Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 18:33:45 EDT Tom Buskey said: Yeah, but you know, I'd really like to be able to use (ex)mh as an interface to an IMAP server. I really like the granular control I have over my e-mail with both raw mh commands and exmh as a GUI. I would *really* like to be able to re-engineer it to interface with an IMAP server and still manipulate my e-mail the same way, but have the mail stored on some external-to-my-laptop system. That would be way cool! There's always NFS and X ;-) I run fetchmail - procmail on my firewall (my personal server only!) and NFS mount the mail directory from my laptop. That's fine for a 1-person environment where you fully trust that one person. However, in a corporate environment, IMO, you shouldn't allow NFS access to your mail spool, *especially* when everyone on the network has root access to their personal machine.[1] The safest way to do what we did was not allow NFS access to the spool, and provide either POP3 or IMAP access to the mail spool. Anyone not wanting to use a POP3/IMAP capable client was free to log onto the mail server and access their mail using their client of choice. [1] It's been argued before that in general, there is little valid reason for users to have root access even to their desktop machines. However, I'm not really in any mood to re-visit this debate, since regardless of who's right, no one on either side of the debate is about to change their opinion, and said re-visiting would merely be an excercise in futility and wasted bandwidth. user -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, at 8:45am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you shouldn't allow NFS access to your mail spool ... Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. It might work if your favorite implementation does locking right, and everyone is using that same implementation, but otherwise, forget it. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. yawn NFS file locking has gotten better over the years. But this is a religious issue at this point, and I don't want to debate this. It might work if your favorite implementation does locking right, and everyone is using that same implementation, but otherwise, forget it. Maildir format works just fine over NFS, no locking required. --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark (cetaceannetworks.com!kclark) | Will hack Perl for Cetacean Networks, Inc. | fine food, good beer, Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)| or fun. alumni.unh.edu!kdc (PGP Key Available)| * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On 25 Jun 2002, at 9:18am, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. NFS file locking has gotten better over the years. Right. The problem is that not every OS release has kept pace, and that not every computer in the world is running an OS release that has kept pace. And, since this is a Linux list, and Linux for a long time had the worst NFS implementation in the world, I think these concerns are justified. Yes, if you know for sure every system on your network does NFS locking right, you are okay. But I've seen the results of what happens when you get one system that doesn't do locking right in the mix, and it ain't pretty. Maildir format works just fine over NFS, no locking required. Okay, that's a good point. These concerns only apply to the admittedly lame but unfortunately common Berkley mbox format. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On 25 Jun 2002, at 9:18am, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Maildir format works just fine over NFS, no locking required. As does mh format :) -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 16:07:27 EDT
Rich Payne said:
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, mike ledoux wrote:
That's one way, however you'd be transfering the message to the client,
figuring out where to put it and then sending it back again. What's would
be even better would be just to move the message on the imap server. Yes
you'd still have to pull the message down, but you wouldn't need to send
it back again. So instead of giving putmail the entire message, just give
it the message's unique message ID on the IMAP server and the destination
folder.
You would also need to be careful about maintaining message flags (unread
etc).
Doesn't IMAP have commands to only grab headers and to re-file a msg?
If so, this shouldn't be all that difficult to implement with
procmail, since *most* filtering of e-mail is done on the headers.
Yes, you can grab just the header of a message. You can also just grab
parts of the body. The body of an IMAP message is broken down into various
'parts' and you can pull down these parts one at a time.
Of course, I do wierd things like actually filter and sort based on
body content as well, which would then require tranferring the msg
from the server to the client for processing, then sending it back to
the server for filing. A lot of overhead, but if IMAP has a properly
designed interface, it should be doable.
No, there's no need to send it back. You could grab the header and the
body (say just the text part of the body, leaving any attachments behind),
filter based on that and then make a call to imap_mail_move to move that
message into a different folder, no need to send that info back up to the
server, it already there.
As I said before the only catch would be you'd need to manually reset the
unseen flag in the destination folder as accessing the message from your
INBOX would mark it as read, again it's just a matter of a call to
imap_clearflag_full (I think that's right).
insert dangerous and untested example code!
