell-program variable does not seem to be respected, but instead
  gnus defaults to ssh'ing to the imap server.  


6. Even allowing the ssh is not enough.  Gnus complains about a missing
  ssh-askpass binary unless the host key was already cached.



OK, I finally got the imap connection up, but I believe there is far too
much hassle and it seems currently impossible to configure Gnus for a
"normal" IMAP connection.  I believe this:

  (setq gnus-select-method  '(nnimap "example.com"))

should result in a working connection to any IMAP server listening on
port 143/tcp, and automatically enable STARTTLS if supported by the
server.



Bjørn