Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Hikaru Ichijyo]

Every now and then, I consider migrating my mail and news reading to the 
wonderful wild world of Emacs, but every time I do, the main thing that 
always makes me decide to forget about it is that, as far as I can tell, 
there isn't a single Emacs mailreader that doesn't insist on copying 
your mailbox into your home directory and leaving it there.

For mail, currently I use Alpine, but I like occasionally using Mutt, 
and sometimes even Kmail.  All of these mailreaders have appropriate 
file locking mechanisms implemented to make it possible to operate on 
the system mailbox in place, in /var/spool/mail or wherever it happens 
to be.  Having it this way makes it so that even if I use Alpine most of 
the time, I can switch if I like, and the mail is always where it's 
expected to be.  Even my shell knows to give me the "You have new mail" 
notication by watching the system spool (where else should my mail be?).

Most UNIX newsreaders also seem to have a similar philosophy of sharing, 
since they all more or less have agreed to keep read/subscribed article 
information in ~/.newsrc, even ones that have more efficient mechanisms 
that they use for themselves, so you don't have to stay in one 
newsreader.  I mostly use Tin, but I also use Pan, and sometimes SLRN.  
None of them lock me in.

I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they all 
seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory, apparently 
because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive access.  Emacs 
seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be written that puts 
your mailbox back the way it was every time you close your mailreader, 
but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.

I'm strongly leaning toward either VM or Gnus if I did migrate, but I 
really want to keep my mailbox where it is.  Is there any way to do 
that?

-- 
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself.
					--Thomas Paine

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Gregory Benjamin]

Hi Hikaru,

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 07:05:56PM +0000, Hikaru Ichijyo wrote:
> Every now and then, I consider migrating my mail and news reading to the 
> wonderful wild world of Emacs, but every time I do, the main thing that 
> always makes me decide to forget about it is that, as far as I can tell, 
> there isn't a single Emacs mailreader that doesn't insist on copying 
> your mailbox into your home directory and leaving it there.
> 
> For mail, currently I use Alpine, but I like occasionally using Mutt, 
> and sometimes even Kmail.  All of these mailreaders have appropriate 
> file locking mechanisms implemented to make it possible to operate on 
> the system mailbox in place, in /var/spool/mail or wherever it happens 
> to be.  Having it this way makes it so that even if I use Alpine most of 
> the time, I can switch if I like, and the mail is always where it's 
> expected to be.  Even my shell knows to give me the "You have new mail" 
> notication by watching the system spool (where else should my mail be?).
> 
> Most UNIX newsreaders also seem to have a similar philosophy of sharing, 
> since they all more or less have agreed to keep read/subscribed article 
> information in ~/.newsrc, even ones that have more efficient mechanisms 
> that they use for themselves, so you don't have to stay in one 
> newsreader.  I mostly use Tin, but I also use Pan, and sometimes SLRN.  
> None of them lock me in.
> 
> I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they all 
> seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory, apparently 
> because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive access.  Emacs 
> seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be written that puts 
> your mailbox back the way it was every time you close your mailreader, 
> but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.
> 
> I'm strongly leaning toward either VM or Gnus if I did migrate, but I 
> really want to keep my mailbox where it is.  Is there any way to do 
> that?

I'm sorry I cannot offer any help at the moment, but wanted to say two
things. 

First, I admire your English writing. Very, very clear and
well done.

Second, I too use mutt and would like to move to a mixed mutt/emacs
environment for mail processing until I'm fully comfortable with the
emacs solution. I've used rmail a bit, and tried to force myself to
like it, but mutt is still faster and more capable for me. I cannot
afford to 'break' email while playing around with rmail, gnus, vm, or
some other emacs email configuration.