?php
if ($HTTP_SERVER_VARS[argc] == 3) {
$argv_array=$HTTP_SERVER_VARS[argv];
$message_id = $argv_array[1];
$destination_folder = $argv_array[2];
}
else {
echo You must pass this script 2 args, the message ID and the
destination folder name;
exit();
}
$imap_conn=imap_open(hostname,user, passwd);
imap_mail_move($imap_conn,$message_id,$destination_folder,CP_UID);
imap_clearflag_full($imap_conn,$message_id,\\Seen,ST_UID);
imap_expunge($imap_conn);
imap_close($imap_conn);
?
/dangerous and untested code
So, the problem with the above is that you're making an imap connection
for each message which is rather wasteful. An even better idea would be to
move message en mass. In the above calls the $message_id could really be
an imap sequence that would move multiple messages, that exercise is left
to the reader (and of course error handling!).
--rdp
--
Rich Payne
http://talisman.mv.com
*
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Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 2:18pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... now I'm fetchmailing and procmailing my work e-mail as well. H... something just occurred to me. (I've got an idea, a'forming in my brain) Oh, oh ... :) It would be really nice if one could apply a set of procmail recipes to an IMAP mail store. That is, rather than having the MDA process each message as it comes in, have a program that, given an IMAP mail server, reads each message in the inbox, runs it through a procmail recipe file, and stores the result relative to the IMAP server. Sure, it would not be as efficient as doing it server-side, but for cases like this, where procmail couldn't run on the server even if the admins let you, it could be handy. Anyone know of anything like this? Pine? :) -- Bill Mullen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jun 24, 2002 * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, at 8:45am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you shouldn't allow NFS access to your mail spool ... Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. It might work if your favorite implementation does locking right, and everyone is using that same implementation, but otherwise, forget it. Well yeah. And NFS is inherently insecure. If you don't trust the environment, you shouldn't run it. MH's file format doesn't really need locking. Each new incoming message is a new file so you very rarely have more then one process modifying the same file. I *could* just run ssh X to run exmh/nmh. But then I'd need galeon, ee, openoffice, etc on my firewall too. I have run an environment with an NFS shared mail spool w/ 100 users on Solaris 2.5.1. Most users were using mailtool or netscape or pine. I never had a problem, despite the theoretical (and real) issues with NFS file locking. Sometimes a 90% solution that exists is better then the 100% solution that is unattainable. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. * -- --- Tom Buskey * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath spake thusly: On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, at 8:45am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... you shouldn't allow NFS access to your mail spool ... Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. It might work if your favorite implementation does locking right, and everyone is using that same implementation, but otherwise, forget it. Even then, you still shouldn't do it. Locking a mail spool, specifically an mbox mail spool, has issues of its own. Dan Bernstien got a lot of this right in his discussion about why not mbox. I don't agree with everything he says (like his unqualified statement that maildir is inherently faster), but as far as locking issues, he's dead on. I don't have the link handy, but you can find it easily enough by doing a google for qmail... But, for the security implications that Paul mentioned, I wouldn't allow NFS access to the spool even if you were using maildir. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9GLMMdjdlQoHP510RAnLrAKCEONglEDjBkyJiqHzjUsxxEibq0QCfVyst /JjDCVYOhLFI5Z0opsOgnWE= =6FGU -END PGP SIGNATURE- * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath spake thusly: On 25 Jun 2002, at 9:18am, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Ever. NFS's history of piss-poor file locking means a shared mailspool is a recipe for disaster in any kind of heterogeneous environment. NFS file locking has gotten better over the years. Right. The problem is that not every OS release has kept pace, and that not every computer in the world is running an OS release that has kept pace. Quite true, and a very good point. And, since this is a Linux list, and Linux for a long time had the worst NFS implementation in the world, I think these concerns are justified. Not so much anymore, if the application does the right thing. If you do POSIX locking (i.e. fcntl()) over NFS on Linux, using 2.4 kernels, and recent versions of nfsutils, it does work reliably. The traditional form of locking which historically has worked for all cases (namely the link()ing to a unique lock file) does NOT work reliably on Linux over NFS, because of a race condition. It should work reliably if and only if the server and clients are configured to use synchronous I/O, which is rarely the case in my experience. The default is not to use it, to improve performance, and so it goes largely unused. However, Last I'd read (in the man page for open(), I believe) there's still a race condition in the kernel that prevents this from being reliable. Maildir format works just fine over NFS, no locking required. Okay, that's a good point. These concerns only apply to the admittedly lame but unfortunately common Berkley mbox format. And other formats that save multiple messages per file, of which mbox is not the only one. But there are still the security implications, unless you take root access away from people's desktops. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9GLfNdjdlQoHP510RAotdAKCQxA8vfCLxgCJH93NAHGsci/JSWACfeHe4 NA2kGL2NedkIv2jJGP8n7gw= =H6P7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
