Gnus and Gmail?

Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

I've been using Gnus for a number of years to access IMAP and POP3 accounts. 
I'm now switching my POP3 connection to Gmail, and it's not working so far.

I started by following the directions at
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusGmail#toc4.  On Debian Lenny with Emacs 22.1,
I couldn't connect.  I now moved to LMDE and Emacs 23.2.1 with Gnus 5.13.  I
moved my .gnus over from the Lenny machine, started Gnus, tried reading, and it
said it was downloading 290 files over TLS.  (In debugging things, I did that
twice more; I suspect I got multiple copies of the same things, even though I
had told Gmail to archive downloaded emails.)

That sounded good, but I can't find the emails.  I had forgotten to move over
the contents of my .emacs so that topics and mail splitting would stand a chance
of working. 

I then moved over my .emacs pretty much wholesale, changed a few things such as
setting up to use Gmail's smtp servers
(http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusGmail#toc2).  I still don't get my old
topics, I can't find the newer emails, and I'm not even sure if I see all my
more recent emails I had downloaded earlier.

I tried to send something using Gmail's smtp servers, but I got nothing (the
error buffer came up empty).

With so many problems, I'm game to try pieces one at a time.  I'd like to be
able to download emails reliably, have topics show up again, andm have mail
splitting work.  If necessary, I can even rsync my email system as it was before
I did the first download from Gmail.

Suggestions?  Things to try?

Thanks,

Bill Harris

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Olivier Sirven]

On 2011-03-07 04:32:03, Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> wrote:
> Suggestions?  Things to try?

Hey,

I'm using gmail too for my emails and my suggestion is to work with
the IMAP protocol. That being said, their IMAP server is pretty slow so
the solution I found which is working just fine is to use offlineimap to
sync my gmail account with a local dovecot imap server.
This way everything is fast as light.

--
Olivier

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Richard Riley]

Olivier Sirven <the.slaa@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2011-03-07 04:32:03, Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> wrote:
>> Suggestions?  Things to try?
>
> Hey,
>
> I'm using gmail too for my emails and my suggestion is to work with
> the IMAP protocol. That being said, their IMAP server is pretty slow so
> the solution I found which is working just fine is to use offlineimap to
> sync my gmail account with a local dovecot imap server.
> This way everything is fast as light.
>
> --
> Olivier
>

Using offlineimap with gmail can cause real hassles. I used it for
ages. Not least if you have more than one account and you start having
to do name translations.

I recently stopped using following yet another "complete download" which
resulted from some unusual issue with syncing multiple cients using
offlineimap. I had advocated it before- But no more.

Get noGnus from the git repo. It works really, really well with a direct
imap connection.

I have thousands upon thousands of gmail spread over 3 accounts and
connection and update is just about instant.

The only issue is that I gave up on splitting - its simply too
complicated for me to get working. You need to know elisp backwards from
what I can gather. But thats not too bad since all my email is gmail
based and I use server side filters to label the mails.

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

Olivier Sirven <the.slaa <at> gmail.com> writes:

> I'm using gmail too for my emails and my suggestion is to work with
> the IMAP protocol. That being said, their IMAP server is pretty slow so
> the solution I found which is working just fine is to use offlineimap to
> sync my gmail account with a local dovecot imap server.
> This way everything is fast as light.

Thanks for the suggestion, Olivier.  I had thought about IMAP, but it has been
slow on the account where I use it (thankfully I don't get much email there), 
and I also wanted to download messages onto my machine.  If offlineimap really 
works, maybe that's the way to try.  I will check it out.

Still, if anyone has a nice POP3 solution, I'd certainly listen.  I _suspect_ 
I'd have less to learn (and less to set up) that way.

Bill

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Charles Philip Chan]

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Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> writes:

> Still, if anyone has a nice POP3 solution, I'd certainly listen.  I
> _suspect_ I'd have less to learn (and less to set up) that way.

Personally, I use fetchmail to download my emails from gmail (and other
accounts) via pop3. They are then feed to procmail to be run through
spamd and split with procmail rules (partly automated with
niko-bbdb-split.el[1]). The final delivery of the emails to my local
imap spool is done via "deliver" (part of Dovecot) by procmail.