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Jude DaShiell]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2013, Gregory Benjamin wrote:

> Hi Hikaru,
> 
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 07:05:56PM +0000, Hikaru Ichijyo wrote:
> > Every now and then, I consider migrating my mail and news reading to the 
> > wonderful wild world of Emacs, but every time I do, the main thing that 
> > always makes me decide to forget about it is that, as far as I can tell, 
> > there isn't a single Emacs mailreader that doesn't insist on copying 
> > your mailbox into your home directory and leaving it there.
> > 
> > For mail, currently I use Alpine, but I like occasionally using Mutt, 
> > and sometimes even Kmail.  All of these mailreaders have appropriate 
> > file locking mechanisms implemented to make it possible to operate on 
> > the system mailbox in place, in /var/spool/mail or wherever it happens 
> > to be.  Having it this way makes it so that even if I use Alpine most of 
> > the time, I can switch if I like, and the mail is always where it's 
> > expected to be.  Even my shell knows to give me the "You have new mail" 
> > notication by watching the system spool (where else should my mail be?).
> > 
> > Most UNIX newsreaders also seem to have a similar philosophy of sharing, 
> > since they all more or less have agreed to keep read/subscribed article 
> > information in ~/.newsrc, even ones that have more efficient mechanisms 
> > that they use for themselves, so you don't have to stay in one 
> > newsreader.  I mostly use Tin, but I also use Pan, and sometimes SLRN.  
> > None of them lock me in.
> > 
> > I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they all 
> > seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory, apparently 
> > because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive access.  Emacs 
> > seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be written that puts 
> > your mailbox back the way it was every time you close your mailreader, 
> > but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.
> > 
> > I'm strongly leaning toward either VM or Gnus if I did migrate, but I 
> > really want to keep my mailbox where it is.  Is there any way to do 
> > that?
> 
> I'm sorry I cannot offer any help at the moment, but wanted to say two
> things. 
> 
> First, I admire your English writing. Very, very clear and
> well done.
> 
> Second, I too use mutt and would like to move to a mixed mutt/emacs
> environment for mail processing until I'm fully comfortable with the
> emacs solution. I've used rmail a bit, and tried to force myself to
> like it, but mutt is still faster and more capable for me. I cannot
> afford to 'break' email while playing around with rmail, gnus, vm, or
> some other emacs email configuration.

One advantage of having an e-mail spool in the $HOME directory is that 
the $HOME directory is usually lots larger than /var/spool.  This makes 
denial of service attacks a little more difficult and take a little 
longer since the directory capacity is larger and will take longer to 
fill and crash a system.

> > 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net> Avoid the Gates Of Hell, use Linux!

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Damien Wyart]

* Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> in gnu.emacs.help:
> I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they all
> seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory, apparently
> because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive access. Emacs
> seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be written that
> puts your mailbox back the way it was every time you close your
> mailreader, but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.

Even if what you want is not strictly possible (as far as I know), I see
two ways of having a setup where mail would be readable by several MUAs:

- having procmail or maildrop (I prefer the latter) put the mail in
  a target your like (more convenient in $HOME but not mandatory),
  either in mbox or maildir, and than point Gnus and Emacs to it (mutt
  will read a Gnus nnml fine, but doing modifications might not work
  well).

- having a local IMAP server (cleaner solution I think) and use the IMAP
  layers of mutt and Gnus to access it. As IMAP is fully supported in
  the MUAs you quote, this is the safest and most flexible solution.

Using an mbox spool for a shared access in not really optimal, IMAP was
designed for shared access from the start.

Best regards,
-- 
DW

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Damien Wyart]

> > I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they
> > all seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory,
> > apparently because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive
> > access. Emacs seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be
> > written that puts your mailbox back the way it was every time you
> > close your mailreader, but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.

* Damien Wyart <damien.wyart@free.fr> in gnu.emacs.help:
> Even if what you want is not strictly possible (as far as I know),
> I see two ways of having a setup where mail would be readable by
> several MUAs:

> - having procmail or maildrop (I prefer the latter) put the mail in
>   a target your like (more convenient in $HOME but not mandatory),
>   either in mbox or maildir, and than point Gnus and Emacs to it (mutt
>   will read a Gnus nnml fine, but doing modifications might not work
>   well).

I've thought about a third way (not very elegant):

Have procmail or maildrop (or your MDA) deliver all your incoming
messages to two (or more!) spool files. That way, you could do what you
want with each MUA (even deleting messages without impacting the
others), but that's not very nice in terms of disk space and still
doesn't allow sharing (modifications on one spool will not been visible
on the other one).

IMAP (installing dovecot locally, for example) seems to be a better
option.

-- 
DW

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Joost Kremers]

Damien Wyart wrote:
> - having a local IMAP server (cleaner solution I think) and use the IMAP
>   layers of mutt and Gnus to access it. As IMAP is fully supported in
>   the MUAs you quote, this is the safest and most flexible solution.

Another option would be to use offlineimap or mbsync to sync your mail
on the server with a local maildir. You can then use any mail client
that understands the local mail box format (mbox, maildir).

Personally, I use mu4e to read mail inside Emacs, but I've previously
used mutt. mu4e requires mail to be in maildir format and mutt handles
that just fine, so if I wanted to, I could access my mail from mutt as
well. I used to do that when I was still in the process of switching
from mutt to mu4e, but I haven't found any need for quite some time now.



-- 
Joost Kremers                                   joostkremers@fastmail.fm
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Emanuel Berg]

Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:

> I'm strongly leaning toward either VM or Gnus if I did
> migrate, but I really want to keep my mailbox where it
> is.  Is there any way to do that?

I use Gnus, but before that I used Rmail. I can really
recommend both of those... like night and day compared
to Gmail and those other web mail GUIs.

But, I was always happy to have my mails on my
disk. That way, I can use my own tools to, for example,
search my mails. That proved to be even easier with
Gnus, or at least the way I set it up (with nnml), than
with Rmail, because with Gnus I got a one-mail-per-file
solution.

Now, if you want to preserve your inbox (just download
it, or the parts of it that is new, and never delete
anything), in Rmail, there is

(setq rmail-preserve-inbox t)

With Gnus, I don't know, I don't even know if Gnus does
that. But if it does, I'm sure that could be configured
as Gnus uses files with meta data to keep track on
what's new and what's old. You might know that Gnus is
also a Usenet reader. If you check for new articles in a
newsgroup, and you get zero back, obviously that isn't a
sign Gnus deleted them all on the server :) I think the
same can be setup for mails, and that wouldn't be that
difficult, as those (mail and news) in my experience are
very close in Gnus (and why not?).

You can ask on gnu.emacs.gnus - it may take some time,
but you'll get an answer!

However... if you also want drafts, outbox, etc. to be
mirrored anywhere you go, that's a whole different story
that will require some work.

-- 
Emanuel Berg, programmer-for-rent. CV, projects, etc at uXu
underground experts united:  http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Jonathan Groll]

On 22 Oct 2013 19:05:56 GMT, Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> wrote:

> Every now and then, I consider migrating my mail and news reading to
> the wonderful wild world of Emacs, but every time I do, the main thing
> that always makes me decide to forget about it is that, as far as I
> can tell, there isn't a single Emacs mailreader that doesn't insist on
> copying your mailbox into your home directory and leaving it there.
> 
> For mail, currently I use Alpine, but I like occasionally using Mutt,
> and sometimes even Kmail.  All of these mailreaders have appropriate
> file locking mechanisms implemented to make it possible to operate on
> the system mailbox in place, in /var/spool/mail or wherever it happens
> to be.  Having it this way makes it so that even if I use Alpine most
> of the time, I can switch if I like, and the mail is always where it's
> expected to be.  Even my shell knows to give me the "You have new
> mail" notication by watching the system spool (where else should my
> mail be?).
> 
> Most UNIX newsreaders also seem to have a similar philosophy of
> sharing, since they all more or less have agreed to keep
> read/subscribed article information in ~/.newsrc, even ones that have
> more efficient mechanisms that they use for themselves, so you don't
> have to stay in one newsreader.  I mostly use Tin, but I also use Pan,
> and sometimes SLRN.  None of them lock me in.
> 
> I've gone over the documentation for RMAIL, VM, and Gnus, and they all
> seem to require moving your mailbox to the home directory, apparently
> because none of them can lock the mailbox for exclusive access.  Emacs
> seems powerful enough that a kludge could probably be written that
> puts your mailbox back the way it was every time you close your
> mailreader, but that seems sort of ugly and unnecessary.
> 
> I'm strongly leaning toward either VM or Gnus if I did migrate, but I
> really want to keep my mailbox where it is.  Is there any way to do
> that?

Yes, it is possible - I read my mail via a local IMAP server
(dovecot). I don't do anything special and leave the mail as the
default mbox. I can switch between mutt and Emacs, if I want to (but
have never tried them both at the same time because of mbox
contention). To be explicit, in my case, mutt isn't configured to read
via IMAP but Emacs is, and the mail is in /var/spool/mail

Of course, an advantage to using an IMAP server is it means you can
sometimes use one mail client and sometimes use another, which seems
to be something you like to do.

