From: W. Trevor King <wking@drexel.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:28:38 +0000 (-0500)
Subject: Add OfflineIMAP post.
X-Git-Url: http://git.tremily.us/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=e48f209bb46cfa2d5a677b8da6fb5f450987bac7;p=blog.git

Add OfflineIMAP post.
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+[[!meta  title="OfflineIMAP"]]
+
+Our internet connection from home is somewhat flaky, and long-running
+connections are often dropped.  This is not usually a problem, I just
+make liberal use of [[screen]] when using [[SSH]].  The dropped
+connections *are* annoying when I'm reading my mail over [IMAP][] with
+[[mutt]], my prefered mail client.  Mutt caches many changes (marking
+messages as read, deleting messages, etc.) and only pushes the changes
+to the remote IMAP server periodically.  If the connection drops
+before Mutt pushes those changes, your changes get lost, and you have
+to reconnect and work through the mail again.
+
+It would be nice if I could work through my mail locally, and use a
+more robust tool to deal with the networking side of things.  There
+are a number of tools to accomplish this, including the vernerable
+[fetchmail][], but I use [OfflineIMAP][] because it allows me to store
+my mail locally while retaining direct IMAP access if I need it
+(e.g. using webmail from an internet cafe).
+
+Install (on [Gentoo][]) with
+
+    # emerge -av net-mail/offlineimap
+
+If you're running Python >= 2.7.2rc1 you'll need OfflineIMAP >= 6.3.3
+to avoid problems such as `Unknown IMAP4 command: 'file'`.
+
+Then create `~/.offlineimaprc` following the provided examples.  To
+sync my Drexel account with my local machine, I use something like:
+
+    [general]
+    accounts = Drexel
+
+    [Account Drexel]
+    localrepository = DrexelLocal
+    remoterepository = DrexelRemote
+
+    [Repository DrexelLocal]
+    type = Maildir
+    localfolders = ~/mail/drexel
+    sep = /
+
+    [Repository DrexelRemote]
+    type = IMAP
+    ssl = yes
+    remotehost = imap.mail.drexel.edu
+    remoteuser = REDACTED
+    remotepass = REDACTED
+
+Then run `offlineimap` to start the bidirectional syncronization.
+With the configuration above, you'll need to drop OfflineIMAP into a
+`cron` job (or just run it before you want to read your mail, and
+again after you've made any local changes).
+
+If you want to run OfflineIMAP continuously as a daemon, take a look
+at the `autorefresh` configuration option.
+
+[IMAP]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol
+[fetchmail]: http://www.fetchmail.info/
+[offlineimap]: https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap
+[Gentoo]: http://www.gentoo.org/