Charles


Footnotes: 
[1] http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/emacs/niko-bbdb-split.el 

-- 
"...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)

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Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Erik Colson]

Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> writes:

> Olivier Sirven <the.slaa <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm using gmail too for my emails and my suggestion is to work with
>> the IMAP protocol. That being said, their IMAP server is pretty slow so
>> the solution I found which is working just fine is to use offlineimap to
>> sync my gmail account with a local dovecot imap server.
>> This way everything is fast as light.

Olivier (and maybe others),

Are you synchronizing IMAP to IMAP or are you synchronizing IMAP to
MAILDIR and then serving the local MAILDIR as IMAP dovecot ?

I'm synching IMAP to MAILDIR and experience some oddities, but not sure
if they can be attributed to offlineimap or dovecot or gnus or any
combination...

Please, mail your experiences

Best,

-- 
erik colson
ecocode.net

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Olivier Sirven]

On 2011-03-08 07:57:52, Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> wrote:
> Are you synchronizing IMAP to IMAP or are you synchronizing IMAP to
> MAILDIR and then serving the local MAILDIR as IMAP dovecot ?
>
> I'm synching IMAP to MAILDIR and experience some oddities, but not sure
> if they can be attributed to offlineimap or dovecot or gnus or any
> combination...

I'm synchronizing IMAP to IMAP, that's the best way I found to keep
everything in sync such as expiration markers.

--
Olivier

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

Just an update: while most here seem to advise IMAP or fetch/procmail, I got
POP3 to work.  It turns out I had some variables defined in .gnus / .emacs and
others defined via customize.  When I fixed a few inconsistencies, it seems to
download just fine, and mail splitting works.

I have two open problems, I think:

- My topics don't show up, and I haven't figured out what file I need to copy
over from my old machine to make that work.

- Sending email doesn't work yet.

If anyone has a clue what files I need to have copied from my old machine to my
new to make it all work (except perhaps sending mail; that's a different
problem), I'd be grateful.  

Since I did forget to grab .newsrc / .newsrc.eld and .newsrc-dribble, I'm
thinking of deleting the ~/Mail directory on the new machine, copying _all_ the
files from the old machine, and re-running POP3.

When this is all done, I'll have Gmail delete emails after I read them.

Thanks,

Bill

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Richard Riley]

Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> writes:

> Just an update: while most here seem to advise IMAP or fetch/procmail, I got
> POP3 to work.  It turns out I had some variables defined in .gnus / .emacs and
> others defined via customize.  When I fixed a few inconsistencies, it seems to
> download just fine, and mail splitting works.
>
> I have two open problems, I think:
>
> - My topics don't show up, and I haven't figured out what file I need to copy
> over from my old machine to make that work.
>
> - Sending email doesn't work yet.
>
> If anyone has a clue what files I need to have copied from my old machine to my
> new to make it all work (except perhaps sending mail; that's a different
> problem), I'd be grateful.  
>
> Since I did forget to grab .newsrc / .newsrc.eld and .newsrc-dribble, I'm
> thinking of deleting the ~/Mail directory on the new machine, copying _all_ the
> files from the old machine, and re-running POP3.
>
> When this is all done, I'll have Gmail delete emails after I read them.

Out of interest, why not use nnimap? This way your [g,e]mail in gnus will
properly sync with the server and thus across all machines "live" as you
read them.

I used to use a fetchmail/pop3 solution but imo the nnnimap solution is
far cleaner, easier, more efficient and robust if you use multiple
clients/machines etc.

Regarding sending, have you installed exim and gnutls? If using debian
for example you need to properly configure exim as an internet node
using dpkg-reconfigure. More info? Try googling them and you'll find a
wealth of similar experiences I daresay ;) I know I fell foul of the
default exim setup recently when I installed a new laptop.

Your topics should be in your .newsrc.eld afaik.  I have the dribble
turned off since I only use gnus as a mail client reading my Mail
structures. see the variable gnus-use-dribble-file.

hth, 

regards

r.

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

Richard Riley <rileyrg <at> googlemail.com> writes:

> Out of interest, why not use nnimap? This way your [g,e]mail in gnus will
> properly sync with the server and thus across all machines "live" as you
> read them.
> 
> I used to use a fetchmail/pop3 solution but imo the nnnimap solution is
> far cleaner, easier, more efficient and robust if you use multiple
> clients/machines etc.

My experience with imap is that it works well, but it's a bit slow, and I can't
see my email unless I'm connected.  That may all be fixable, but I'm looking for
speed of getting set up, too.