I would also recommend you consider the Wanderlust mail client in
Emacs.

Cheers,
Jonathan
--
jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
Any other Disclaimer in this mail is Wrong.

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[Hikaru Ichijyo]

Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za> wrote:

> Yes, it is possible - I read my mail via a local IMAP server 
> (dovecot). I don't do anything special and leave the mail as the 
> default mbox. I can switch between mutt and Emacs, if I want to (but 
> have never tried them both at the same time because of mbox 
> contention). To be explicit, in my case, mutt isn't configured to read 
> via IMAP but Emacs is, and the mail is in /var/spool/mail
> 
> Of course, an advantage to using an IMAP server is it means you can 
> sometimes use one mail client and sometimes use another, which seems 
> to be something you like to do.

Yes, I already have an IMAP daemon setup for users, so I could use it 
locally also.

Well...I suppose I could consider it a wishlist request for VM and/or 
Gnus then:  It would be nice if they could do in-place file locking of 
the system mail spool, like Mutt and Alpine do.  Maybe in a future 
version?  :)

-- 
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself.
					--Thomas Paine

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[William G Gardella]

Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:

[...]

> Yes, I already have an IMAP daemon setup for users, so I could use it 
> locally also.
>
> Well...I suppose I could consider it a wishlist request for VM and/or 
> Gnus then:  It would be nice if they could do in-place file locking of 
> the system mail spool, like Mutt and Alpine do.  Maybe in a future 
> version?  :)

If RMAIL can do this with a configuration variable, Gnus probably can as
well, at least from a technical standpoint.

For what it's worth, I use Gnus with its "nnmaildir" message store,
notmuch <http://notmuchmail.org/>, and notmuch-web
<https://bitbucket.org/wuzzeb/notmuch-web>, together with a
~/.procmailrc that delivers my incoming mail to a series of Maildirs in
$HOME.  The main advantages of this setup from my standpoint are that
filtering of messages into some basic categories is automatic before I
even look at my mail, and that the Maildir format itself does not
require locks; several MUAs can be refiling, marking, and adding new
messages to the Maildir at the same time without stepping on each
other's toes.  This configuration does not fulfil your requirement of
not moving the mail, but it may fulfil your requirement of sharing, as
Maildir is a lingua franca among many MUAs, mail indexing programs, and
IMAP servers these days.

The (for now very simple) ~/.procmailrc is as follows:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
:0 c
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
Maildir/spam/
:0 Ec
* ^List-Unsubscribe:.*
Maildir/lists/
:0 Ec
Maildir/mail/
:0
| notmuch new
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

First, spam is filtered out into its own sub-maildir for possible manual
checking (not shown: the SpamAssassin + Pyzor configuration that adds
the spam-related headers).  Second, messages with a List-Unsubscribe
header--bulk mailings--go in the "lists" maildir.  Anything else is
mail.  Finally, the notmuch indexer is run to incorporate the new mail
(pedantically speaking, this recipe runs notmuch with the new messages as
arguments, but notmuch ignores its stdin).

Of course, this setup might or might not make sense for your
requirements.  You may have some reason to prefer mbox, but consider
also that many contemporary MTAs such as Postfix are happy to deliver
directly to a maildir in $HOME, possibly without the help of an MDA
helper like procmail.

--
Best,
WGG

Re: Emacs mailreader that doesn't move the spool

[William G Gardella]

William G Gardella <wgg2@member.fsf.org> writes:

[...]

>
> Of course, this setup might or might not make sense for your
> requirements.  You may have some reason to prefer mbox, but consider
> also that many contemporary MTAs such as Postfix are happy to deliver
> directly to a maildir in $HOME, possibly without the help of an MDA
> helper like procmail.

Another thought: I notice you have an SDF account, so perhaps your mail
is on a shell server where others have configured the MTA for you.  Even
in that case, I think a procmail configuration like mine should be quite
suitable, because MTAs typically call procmail or another MDA like
maildrop at the end of delivery, if the user has a ~/.forward or
~/.procmailrc.

--
Best,
WGG