Re: Gnus Access mail spool by ssh

[Nuutti Kotivuori <nuutti.kotivuori@sonera.com>]

"Harry" == Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
> Nuutti Kotivuori <nuutti.kotivuori@sonera.com> writes:
> [...]
> 
>> 
>> Err. He won't be forced to run imapd as a daemon listening to an imap
>> port. Just as a program to access mail. To clear things up:
>> 
>> _Not_:
>> $ telnet mail.host.foo imap2
>> Trying 127.0.0.1...
>> Connected to oro.
>> Escape character is '^]'.
>> * OK mail.host.foo IMAP4rev1 v12.264 server ready
>> 
>> _But_:
>> $ ssh mail.host.foo
>> mail$ /usr/sbin/imapd
>> * PREAUTH mail.host.foo IMAP4rev1 v12.264 server ready
>> 
>> Most imap servers are able to run from the command line and notice the
>> situation and start up preauthenticated. And this is what can be used
>> by fetchmail and the plugin option - and if nnimap does not support
>> this, it would be nice.
> 
> This looks like an interesting approach.  
> I'll have to get an imap program installed, but before I do:
> 
> It isn't clear to me how fetchmail fits in here.  Reading man
> fetchail, particularly the `--plugin <command>' section:
> 
>               " . . . . . . . Fetchmail will write to  the
>               plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's stdout.
> 
> It appears that the fetchmail addressed here will be running on the
> parent desktop (in this case, $remote) or `mail.host.foo' so does it
> just put its standard out into the ssh tunnel in the same way as the
> mail-sources prescript `cat' command does, or is fetchmail asked to
> deliver to sendmail on the local machine?
> 
> It sounds somewhat confusing.  Can you describe the process in a bit
> more detail?

Local machine runs fetchmail, which runs ssh to connect to the remote
machine and run imapd, which the fetchmail will access. I will put a
few configuration scripts to demonstrate.

Local .fetchmailrc:

poll mail.host.foo with proto IMAP and options no dns
       preauth ssh plugin /usr/home/xxx/bin/fetchmail-imap-wrapper

Local bin/fetchmail-imap-wrapper:

#!/bin/sh
exec ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/identity-imap -l xxx $1 /opt/net/etc/imapd

So, what nnimap should be able to do is to do exactly what --plugin
option in fetchmail does.

-- Naked