Re: nnimap workflow examples?

[Jose A. Ortega Ruiz]

Hi Garjola,

On Fri, Apr 24 2020, Garjola Dindi wrote:

[...]

> I am looking for examples of configurations or workflows that I could
> use.

Here goes what i do, since i do thinks a tad differently that what i've
seen explained in the available tutorials.  As you're about to see, it's
kind of complicated, and i don't expect many people to use it in the
same way, but there are some bits and pieces that i discovered over the
years and that might be useful by themselves.

 - I keep my local email using dovecot smptp server.  I configure it to
   use a maildir directory in my home (~/var/mail), and all local mails
   eventually end there, although Gnus access them exclusively via
   nnimap (to localhost).
 - As an aside, the fact that ~/var/mail is a regular maildir allows me
   to have notifications of new mails and the like independently of
   dovecot or Gnus (i use a xmobar monitor, and sometimes a little emacs
   lib i wrote that in turn uses inotify).
 - To fetch mail from remote imap servers (in my case a gmail account
   for work and protonmail via its bridge), i use fetchmail
 - I tell fetchmail to deliver the fetched mails using dovecot's mda.
   This is an example using cli flags, but the same can be done in
   fetchmailrc

      mda="/usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -a"

      function fetch_work () {
        fetchmail --ssl --sslproto auto --folder $1 $2 $3 \
                  --mda "$mda jao+work/${1,,}" \
                  --user jao@bigml.com imap.gmail.com
      }

      fetch_work INBOX --keep
      fetch_work support --nokeep --fetchall

    Here, i'm fetching mail from a gmail INBOX and telling fetchmail to
    deliver it to dovecot with envelope addresses
    jao+work/inbox@localhost, and fetching mail from a gmail "folder"
    called support and sending it to jao+work/support@locahost.  "jao"
    is my local username.

    Also, in the first case i'm keeping emails in the remote server and
    in the second deleting them when i download them.

 - In dovecot, i have a sieve filter that sends mail directed to
   jao+FOO to the local inbox FOO.  so those mails above go to local
   imap inboxes work/inbox and work/support.  That's what Gnus sees
   when it connects to the local imap server: a work/inbox and a
   work/support.

 - This can be extended to as many remote imap folders and servers as
   you want (i have two servers and a handful of folders in each).

 - I also have local sieve filters to put mail fetched from the remote
   server in different local imap boxes.  I prefer the filtering being
   doing by dovecot because that way may email notifiers (which look at
   the inbox maildirs) don't depend on a gnus fetch: i get a
   notification as soon as dovecot puts the mail there (usually
   instructed by fetchmail, asynchronosuly, but also local mail
   deliveries go there).

 - To search mail locally, one can use the regular nnimap search in
   Gnus against the local dovecot server.  I also use in paralell
   ivy-notmuch: i tell notmuch to (re)index ~/var/mail after each
   fetchmail round (that's in a cron job), and the perform searches
   typically with ivy-notmuch)... i've got a little bit of elisp that
   goes then from a notmuch result to the corresponding mail in Gnus.

 - I use postfix to deliver email using different remote SMTP servers
   (multiplexing on the mail's From: address), so emacs sends all mails
   to just to the local MTA (postfix), and it asynchronously takes care
   of dispatching the mail (that way, sending an email is always almost
   instantaneous).

It's simpler than it looks :)

HTH,
jao
-- 
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it
from a defeat. -Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980)