> Regarding sending, have you installed exim and gnutls? If using debian
> for example you need to properly configure exim as an internet node
> using dpkg-reconfigure. More info? Try googling them and you'll find a
> wealth of similar experiences I daresay ;) I know I fell foul of the
> default exim setup recently when I installed a new laptop.

I thought of that, but I had another customize / .gnus conflict, I think.  I can
now send via smtp as describe on emacswiki.org.

> Your topics should be in your .newsrc.eld afaik.  I have the dribble
> turned off since I only use gnus as a mail client reading my Mail
> structures. see the variable gnus-use-dribble-file.

Thanks!  I discovered that, too.

Now I think I'm down to getting bbdb to be happy.  On Debian Lenny (and perhaps
on Ubuntu before that), the odd numbered times I started Emacs and Gnus, bbdb
would report args out of range and not display the bbdb buffer.  That made
sending email hard, but at least a restart would fix it.

Now on LMDE (based on Debian testing), it seems to fail on both even and odd
numbered invocations.  I never got an answer as to what might be going on nor
how to fix it.  If anyone has any clues, I'm all ears.

Bill

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

Bill Harris <bill_harris <at> facilitatedsystems.com> writes:

> Now I think I'm down to getting bbdb to be happy.  On Debian Lenny (and perhaps
> on Ubuntu before that), the odd numbered times I started Emacs and Gnus, bbdb
> would report args out of range and not display the bbdb buffer.  That made
> sending email hard, but at least a restart would fix it.
> 
> Now on LMDE (based on Debian testing), it seems to fail on both even and odd
> numbered invocations.  I never got an answer as to what might be going on nor
> how to fix it.  If anyone has any clues, I'm all ears.

I did a bit of troubleshooting and found that (bbdb-initialize), with or without
arguments, returns nil.  I figured it should return something else.

Perhaps that gives someone a useful hint.

Bill

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Antoine Levitt]

11/03/11 07:54, Bill Harris
> Bill Harris <bill_harris <at> facilitatedsystems.com> writes:
>
>> Now I think I'm down to getting bbdb to be happy.  On Debian Lenny (and perhaps
>> on Ubuntu before that), the odd numbered times I started Emacs and Gnus, bbdb
>> would report args out of range and not display the bbdb buffer.  That made
>> sending email hard, but at least a restart would fix it.
>> 
>> Now on LMDE (based on Debian testing), it seems to fail on both even and odd
>> numbered invocations.  I never got an answer as to what might be going on nor
>> how to fix it.  If anyone has any clues, I'm all ears.

There's a new version of BBDB you might want to check out: cvs
-d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/bbdb co bbdb

If you still have problems, post a full backtrace on the BBDB mailing list.

>
> I did a bit of troubleshooting and found that (bbdb-initialize), with or without
> arguments, returns nil.  I figured it should return something else.

FWIW, it returns nil here too.

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Bill Harris]

Antoine Levitt <antoine.levitt <at> gmail.com> writes:

> There's a new version of BBDB you might want to check out: cvs
> -d:pserver:anonymous <at> cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/bbdb co bbdb

Thanks!  I downloaded it, and I'll try to install it this weekend.

I suspect my problem is related to a corrupted .bbdb.  It's got 311 closing
parentheses at the end and about 4400 lines total.  I've not seen a 
definition of the bbdb format, but, at 4400 lines, I'm not looking forward
to a manual scrub of the file, even if I knew that would fix it.

The changelog on the new bbdb says it's got a new format and will usually
automatically update old .bbdbs, so I'm hopeful.

Incidentally, I should have said: I'm running Gnus v. 5.13, Emacs 23.2.1 as
modified by Debian, and bbdb 2.36

> If you still have problems, post a full backtrace on the BBDB mailing list.

Will do.

> > I did a bit of troubleshooting and found that (bbdb-initialize), with 
> > or without
> > arguments, returns nil.  I figured it should return something else.
> 
> FWIW, it returns nil here too.

Thanks.  That's one less path to wonder about.

Bill

Re: Gnus and Gmail?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> writes:

> - My topics don't show up, and I haven't figured out what file I need to copy
> over from my old machine to make that work.

The topics are stored in the ~/.newsrc.eld file.  You need to copy the
gnus-topic-topology and gnus-topic-alist settings you can find in that
file.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen