Configuring Linux to download your email
This page is obsolete, and dates back to a terrible time in the past when Mailpile didn't support fetching mail natively. It should be disregarded for almost all users now, although some technical users may find it interesting.
This page describes how to configure Ubuntu or Debian to download your
e-mail from a remote server. These instructions probably apply to other
operating systems as well, but the commands for installing software
(apt-get install etc.) may differ.
Two methods are described: OfflineIMAP and postfix + fetchmail. They can be summarized roughly as follows:
- OfflineIMAP just downloads your mail to a local folder.
- The postfix + fetchmail solution configures a full local mail server.
The former is simpler, the latter is a more advanced - more flexible and more complicated - configuration.
If neither of those sound good, maybe you want one of these:
So, choose your poison!
That should be as simple as:
sudo apt-get install offlineimap
OfflineIMAP reads its configuration from a file named .offlineimaprc in
your home directory. You can edit (or create) it using your favourite text
editor, or this: nano $HOME/.offlineimaprc.
For a simple case of one remote IMAP account, all mail downloaded to a
folder named MyMail in your home directory, the configuration file
should look something like this:
[general]
accounts = MyMail
[Account MyMail]
localrepository = Local
remoterepository = Remote
[Repository Local]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/MyMail
[Repository Remote]
type = IMAP
remotehost = imap.yourprovider.com
remoteuser = yourname
remotepass = yourpassword
If downloading from GMail, the last section might be better written like so:
[Repository Remote]
type = Gmail
cert_fingerprint = 89091347184d41768bfc0da9fad94bfe882dd358
folderfilter = lambda folder: folder.startswith('[Gmail]/All Mail')
remoteuser = [email protected]
remotepass = yourpassword
This will only download the "All Mail" section.
You can test your OfflineIMAP configuration by running offlineimap. If it
looks like it is about to take forever, you can abort it by pressing CTRL+C.
You can configure Mailpile to periodically invoke OfflineIMAP for you. In the Mailpile CLI, type:
# Run offlineimap before looking for new mail
mailpile> set prefs.rescan_command = offlineimap || true
# Configure Mailpile to look for new mail every 300 seconds
mailpile> set prefs.rescan_interval = 300
Finally, you need to tell Mailpile where to find your mail:
# Add your mailbox to the list of locations to scan
mailpile> add ~/MyMail
# Read it now! Invokes offlineimap and then scans for new mail.
mailpile> rescan
That's all folks!
We like postfix, but these instructions probably also work almost verbatim for other common mail servers (exim for example).
sudo apt-get install postfix fetchmail
The package installer will ask what kind of mail configuration you
prefer. Usually "Local only" is fine - you can update the settings at
any time with sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix.
To configure fetchmail, create a file named .fetchmailrc in your
home directory. If your Unix account is named unixjoe, and you have
a GMail account, contents like the following might work:
set postmaster unixjoe
poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3
user '[email protected]' there with password 'SEKRIT'
is unixjoe here
nofetchall keep options ssl
To create this file,use nano $HOME/.fetchmailrc in the shell (or your
editor of choice), and afterwards run chmod 0700 $HOME/.fetchmailrc to
set the correct access controls.
(Note for GMail users: you cannot use your normal password with fetchmail if you are using two-factor authentication. Instead you will need to create a custom password using GMail's security tools.)
This setup can then be tested by running the following command:
# Fetch some mail! (hit CTRL+C to abort)
fetchmail
# Or if you really need verbose output for debugging:
fetchmail -V -v --nodetach --nosyslog`
Once local mail delivery and fetchmail are both working, you can either use a cron job to periodically download your e-mail, or configure Mailpile to periodically invoke fetchmail for you. In the Mailpile CLI, type:
# Run fetchmail before looking for new mail
mailpile> set prefs.rescan_command = fetchmail || true
# Configure Mailpile to look for new mail every 300 seconds
mailpile> set prefs.rescan_interval = 300
Finally, you need to tell Mailpile where to find your mail:
# Add your mailbox to the list of locations to scan
mailpile> add /var/mail/unixjoe
# Read it now! Invokes fetchmail and then scans for new mail.
mailpile> rescan
That wasn't too hard, was it?