It would be really nice if one could apply a set of procmail recipes to an IMAP mail store. That is, rather than having the MDA process each message as it comes in, have a program that, given an IMAP mail server, reads each message in the inbox, runs it through a procmail recipe file, and stores the result relative to the IMAP server. Sure, it would not be as efficient as doing it server-side, but for cases like this, where procmail couldn't run on the server even if the admins let you, it could be handy. Anyone know of anything like this? OK - we have the business plan. Now all we need are some investors and some employees. IPO in, what, 12 months? * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It would be really nice if one could apply a set of procmail recipes to an IMAP mail store. That is, rather than having the MDA process each message as it comes in, have a program that, given an IMAP mail server, reads each message in the inbox, runs it through a procmail recipe file, and stores the result relative to the IMAP server. Could you provide clarification as to where you are proposing to store this? On the IMAP server itself? Sure, it would not be as efficient as doing it server-side This sound similar to sieve. But it could also involve a thing that filed your mail for you (from the client) but kept the mail on the server side. In a pinch, I could do this with duct tape, chicken-wire, and Perl, but this isn't a turnkey solution... (-: Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. but for cases like this, where procmail couldn't run on the server even if the admins let you, it could be handy. Anyone know of anything like this? No, but I got my procmail - Maildir format - Courier IMAP setup running...I plan on posting a writeup soon. (-: --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark (CetaceanNetworks.com!kclark) | Cetacean Networks, Inc. | Give me a decent UNIX Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)| and I can move the world alumni.unh.edu!kdc (PGP Key Available)| * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On 24 Jun 2002, at 3:19pm, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Could you provide clarification as to where you are proposing to store this? On the IMAP server itself? I am envisioning a procmail work-a-like program that runs on an IMAP client machine, but accesses and stores mail on an IMAP server. Basically, imagine a person who: - Wants or has to keep his mail on an IMAP mail server - Cannot run procmail on the server - Wants the filtering capabilities of procmail One of the ideas behind IMAP is to separate mail storage from the mail client. This fits in that puzzle somewhere. But it could also involve a thing that filed your mail for you (from the client) but kept the mail on the server side. Bingo. Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix, so he would have little use for such a tool, I am sure. His post was just a catalyst for my idea. No, but I got my procmail - Maildir format - Courier IMAP setup running...I plan on posting a writeup soon. Cool! I'm sure Paul has already scheduling you for a meeting presentation. ;-) -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Cool! I'm sure Paul has already scheduling you for a meeting presentation. ;-) I wouldn't dream of subjecting a captive audience to something so boring. (-: --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark (cetaceannetworks.com!kclark) | Will hack Perl for Cetacean Networks, Inc. | fine food, good beer, Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)| or fun. alumni.unh.edu!kdc (PGP Key Available)| * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, mike ledoux wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 03:34:46PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Jun 2002, at 3:19pm, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Could you provide clarification as to where you are proposing to store this? On the IMAP server itself? I am envisioning a procmail work-a-like program that runs on an IMAP client machine, but accesses and stores mail on an IMAP server. What I'm seeing is something a little different: fetchmail - procmail - putmail where 'putmail' is a program that takes a mail message on STDIN and puts it in the specified folder on the IMAP server. That's one way, however you'd be transfering the message to the client, figuring out where to put it and then sending it back again. What's would be even better would be just to move the message on the imap server. Yes you'd still have to pull the message down, but you wouldn't need to send it back again. So instead of giving putmail the entire message, just give it the message's unique message ID on the IMAP server and the destination folder. You would also need to be careful about maintaining message flags (unread etc). --rdp -- Rich Payne http://talisman.mv.com * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 4:07pm, Rich Payne wrote: That's one way, however you'd be transfering the message to the client, figuring out where to put it and then sending it back again. What's would be even better would be just to move the message on the imap server. Yes you'd still have to pull the message down, but you wouldn't need to send it back again. Oh, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. This raises a more general question: Does anyone here know of an IMAP client tool(set) that can be driven from a command line or a shell script? The more I think about it, the more I think such a thing would be useful. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath spake thusly: On 24 Jun 2002, at 3:19pm, Kevin D. Clark wrote: Could you provide clarification as to where you are proposing to store this? On the IMAP server itself? I am envisioning a procmail work-a-like program that runs on an IMAP client machine, but accesses and stores mail on an IMAP server. Basically, imagine a person who: - Wants or has to keep his mail on an IMAP mail server - Cannot run procmail on the server - Wants the filtering capabilities of procmail Isn't this what Netscape and Outbreak do when you enable filters? I really don't know as I've never even conceived of using the feature, but from other's descriptions that's what I thought they did. Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix This isn't exactly true; Paul is just stubborn. It is true that exmh can't access IMAP folders directly. The solution to this problem is use fetchmail to retrieve the IMAP messages, and use exmh to read them locally. You can either leave the messages on the server, or provide your own back-up mechanism. Or, you can just use Mutt. :) [Mutt supports mbox, mmdf, maildir, mh... etc. as well as IMAP and POP3.] so he would have little use for such a tool, I am sure. This part, OTOH, is quite true. If you were to use the above technique, clearly you'd just filter locally with procmail. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9F37QdjdlQoHP510RAh1NAKCsD8f+4Gj7eZCXxRhz/HFqb8V9+QCfb7CJ 9sJU9WqDyiDqJCSXG32LuDs= =N3Ij -END PGP SIGNATURE- * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This raises a more general question: Does anyone here know of an IMAP client tool(set) that can be driven from a command line or a shell script? The more I think about it, the more I think such a thing would be useful. Long ago, in my college days, I remember an assignment where we took c-client, the IMAP libraries from Pine, and wrote our own basic email clients. It should be feasible to use c-client as the basis for writing a putmail tool like you described. -- John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux Unix ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER [EMAIL PROTECTED] / YAHOO abreauj Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9 PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99 An idealist is just a farsighted pragmatist. -Anon msg15359/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 4:07pm, Rich Payne wrote: That's one way, however you'd be transfering the message to the client, figuring out where to put it and then sending it back again. What's would be even better would be just to move the message on the imap server. Yes you'd still have to pull the message down, but you wouldn't need to send it back again. Oh, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Of course you could also avoid pulling the attachment down this way as well! This raises a more general question: Does anyone here know of an IMAP client tool(set) that can be driven from a command line or a shell script? The more I think about it, the more I think such a thing would be useful. Don't know that one...I was thinking in terms of PHP w/imap support (www.php.net/imap). This was the way I'd imagined adding filter support to my own mail client (Teak - teak.sf.net), but that's a few months away at the least. --rdp -- Rich Payne http://talisman.mv.com * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath spake thusly: This raises a more general question: Does anyone here know of an IMAP client tool(set) that can be driven from a command line or a shell script? The more I think about it, the more I think such a thing would be useful. Yes, it's called telnet... =8^) - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9F4AFdjdlQoHP510RAsP6AKCk7r9E8+jrUI9hC+iD5SE2t7rcQACgrMRg V3YZF84ubfS7YxCtbkEQp2o= =HEe7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 4:19pm, Derek D. Martin wrote: Basically, imagine a person who: - Wants or has to keep his mail on an IMAP mail server - Cannot run procmail on the server - Wants the filtering capabilities of procmail Isn't this what Netscape and Outbreak do when you enable filters? MS Outlook does not support filtering IMAP mail at all. As far as Netscape goes, I believe you are correct, but I am sure it is not as powerful as procmail is. :) Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix This isn't exactly true; Paul is just stubborn. It is true that exmh can't access IMAP folders directly. The solution to this problem is use fetchmail to retrieve the IMAP messages, and use exmh to read them locally. Which completely defeats the point of IMAP. I really wouldn't call that using MH and IMAP together. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 15:34:46 EDT [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix, so he would have little use for such a tool, I am sure. His post was just a catalyst for my idea. Yeah, but you know, I'd really like to be able to use (ex)mh as an interface to an IMAP server. I really like the granular control I have over my e-mail with both raw mh commands and exmh as a GUI. I would *really* like to be able to re-engineer it to interface with an IMAP server and still manipulate my e-mail the same way, but have the mail stored on some external-to-my-laptop system. That would be way cool! No, but I got my procmail - Maildir format - Courier IMAP setup running...I plan on posting a writeup soon. Cool! I'm sure Paul has already scheduling you for a meeting presentation. ;-) Ayup, you got it. However, I know Kevin pretty well, and understand the amount of stuff on his todo list. That presentation is scheduled for the 24 October 2007 meeting ;) -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 16:07:27 EDT Rich Payne said: On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, mike ledoux wrote: That's one way, however you'd be transfering the message to the client, figuring out where to put it and then sending it back again. What's would be even better would be just to move the message on the imap server. Yes you'd still have to pull the message down, but you wouldn't need to send it back again. So instead of giving putmail the entire message, just give it the message's unique message ID on the IMAP server and the destination folder. You would also need to be careful about maintaining message flags (unread etc). Doesn't IMAP have commands to only grab headers and to re-file a msg? If so, this shouldn't be all that difficult to implement with procmail, since *most* filtering of e-mail is done on the headers. Of course, I do wierd things like actually filter and sort based on body content as well, which would then require tranferring the msg from the server to the client for processing, then sending it back to the server for filing. A lot of overhead, but if IMAP has a properly designed interface, it should be doable. -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath spake thusly: This isn't exactly true; Paul is just stubborn. Hey, wait! I resemble that remark! ;) :) You can either leave the messages on the server, or provide your own back-up mechanism. Not following this line of thought. If I leave the messages on the server and use fetchmail to access them, I then must constantly download all the messages I've already read but left on the server. Actually fetchmail, by default, only downloads unread messages. You can also tell it to delete read messages off the server. See the fetchmail manpage... And what do you mean by back-up mechanism? =8^) The comment about mutt was largely tongue-in-cheek, as I'm sure you realize... as for your anality^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlevel of caution at MCL, I have no comment... - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9F5jFdjdlQoHP510RAi3PAJ0al9CVjhbJOSrW/PMGL2098tNHZACgic1Z hEyJ49Wrfnv0fw4lg6MPofc= =OVIa -END PGP SIGNATURE- * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 5:36pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, but you know, I'd really like to be able to use (ex)mh as an interface to an IMAP server. I've said this before: The Right Thing here would be to do this as a filesystem driver. Said filesystem driver would read an IMAP server, and present it to the client as a system of MH-style directories and files. This would allow you to use any current and/or future MH tools on an IMAP server. Implementation is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-) On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 5:40pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Doesn't IMAP have commands to only grab headers and to re-file a msg? Yes. Of course, I do wierd things like actually filter and sort based on body content as well, which would then require tranferring the msg from the server to the client for processing, then sending it back to the server for filing. No, you would only need to transfer it to the client. Once the client made the decision, it could simply move the message using IMAP commands. Since exmh doesn't have direct IMAP support, it made more sense to run the client on the mail server. I might argue it makes more sense to fix the mail client. ;-) -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 16:24:37 EDT Derek D. Martin said: Yes, it's called telnet... =8^) Sorry that's been deprecated. The new tool is called ssh ;^P -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 16:19:29 EDT Derek D. Martin said: Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix This isn't exactly true; Paul is just stubborn. Hey, wait! I resemble that remark! ;) It is true that exmh can't access IMAP folders directly. The solution to this problem is use fetchmail to retrieve the IMAP messages, and use exmh to read them locally. Which is exactly what I'm doing now. You can either leave the messages on the server, or provide your own back-up mechanism. Not following this line of thought. If I leave the messages on the server and use fetchmail to access them, I then must constantly download all the messages I've already read but left on the server. And what do you mean by back-up mechanism? Or, you can just use Mutt. :) [Mutt supports mbox, mmdf, maildir, mh... etc. as well as IMAP and POP3.] Mutt has minimal support for mh folders. Yes, it can read them, but it doesn't update your scan cache or your unseen cache, which means that if you jump back and