I'm currently building up the courage to switch over to a new
system for downloading and managing my emails. While I know email
isn't generally the most exciting of topics, it's made me curious
about whether others here have some interesting systems
implemented, or dreamed of, for managing their mail.

Most of my email addresses are hosted on my own mail server
(Postfix + Docecot) running on the VPS that also hosts my websites.
This stores emails and also forwards everything to one of two free
accounts with an obscure mail provider, one account for important
stuff (mostly business-related), and another for stuff that can
probably wait. This provides redundancy as well as some basic
sorting.

So far I've been connecting to the email provider's server via IMAP
to check the two accounts, manually archiving stuff locally on two
PCs and deleting it from the remote inbox (free accounts there
don't have much storage space). Now I'm switching to POP and a
central mail archive.

I've ended up with:
* Rsync mail account inboxes (MB format for Sylpheed) to PCs on
LAN from my 'internet client' (here effectively my LAN server
computer), before and after running the email client.
* Intermittently copy old mail over to a 'recent archive' mailbox
which is accessed via NFS from computers on my LAN, except on the
laptop, where it's rsynced again so that I have a local copy on
there.
* I realised I then needed a separate long-term archive which is
only rsynced from the laptop when required because otherwise it
would be too slow to run every time the email client is launched.

It's a little more complicated actually, but that's the short
version. I'm probably setting myself up for disaster, but that's
how it goes.

Later I'll set up something to automatically fetch new mail every
so often on my 'internet client' so I don't need to wait for it,
and I also need to set up a secondary mail server in case the VPS
goes down. Also automatic purging of old mail from the VPS, and
msmtp as a forwarding SMTP server on my 'internet client'.

So how do you do it?

PS. I like to run mail clients on the local machine I'm working
from for the sake of viewing/saving/attaching attachments.
Except for my Tilde email account which doesn't really factor
into all this yet.
--

- The Free Thinker | gopher://aussies.space/1/%7efreet/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2021-09-11, The Free Thinker <freet@aussies.space> wrote:

So how do you do it?

I might suggest:

Have your email on whatever public provider you choose. Set up rules: everything goes to INBOX and to "received".

Access via IMAP. Never touch "received" with a client.

One machine does archives. savemail, maildir-utils, etc. are helpful for this. It processes received via fetchmail/cron.

Then your active mail is available wherever you need it, and your (likely quite large) archives are available somewhere, but doesn't have to be everywhere.

Incidentally I read mail with mu4e which integrates with maildir-utils, org-mode, and org-roam. Email, todos, and notes, all integrated!

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

On 2021-09-11, The Free Thinker <freet@aussies.space> wrote:

So how do you do it?

I might suggest:

Have your email on whatever public provider you choose. Set up rules: everything goes to INBOX and to "received".

Access via IMAP. Never touch "received" with a client.

One machine does archives. savemail, maildir-utils, etc. are helpful for this.
It processes received via fetchmail/cron.

Then your active mail is available wherever you need it, and your (likely quite
large) archives are available somewhere, but doesn't have to be everywhere.

That's a nice approach. In my case though one thing I'm trying to
achieve is minimising the amount of data kept on internet
services. For the sake of privacy, and cheap/easy maintenance.

I am aware of the flaws in that reasoning, but on balance it suits
me best. You did remind me that I probably shouldn't let the VPS
delete old mail until after my laptop's offsite backup is refreshed
though. Unfortunately offline offsite backups aren't proving very lockdown-compatible.

Incidentally I read mail with mu4e which integrates with maildir-utils, org-mode, and org-roam. Email, todos, and notes, all integrated!

Neat. Most of my todos and notes are still stuck in pencil and
paper technology to be honest.
--

- The Free Thinker | gopher://aussies.space/1/%7efreet/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2021-09-11, The Free Thinker <freet@aussies.space> wrote:

I'm currently building up the courage to switch over to a new
system for downloading and managing my emails. While I know email
isn't generally the most exciting of topics, it's made me curious
about whether others here have some interesting systems
implemented, or dreamed of, for managing their mail.

