IMAP and Exchange 2007

IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Jake Colman]

As of two hours ago, we have moved from Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007
and now Gnus won't work.

Yes, I have found the postings that indicate that nnimap won't work with
Exchange 2007 and that it's Microsoft's fault.  Great.  But is there
anything I can do?

I googled and found a posting from Ted Zlatanov discussing "setting up
MAP mail source that Gnus uses to download new mail into a local
Maildir".  I've emailed him but maybe someone on this list (or Ted if he
sees this before he seems my email) can tell me what needs to be done?

I have well over 10 years experience with using Gnus to do my email
processing.  I really can't stand the thought of doing it any other way.

Thanks for any help.

...Jake

-- 
Jake Colman
Director of Software Development
Principia Partners LLC
101 West Elm Street
Suite 620
Conshohocken, PA  19428
+1 (610) 755-9786
www.principiapartners.com

IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Jake Colman]

There have been numerous posts to this list regarding incompatibilities
between Gnus/IMAP when connecting to Exchange 2007.  Two of the larger
issues were:

1) Unable to retrieve large emails; the emails were simply left in the
   INBOX.  This issue affected other IMAP clients, too, such as
   Thunderbird.

2) Unable to read messages with a MIME attachment.  Instead, an
   imap-parse error would be displayed.

Both of these issues have been resolved with the latest patches for
Exchange 2007.

I have not checked whether 'imap-enable-exchange-bug-workaround' is
still required.

...Jake


-- 
Jake Colman
Director of Software Development
Principia Partners LLC
101 West Elm Street
Suite 620
Conshohocken, PA  19428
+1 (610) 755-9786
www.principiapartners.com

Re: IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Brett Randall]

Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:

> offlineimap sounds very interesting.  Assuming it works with Exchange,
> does it play nicely with Gnus?  Does Gnus support Maildir format?  I
> can't imagine that it doesn't.

I've JUST finished getting offlineimap working on my system. Some
reading I did led me to believe that gnus reading from offlineimap's
Maildir would break things when the mail sync'd BACK to my IMAP
(Exchange 2003) server, so I am running a local Courier IMAP server
(just Debian's default install of it) that I use nnimap to suck the
mail from - i.e. offlineimap sync's my Exchange mail to ~/Maildir, and
Courier IMAP re-serves ~/Maildir to gnus via nnimap. Not as ugly as
you might think...

Key lines when setting up your .offlineimaprc to talk to Exchange:

[Repository Remote]
nametrans = lambda foldername: re.sub('^INBOX.?', '.', foldername)

This will make sure it syncs it to a structure that Courier
likes. Otherwise, it "just works" which is nice (although that above
line took me about 2 hours to figure out - python is not my strong
point).

HTH

Brett.

Re: IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Tobias Brink]

Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:

>>>>>> "TB" == Tobias Brink <tobias.brinkNO.SPAM@gmail.com> writes:
>
>    TB> To synchronize between IMAP and a maildir or between two IMAP
>    TB> servers you could have a look at offlineimap.  I use it two sync
>    TB> between two IMAP servers, which works great.  Don't know if it
>    TB> works with Exchange, though.
>
> offlineimap sounds very interesting.  Assuming it works with Exchange,
> does it play nicely with Gnus?  Does Gnus support Maildir format?  I
> can't imagine that it doesn't.

Gnus supports maildir ("nnmaildir"), see the manual.  "Maildir" is an
entry in the index.  You could also run your own IMAP server on the
computer you run Gnus on and sync this with Exchange, but this seems
pointless.

> Do you use offlineimap?  If so, some quick questions before I delve more
> deeply into the manual.  offlineimap will dump my IMAP folders into a
> Maildir equivalent.

Yes and yes, but you could also sync two IMAP servers (see above).

> I assume, then, that I use split rules on the Maildir folders to
> split my messages as I see fit.  offlineimap will then sync what
> I've done so that my IMAP servers see where I put my messages?

If I understood you correctly, yes.  offlineimap will synchronize the
maildir folders with the IMAP server.  So if you move/delete something
this change will be reflected on the server after syncing.  Of course
changes done on the server will also be synchronized to your maildir.

HTH,
Tobias

Re: IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Jake Colman]

>>>>> "TB" == Tobias Brink <tobias.brinkNO.SPAM@gmail.com> writes:

   TB> Joel Reicher <joel@panacea.null.org> writes:
   >> Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:
   >> 
   >>> Yes, I have found the postings that indicate that nnimap won't
   >>> work with Exchange 2007 and that it's Microsoft's fault.  Great.
   >>> But is there anything I can do?
   >> 
   >> Transfer the mail somewhere else; either to your home directory or
   >> to a proper IMAP server. Gnus can transfer it to your home
   >> directory using POP if your Exchange server offers it, or using a
   >> subset of IMAP (which may work OK even on Exchange). See the info
   >> node on Mail Source Specifiers.
   >> 
   >> fetchmail or mailutil (from the uw-imap toolkit) may be able to
   >> transfer it to another IMAP server. Haven't tried this kind of
   >> thing myself.

   TB> To synchronize between IMAP and a maildir or between two IMAP
   TB> servers you could have a look at offlineimap.  I use it two sync
   TB> between two IMAP servers, which works great.  Don't know if it
   TB> works with Exchange, though.

offlineimap sounds very interesting.  Assuming it works with Exchange,
does it play nicely with Gnus?  Does Gnus support Maildir format?  I
can't imagine that it doesn't.

Do you use offlineimap?  If so, some quick questions before I delve more
deeply into the manual.  offlineimap will dump my IMAP folders into a
Maildir equivalent.  I assume, then, that I use split rules on the
Maildir folders to split my messages as I see fit.  offlineimap will
then sync what I've done so that my IMAP servers see where I put my
messages?

...Jake

-- 
Jake Colman
Director of Software Development
Principia Partners LLC
101 West Elm Street
Suite 620
Conshohocken, PA  19428
+1 (610) 755-9786
www.principiapartners.com

Re: IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Tobias Brink]

Joel Reicher <joel@panacea.null.org> writes:

> Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:
>
>> Yes, I have found the postings that indicate that nnimap won't work with
>> Exchange 2007 and that it's Microsoft's fault.  Great.  But is there
>> anything I can do?
>
> Transfer the mail somewhere else; either to your home directory or to
> a proper IMAP server. Gnus can transfer it to your home directory
> using POP if your Exchange server offers it, or using a subset of IMAP
> (which may work OK even on Exchange). See the info node on Mail Source
> Specifiers.
>
> fetchmail or mailutil (from the uw-imap toolkit) may be able to
> transfer it to another IMAP server. Haven't tried this kind of thing
> myself.

To synchronize between IMAP and a maildir or between two IMAP servers
you could have a look at offlineimap.  I use it two sync between two
IMAP servers, which works great.  Don’t know if it works with
Exchange, though.

Greetings,
Tobias

Re: IMAP and Exchange 2007

[Joel Reicher]

Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:

> Yes, I have found the postings that indicate that nnimap won't work with
> Exchange 2007 and that it's Microsoft's fault.  Great.  But is there
> anything I can do?

Transfer the mail somewhere else; either to your home directory or to
a proper IMAP server. Gnus can transfer it to your home directory
using POP if your Exchange server offers it, or using a subset of IMAP
(which may work OK even on Exchange). See the info node on Mail Source
Specifiers.

fetchmail or mailutil (from the uw-imap toolkit) may be able to
transfer it to another IMAP server. Haven't tried this kind of thing
myself.

Cheers,

        - Joel