forth between different interfaces to you mailbox, like mutt and exmh, your view of things under each interface will be quite different. so he would have little use for such a tool, I am sure. This part, OTOH, is quite true. If you were to use the above technique, clearly you'd just filter locally with procmail. Which is exactly what I do. Maybe you're referring to the way I worked at MCL when I insisted on running exmh *on* the mail server. The reason for this had nothing to do with exmh or IMAP. On the contrary, it had everything to do with procmail. In an ideal situation (which I found myself in at MCL and don't at my current site of employment) I want to do several things with my e-mail: - use vacation as an auto-responder - filter several hundred e-mails per day as they come in - access 1 view of my e-mail from multiple locations - high availability for where I read my e-mail from While at MCL I accessed my e-mail on a daily basis from my house as well as while at work. If I were to have used fetchmail from my desktop system to suck my e-mail down to it, I had no HA capability, not in the sense of a clustered environment, but at least on UPS and regularly backed up. I could not guarantee with any amount of certainty that my system would be up over a weekend much less a week while on vacation. That means that: - I was no longer filtering my e-mail real-time - I couldn't read my e-mail with a single, consistent view - I couldn't have vacation auto-respond to incoming e-mail Since exmh doesn't have direct IMAP support, it made more sense to run the client on the mail server. Additionally, I don't like mutt. I have years of customizations invested in exmh, why should I spend an inordinate amount of time re-learning a tool which IMO falls short of the capabilities I have with exmh? But you're right, I am stubborn :) -- Seeya, Paul It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: In a message dated: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 15:34:46 EDT [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Given my druthers, I'd rather run my own server, but Paul's particular situation left him few options. Paul likes exmh, and MH clients and IMAP do not mix, so he would have little use for such a tool, I am sure. His post was just a catalyst for my idea. Yeah, but you know, I'd really like to be able to use (ex)mh as an interface to an IMAP server. I really like the granular control I have over my e-mail with both raw mh commands and exmh as a GUI. I would *really* like to be able to re-engineer it to interface with an IMAP server and still manipulate my e-mail the same way, but have the mail stored on some external-to-my-laptop system. That would be way cool! There's always NFS and X ;-) I run fetchmail - procmail on my firewall (my personal server only!) and NFS mount the mail directory from my laptop. Of course, then there are issues outside the firewall. I can SSH into my firewall run exmh on the firewall if I have X on my remote system. Works if your firewall is always on you have enough bandwidth (cable modem, 802.11b internally). Of course, I'd like to have IMAP access to my MH folders too. If wishes were fishes I probably wouldn't like the restrictions. * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
I actually looked into doing that - I think it was way back in '95 - or maybe it was '96 - I can't remember anymore, brain cramps. At any rate, there are a lot of Imap attributes that don't map well into a filesystem. And I remember thinking: If it can't be done right - then don't do it. Of course, I won't become rich like Bill Gates with that attitude. ;-) --Bruce On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 18:28, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... I've said this before: The Right Thing here would be to do this as a filesystem driver. Said filesystem driver would read an IMAP server, and present it to the client as a system of MH-style directories and files. This would allow you to use any current and/or future MH tools on an IMAP server. Implementation is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: procmail and IMAP (was: What do people use ...)
That would be a good hack! And I'd like to encourage someone to do it. But I feel its necessary to point out that most companies who use IMAP do so to avoid all the network traffic that dragging down each message to process it would entail. That's why POP is still around. Just my $0.02 worth - don't let this discourage anyone! On Mon, 2002-06-24 at 14:31, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, at 2:18pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... now I'm fetchmailing and procmailing my work e-mail as well. H... something just occurred to me. (I've got an idea, a'forming in my brain) It would be really nice if one could apply a set of procmail recipes to an IMAP mail store. That is, rather than having the MDA process each message as it comes in, have a program that, given an IMAP mail server, reads each message in the inbox, runs it through a procmail recipe file, and stores the result relative to the IMAP server. Sure, it would not be as efficient as doing it server-side, but for cases like this, where procmail couldn't run on the server even if the admins let you, it could be handy. Anyone know of anything like this? -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | * To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. * signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