I mostly use SDF, RiseUp, and occasionally tilde.pink for mails, and for
waht it's worth I trust those enough to let them keep a copy of my spool
on their server.
On mobile (Android), I use FairEmail + OpenKeyChain.
On desktop, I usually have a cron job fetching new emails every 5 min,
which relies on either getmail or offlineimap. On pubunices
I don't mind still using mbox as opposed to maildir in spite of its
downsides, since this allows me to use legacy programs like biff(1).
This is included in my ~/.profile:

#--- login scripts (for remote shell)
# mailbox notifications
if [ -x /usr/bin/biff ]; then
biff y 2> /dev/null
fi
# give a fortune cookie
[ -x /usr/games/fortune ] && /usr/games/fortune -aes
echo ''
# display current date
echo ''; echo -n 'To days date is: '; date
# lauch tmux by default
if command -v tmux &> /dev/null && [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then
tmux attach -t default || tmux new -s default
fi

As I mentioned elsewhere already, my client setup involves a combination
of neomutt, msmtp, nvi, abook, aspell, gpg2. I export the same setup as
a tarball via scp whenever I'm configuring a new system. This involves
both desktops and remote shells. The ~/.mutt/account file which is
sourced by ~/.mutt/muttrc will be edited accoirdingly, so a to reflect
the local settings. I try to avoid having passwords stored in plain
text, if after chmod'ing everything to 600, so I prefer to let GnuPG
decrypt it at each login, or use getmail.

I've self'hosted a mail server for personal use in the past, on a
Raspberry Pi 3 running NetBSD/aarch64. It was a somewhat unusual setup,
using QMAIL (more specifically notqmail) and uw-impad (through inetd),
as opposed to the nowadays more common postfix + dovecot build. I was
using bind for DNS, spamassassin, opendkim, NPF as firewall +
blacklistd. I was using No-IP as a DDNS provider.
It lasted a couple of years; after that, I grew tired of Outlook and
Gmail spam filters rejecting my mails because my IP fell into the home
network ranges for my ISP.
--
snowcrash - finger snowcrash@tilde.pink
gopher://tilde.pink:70/1/~snowcrash/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> writes:

I mostly use SDF, RiseUp, and occasionally tilde.pink for mails, and for
waht it's worth I trust those enough to let them keep a copy of my spool
on their server.

I use some common looking email accounts of local providers like every
harmless noob would. Camouflage! :-P Those get fetched from the
provider's IMAPsens to home while I use ~/.forward on the tilde (yip!
currently I'm really only in one of them!) and for SDF/SDFEU.

Additionally I was playing with SMTP over TOR and UUCP over TOR. I will revisit that somewhen, but currently other things inched upwards to the
top of my to do list (™dark energy inside!™).
--
Take Back Control! — Mesh The Planet!
smtp/tor: yeti@anetphabw4n7gheupc7d2gla4m4yuec622f6qadfypd6lgnhipodbyqd.onion finger yeti@tilde.institute
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-05, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

I use some common looking email accounts of local providers like every
harmless noob would. Camouflage! :-P Those get fetched from the
provider's IMAPsens to home while I use ~/.forward on the tilde (yip!
currently I'm really only in one of them!) and for SDF/SDFEU.

While I generally don't mind text mail clients, I've recently started to
do forwarding from the SDF Faeroes Cluster to my MetaArray, since most
of my serious remote copputing happens there.
First time I'm actually using a ~/.forward file and one thing I don't
undrstand if how to forward other mailboxes as Drafts, Trash, Archive.
If you can point me to a solution here, it would be very appreciated.

Additionally I was playing with SMTP over TOR and UUCP over TOR. I will
revisit that somewhen, but currently other things inched upwards to the
top of my to do list (™dark energy inside!™).

UUCP over Tor? I'm interested. By the way, is dataforge down?
--
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.„

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> writes:

First time I'm actually using a ~/.forward file and one thing I don't undrstand if how to forward other mailboxes as Drafts, Trash, Archive.
If you can point me to a solution here, it would be very appreciated.

.forward only influences mail that freshly comes in.

New drafts and such only should appear if yo still use a MUA there.

The old stuff is a Maildir structure oder mail folders in files and
trying to import a copy of this on the target system won't be
destructive to the source side. Just look what format they use and how
your MUA imports stuff.

UUCP over Tor? I'm interested. By the way, is dataforge down?

https://web.archive.org/web/20210908020012/https://tildegit.org/UUCP-Grassroots/incubator/wiki/Home

I currently don't play with UUCP. Haven't found out how to use
anonymous UUCP yet, so SMTP over UUCP turned out to be easier.

Normal UUCP needs to be configured on both sides. I was looking for
something like a real life mailbox. Everyone knowing where it is should
be able to thow mail at it withot needing to know more than the
address. An open SMTP port via TOR was much easier.
--
Take Back Control! — Mesh The Planet!
smtp/tor: yeti@anetphabw4n7gheupc7d2gla4m4yuec622f6qadfypd6lgnhipodbyqd.onion finger yeti@tilde.institute
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-15, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

snowcrash <snowcrash@tilde.pink> writes:
.forward only influences mail that freshly comes in.
New drafts and such only should appear if yo still use a MUA there.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My problem is having those folder synced when I
access the account remotely via IMAPS, either with a client or webmail.
This may happen as I access my inbox from mobile or someone's else
computer which might not have a SSH client ready to launch. Also, I
don't mind the Roundcube interface of mab's webmail as opposed to the Squirremail one of lonestar/faeroes/otaku.
It appears Dovecot will simply send my drafts, replies and archived mail
to the SDF's cluster, which will in turn update the mailbox there but
not on the MetaArray, as those messages are not forwarded.

