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							<!DOCTYPE html><head><meta charset="utf-8" /><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no" /><meta name="keywords" content="GNU, Emacs, Libre Software, Hurd, Guile, Guix" /><meta name="description" content="GNUcode.me is a website focusing on libre software projects, especially the GNU project." /><link type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="GNUcode.me -- Feed" href="/feed.xml" /><a rel="me" href="https://fosstodon.org/@thegnuguy"></a><link type="text/css" href="css/footer.min.css" rel="stylesheet"></link><link type="text/css" href="css/header.min.css" rel="stylesheet"></link><link type="text/css" href="css/main.min.css" rel="stylesheet"></link><title>A Locally Running Dovecot in Guix — GNUcode.me</title></head><body><header><nav><ul><li><a href="index.html">GNUcode.me</a></li><li><a href="services.html">Services</a></li><li><a href="about.html">About</a></li><li><a href="business-ideas.html">Business-ideas</a></li></ul></nav></header><h1>A Locally Running Dovecot in Guix</h1><main><section class="basic-section-padding"><article><h3>by Joshua Branson — June 08, 2021</h3><div><p>So, I have been wanting to set up a locally running dovecot server for a LONG
time now.  Essentially I have an email account at <a href="dismail.de">dismail.de</a>, and
Emacs' <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/">Gnus</a> is
pretty slow at searching for my emails.  I could switch to using mu4e or
notmuch, which ARE BLAZINGLY fast at searching your emails, BUT after listening
to John Wiegley, who is one of the current
<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Emacs</a> maintainers, talk about how Emacs'
Gnus mode is so cool...I've been using Gnus ever since.  Essentially Gnus is a
newsreader.  It is a way to handle lots news that is similar to reddit.  In
Gnus, after you've read a message, you do not see it again by default.  This is
handy, because since you are getting so much email, it's useful to only see
messages that you have not read.</p><p>Emacs's Gnus is actually the best way I've seen at handling LOTS of email,
particularly mailing lists.  For example, I am currently subscribed to
<a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guix-devel">guix-devel</a>,
<a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-guix">help-guix</a>, and
<a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd">bug-hurd</a>.  With Gnus, I can
open up these email folders and I only see messages that I have not read, AND
the emails are organized by threads NOT date:</p><p><img src="./images/gnus-thread.png" alt="Image" /></p><p>With my cursor on the top of the thread, pressing C-k, will kill the entire
thread.  So when I open up this folder again, I will not see that thread.  Let's
suppose that I've read all of the messages in that thread &quot;Re: website: A little
help running the website locally&quot;.  So that now Gnus looks like this when I open
it up:</p><p><img src="./images/gnus-thread-all-but-one.png" alt="Image" /></p><p>Pressing Shift-A-Shift-T, will pull up the entire thread, so that I can re-read
the whole conversation:</p><p><img src="./images/gnus-thread-all-but-one-reopened.png" alt="Image" /></p><p>Anyway, the main problem that I have had with Gnus (for years...I should have
fixed this a long time ago), is that it is REALLY slow and pretty much not
responsive at searching for my email.  I could try to search for my email with
Gnus, but it would typically fail.  I guess that something with dismail's
servers are wonky, because I did not have this problem when I had a paid
<a href="fastmail.com">fastmail</a> account.</p><p>So, one solution to continue using Gnus, but have decent searching is to have a
locally running <a href="https://www.dovecot.org/">dovecot</a> server that will serve my
emails.  I'll also be querying that local server instead of the remote one.
Sounds plausible.  Here's what you need to do:</p><p>First you need to fetch your remote email and put it in a local
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir">maildir</a>. I prefer
<a href="https://isync.sourceforge.io/mbsync.html">mbsync</a>, because it is what all the
cool kids are doing.</p><p>Here is my  <code>~/.mbsyncrc</code></p><pre><code>IMAPAccount dismail
# Address to connect to
Host imap.dismail.de
User jbranso@dismail.de
Pass VERYSECRETPASSWORD
# To store the password in an encrypted file use PassCmd instead of Pass
# PassCmd &quot;gpg2 -q --for-your-eyes-only --no-tty -d ~/.mailpass.gpg&quot;
#
# Use SSL
SSLType IMAPS
CertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

IMAPStore dismail-remote
Account dismail

MaildirStore dismail-local
Subfolders Verbatim
# The trailing &quot;/&quot; is important
Path ~/.mail/dismail.de/
Inbox ~/.mail/dismail.de/Inbox

Channel dismail
Master :dismail-remote:
Slave :dismail-local:
# show all folders
Patterns *
# Automatically create missing mailboxes, both locally and on the server
Create Both
# Save the synchronization state files in the relevant directory
SyncState *</code></pre><p><code>mbsync -a</code>  running in a cron job, syncs up my email.  The config in guix for
that looks like so:</p><pre><code class="language-scheme">(define mbsync-every-5-minutes
  ;; The job's action is a shell command.
  #~(job &quot;*/5 * * * *&quot;            ;Vixie cron syntax
         &quot;mbsync -Va&quot;
         #:user &quot;joshua&quot;))

...
(operating-system
...
(services
    (append
        (list
            (service mcron-service-type
                (mcron-configuration
                     (jobs (list mbsync-every-5-minutes)))))
     %desktop-services)))</code></pre><p>Now all we need is the configuration for a locally running dovecot server, which
looks like so:</p><pre><code class="language-scheme">(dovecot-service #:config
                     (dovecot-configuration
                      (mail-location &quot;maildir:~/.mail/dismail.de:LAYOUT=fs&quot;)
                      (listen '(&quot;127.0.0.1&quot;))
                      ;; I do not need ssl support in a locally running dovecot.  :)
                      (ssl? &quot;no&quot;)
                      (protocols
                       (list (protocol-configuration
                              (name &quot;imap&quot;)
                              (mail-max-userip-connections 1))))
                      (services (list
                                 (service-configuration
                                  (kind &quot;imap&quot;)
                                  (client-limit 1)))))</code></pre><p>The bit that really got me confused for a while was that I needed <strong>LAYOUT=fs</strong>
in the mail-location line.  Essentially, isync creates a maildir in a slightly
different format than what dovecot expects.  Adding in the &quot;LAYOUT=fs&quot; fixes this.</p><p>The last bit is we have to tell Emacs how to connect to the server:</p><pre><code class="language-scheme">(setq
 user-mail-address &quot;myemailaccount@dismail.de&quot;
 user-full-name &quot;Joshua Branson&quot;)

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
     '((nnimap &quot;localDismail&quot;
               (nnimap-address &quot;localhost&quot;)
               (nnimap-stream network)
               (nnimap-server-port 143)
               )))</code></pre><p>Pretty cool stuff?  Right!?</p></div></article></section></main><footer><p>© 2020 Joshua Branson.  The text on this site is free culture under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International license.</p><p>This website is build with Haunt, a static site generator written in Guile Scheme.  Source code is <a href="https://notabug.org/jbranso/gnucode.me">available.</a></p><p>The color theme of this website is based off of the famous <a href="#3f3f3f" target="_blank">zenburn</a> theme.</p></footer></body>