Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Gary]

Sorry, I know this isn't the right place really, but I asked on the
users ml and didn't really get where I am trying to get to.

I've got a whole pile of locally stored mail in mbox files in ~/Mail and
subdirectories thereof. Mutt is pretty easily configured to handle that,
and that's what I used exclusively until a few months ago. I'm not
married to mbox, I could also use maildir or any other format that mutt
and gnus are both capable of reading.

As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for which
I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing that? I
still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's not going to
change, so please don't suggest using imap :)

If I can, I would still like the email to be accessible to mutt, even if
I only rarely use it. Would nnfolder screw that up? Otherwise, that
looks like the closest to what I already have, right?

Or do I want
  (setq mail-sources
        '((directory :path "/home/gary/Mail")))

Actually I tried just that, and nothing happened, so I guess I have to
also set something else? I'm rather confused about the
relationship/differences between mail sources and backends...

Re: Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Gary <gnus@garydjones.name>:

> As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
> and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for
> which I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing
> that? I still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's
> not going to change, so please don't suggest using imap :)

I use nnimap with agent.  That has worked for me for quite a few years.

But then I don't need to have the agent-cached email available to other
email clients, such as mutt.

Others are using server-local IMAP-servers.

Re: Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Leonidas Tsampros]

Gary <gnus@garydjones.name> writes:

> Sorry, I know this isn't the right place really, but I asked on the
> users ml and didn't really get where I am trying to get to.
>
> I've got a whole pile of locally stored mail in mbox files in ~/Mail and
> subdirectories thereof. Mutt is pretty easily configured to handle that,
> and that's what I used exclusively until a few months ago. I'm not
> married to mbox, I could also use maildir or any other format that mutt
> and gnus are both capable of reading.
>
> As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
> and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for which
> I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing that? I
> still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's not going to
> change, so please don't suggest using imap :)
>
> If I can, I would still like the email to be accessible to mutt, even if
> I only rarely use it. Would nnfolder screw that up? Otherwise, that
> looks like the closest to what I already have, right?
>
> Or do I want
>   (setq mail-sources
>         '((directory :path "/home/gary/Mail")))
>
> Actually I tried just that, and nothing happened, so I guess I have to
> also set something else? I'm rather confused about the
> relationship/differences between mail sources and backends...

Hi Gary,

this is exactly the setup I use. My primary select methos is a local
university nntp server we have and as the secondary methods I have the
following:

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "")
				      (nnimap "10.6.0.20")))

Then I have these in my .conf:

(setq nnml-directory "~/Mail.Gnus")
(setq mail-source-delete-incoming t)

(setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/Mail"
				:suffix "")))

So, Emacs now reads all Mail on all mboxes under ~/Mail, and 'ingests'
them into the nnml backend which is under "~/Mail.Gnus".  Now at this
point and in order to emulate procmail's behaviour, I use fancy
splitting:

;; fancy mail splitting
(setq nnmail-resplit-incoming t)
(setq nnmail-split-methods 'nnmail-split-fancy)
(setq nnmail-split-fancy
      '(|
       ("list-id" "ding\\.gnus\\.org" "mail.gnus.ding")))


In case I have any mistakes in my explanations, please correct me.

I hope this helps.

PS: I'm really bored and I never changed the fetchmail/procmail
configuration in order not to do double splitting (I just update
the fancy splitting rules)

Regards
Leonidas

Re: Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Bojan Nikolic]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Gary <gnus@garydjones.name>:
>
>> As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
>> and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for
>> which I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing
>> that? I still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's
>> not going to change, so please don't suggest using imap :)
>
> I use nnimap with agent.  That has worked for me for quite a few years.
>
> But then I don't need to have the agent-cached email available to other
> email clients, such as mutt.
>
> Others are using server-local IMAP-servers.

I think Gary's original question may have been: how to read email that
is already been downloaded onto the local hard-drive? For this I simply
add the directory where the email is to the
gnus-secondary-select-methods:

      (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
	    '((nnmaildir "md"
	    		 (directory "~/Mail/downloaded"))
	      ))

Obviously this is for downloaded mail in the MailDir format.

To actually download mail onto local storage I use offlineimap -- it
uses the above-mentioned MailDir format.

Best,
Bojan

-- 
Bojan Nikolic          ||          http://www.bnikolic.co.uk

Re: Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Richard Riley]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Gary <gnus@garydjones.name>:
>
>> As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
>> and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for
>> which I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing
>> that? I still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's
>> not going to change, so please don't suggest using imap :)
>
> I use nnimap with agent.  That has worked for me for quite a few years.
>
> But then I don't need to have the agent-cached email available to other
> email clients, such as mutt.
>
> Others are using server-local IMAP-servers.
>

I dont know how to set up gnus to read his current mbox but guess its
easy - then the "migration" will be to simply move from that group to
another group.

What I like, especially after Lars recent imap elispathon, is to use
local dovecot servers on all my machines. This stores using maildir but
provides an imap interface for gnus (and other mail readers including
mutt). IMAP sync using offlineimap then makes much more sense to me than
using fetchmail since its bidirectional and all things "sync" between my
gmail accounts and various machines with their own dovecot servers.

The benefit being each machine has its own email cache and search etc
are lightning fast.

Re: Using gnus with locally stored email (repost from users ml)

[Gary]

Bojan Nikolic wrote:
> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>> As I've been moving ever more to emacs, I find myself using gnus more
>>> and more, but haven't tried integrating locally stored email (for
>>> which I still use fetchmail & procmail). What's my best way of doing
>>> that? I still want to suck some email down to my own HD, and that's
>>> not going to change, so please don't suggest using imap :)
>>
>> I use nnimap with agent.  That has worked for me for quite a few
> years.
>>
>> But then I don't need to have the agent-cached email available to
> other
>> email clients, such as mutt.
>>
>> Others are using server-local IMAP-servers.
>
> I think Gary's original question may have been: how to read email that
> is already been downloaded onto the local hard-drive?

Yup.

> For this I simply
> add the directory where the email is to the
> gnus-secondary-select-methods:
>
>       (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
> 	    '((nnmaildir "md"
> 	    		 (directory "~/Mail/downloaded"))
> 	      ))
>
> Obviously this is for downloaded mail in the MailDir format.

Thanks. Will look into it all again at the weekend :)