The old stuff is a Maildir structure oder mail folders in files and
trying to import a copy of this on the target system won't be
destructive to the source side. Just look what format they use and how
your MUA imports stuff.

Yeah, I already exported the whole thing over mab. By the way, SDF uses
mbox as default, unless you explicitely and manually decide to convert
it to maildir. As I don't mind mbox (it plays nicely with ancient
clients, e.g. I can for example use the MM mail client for x86, ported
from VMS by Columbia University).
As a possible workaround I thought of setting up my mutt's account on
the MetaArray as a maildir one (just as I do remotely) and let an
offlinaimap cron job take care of syncing messages. At the same time, I
may keep some other client (elm) read the user mailbox at /meta/mail/{$LOGNAME}.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210908020012/https://tildegit.org/UUCP-Grassroots/incubator/wiki/Home

Thank you, a fun and thorough read, that's exactly what I was looking
for to understand more on the topic.

Normal UUCP needs to be configured on both sides. I was looking for
something like a real life mailbox. Everyone knowing where it is should
be able to thow mail at it withot needing to know more than the
address. An open SMTP port via TOR was much easier.

The idea is nice. Would easily fit University's student groups, geeky
labs, but, potentially also workplaces and cooperative projects.
--
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.„

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-02-15, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

UUCP over Tor? I'm interested. By the way, is dataforge down?

https://web.archive.org/web/20210908020012/https://tildegit.org/UUCP-Grassroots/incubator/wiki/Home

I currently don't play with UUCP. Haven't found out how to use
anonymous UUCP yet, so SMTP over UUCP turned out to be easier.

Normal UUCP needs to be configured on both sides. I was looking for something like a real life mailbox. Everyone knowing where it is should
be able to thow mail at it withot needing to know more than the
address. An open SMTP port via TOR was much easier.

There is another project along these lines called yggmail; see https://github.com/neilalexander/yggmail .

It runs atop the Yggdrasil Network; https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/ .

Yggdrasil is a auto-configuring global mesh network with full end-to-end encryption, using IPv6 addresses derived from hashes of your node's public key. Very cool. yggmail is a little self-contained system that runs atop Yggdrasil.

To bring it back to UUCP, Yggdrasil would also make an ideal transport for UUCP.
It is a lot faster than Tor, and is encrypted. I use firehol to firewall certain things I expose over Yggdrasil that I want to only be accessible from my
other Yggdrasil nodes (eg, laptops).

NNCP also has a built-in Yggdrasil node; I document it at https://www.complete.org/nncp-over-yggdrasil/ . Yggdrasil makes a fantastic transport for things like NNCP and UUCP because it solves all sorts of problems;
every machine gets its own static IPv6 IP that follows it wherever it is and so forth. I blogged about it at "Make The Internet Yours Again With An Instant Mesh Network" at https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10319-make-the-internet-yours-again-with-an-instant-mesh-network
.

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

From front to back, I use notmuch's emacs client to manage local
mail stored in a maildir-formatted directory. I fetch mail over IMAP
using GNU movemail and send it over SMTP using the emacs smtp library.
Of course, this is all based on a couple of email services (disroot and
gmail), upon whom I rely for archiving in addition to local storage on
my laptop. This is a problem.

I'm very happy with notmuch's approach: mail is stored in a big, flat
directory and accessed with a search engine. In addition, it's possible
to give mail items arbitrary tags. I use movemail because it's super
easy to set up: you give it the source and target URLs, and it "just works".

I'd love to set up my own email server (or receive it on a tilde
machine), but I'm worried about potential drop-outs: if the machine goes offline, what happens to the email that gets sent to it during that
time? Does it complain to the sender, get dropped silently, get queued
at the last working relay and retried later, or something else entirely?

I'll freely admit that my knowledge in this field is rudimentary,
but I've been happy with notmuch's approach: rather than using the
"folder" abstraction, it takes advantage of the machine's ability to
search and sort.

—pmf
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Preston Miller Firestone <0x504d46@disroot.org> wrote:

I'd love to set up my own email server (or receive it on a tilde
machine), but I'm worried about potential drop-outs: if the machine goes offline, what happens to the email that gets sent to it during that
time? Does it complain to the sender, get dropped silently, get queued
at the last working relay and retried later, or something else entirely?

Well it should get queued and the sending SMTP server will keep on
retrying, but as this all relies on that particular mail server's
configuration nothing is really guaranteed. If the time offline
is no more than a day or two, then I don't think it should be a
problem, but I mainly just know that my server doesn't give
up in that time, I don't know for sure about anyone else's.

It is also possible to set up a backup mail (MX) server at the DNS
level. That's somewhere on my list of things to do one day.

I'll freely admit that my knowledge in this field is rudimentary,
but I've been happy with notmuch's approach: rather than using the
"folder" abstraction, it takes advantage of the machine's ability to
search and sort.

Interesting. I don't do any sorting/tagging myself, except by the
different email addresses that I use for different things, which
mostly in turn get forwarded to two main addresses. I do break up
my archives into years, but that's just because otherwise searching
email contents takes too long (with the slow old computers that I
use). Plus there is my "long sagas" folder to which I copy emails
about those things that go on, and on, and on. Until they're
finally over and I can joyfully delete them.
--

- The Free Thinker | gopher://aussies.space/1/%7efreet/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Mon, 21 Mar 2022, Preston Miller Firestone wrote:

From front to back, I use notmuch's emacs client to manage local
mail stored in a maildir-formatted directory. I fetch mail over IMAP
using GNU movemail and send it over SMTP using the emacs smtp library.

Thanks for mentioning GNU Mailutils' `movemail`, I have been looking for
some software to copy off mails from IMAP accounts verbatim [1] en-masse
for some time now. (I had been using email service from certain big-name
free provider-that-must-not-be-named since early 2000s, but now I would
like to gradually switch to a full offline mail management with inbox
address on my own domain, for privacy and vanity reasons)

I'm very happy with notmuch's approach: mail is stored in a big, flat directory and accessed with a search engine. In addition, it's possible
to give mail items arbitrary tags.

I have heard of Notmuch for some time now (as a local email search engine),
but didn't realize that it also does tags. Anyway, since I'm not a
GNU Emacs user (yet) I may have to try it out myself to see if it's
worth the hassle compared to regular Maildir's rigid folder management.

I'm worried about potential drop-outs: if the machine goes
offline, what happens to the email that gets sent to it during that
time? Does it complain to the sender, get dropped silently, get queued
at the last working relay and retried later, or something else entirely?

In my limited experience, if the target SMTP was down (temporary failure category); the email would remain in the sending server's queue-
and would be subjected to several retries, usually for at least a day.
Failing that, the server's postmaster daemon would send a "bounce"
notification email back to the sending user, stating the reason,
with original MIME file enclosed.

But like ~freet said, these are actually depending on the configuration
of sending server in question. But this behavior is apparently common
to the point that I would guess it is a default of many widely used
mail server software packages. (But the actual time period of retrying
varies, so don't quote me on that)

In the on-premise self-hosting approach, I don't think this would be
a problem much on its own (unless you have a shoddy ISP that regularly
let your Internet remain broken for more than half a day); as long as you are willing to let the server machine and related equipments run 24/7.

Side point:
A less common but possible problem in this circle is dealing
with home server that come online only on *some* part of the day.
Sending email from tradiditional always-on server to this kind of boxes
would not be too much of a problem (due to retries). The real roadblock however, is when each of these boxes, on different (or opposite) time zone, tries to send email to each other.

I would like to do a full self-hosted thingamagique as well;
when my living arrangement allows. (My ISP now allow me to have a real IPv4) Probably not for WWW and email, but rather SIP (and maybe XMPP);
so I could call $HOME without relying on or be eavesdropped by third party.

Regards,
~xwindows

[1] At first thought, I'd use my mail clients' sync function;
but they apparently like to stuff-in their own application-specific
MIME headers, to my chagrin.
--
xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 9/11/2021 2:58 AM, The Free Thinker wrote:

So how do you do it?

I run the mailserver for tilde.team and use that for a good number of
things. The tildeverse listserv also lives alongside and uses the same
postfix for delivery.

My personal mailserver runs an identical software stack on a plain
debian stable vm (postfix + dovecot + pigeonhole sieve + rspamd +
snappymail). It handles mail for my personal domains (7 or 8?) with
wildcards dropping everything in my primary inbox there.

I also have a fastmail account with one of my domains assigned there.
I finally nuked my gmail account and have it set to forward to my fastmail.

The main reason I keep a section of my mail separate here is to avoid
the catch-22 of accessing a hosting provider's control panel with an
email address hosted at said provider.

I've been pondering swapping all of my personal domains over to fastmail
but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Deliverability hasn't been a
significant problem in the last couple years and I very rarely have to
touch any configs...

As for clients i use Aquamail on my phone and thunderbird on desktop. Occasionally I'll use mutt to apply patches etc, which are not
particularly friendly to work with in thunderbird.

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113