OfflineIMAP"> ]> OfflineIMAP Manual
jgoerzen@complete.org
JohnGoerzen $Date: 2003-01-08 09:08:01 -0600 (Wed, 08 Jan 2003) $ offlineimap 1 John Goerzen OfflineIMAP Powerful IMAP/Maildir synchronization and reader support offlineimap -1 -P profiledir -a accountlist -c configfile -d debugtype[,...] -o -u interface offlineimap -h--help Description &OfflineIMAP; is a tool to simplify your e-mail reading. With &OfflineIMAP;, you can read the same mailbox from multiple computers. You get a current copy of your messages on each computer, and changes you make one place will be visible on all other systems. For instance, you can delete a message on your home computer, and it will appear deleted on your work computer as well. &OfflineIMAP; is also useful if you want to use a mail reader that does not have IMAP support, has poor IMAP support, or does not provide disconnected operation. &OfflineIMAP; is FAST; it synchronizes my two accounts with over 50 folders in 3 seconds. Other similar tools might take over a minute, and achieve a less-reliable result. Some mail readers can take over 10 minutes to do the same thing, and some don't even support it at all. Unlike other mail tools, &OfflineIMAP; features a multi-threaded synchronization algorithm that can dramatically speed up performance in many situations by synchronizing several different things simultaneously. &OfflineIMAP; is FLEXIBLE; you can customize which folders are synced via regular expressions, lists, or Python expressions; a versatile and comprehensive configuration file is used to control behavior; two user interfaces are built-in; fine-tuning of synchronization performance is possible; internal or external automation is supported; SSL and PREAUTH tunnels are both supported; offline (or "unplugged") reading is supported; and esoteric IMAP features are supported to ensure compatibility with the widest variety of IMAP servers. &OfflineIMAP; is SAFE; it uses an algorithm designed to prevent mail loss at all costs. Because of the design of this algorithm, even programming errors should not result in loss of mail. I am so confident in the algorithm that I use my own personal and work accounts for testing of &OfflineIMAP; pre-release, development, and beta releases. Of course, legally speaking, &OfflineIMAP; comes with no warranty, so I am not responsible if this turns out to be wrong. Method of Operation &OfflineIMAP; operates by maintaining a hierarchy of mail folders in Maildir format locally. Your own mail reader will read mail from this tree, and need never know that the mail comes from IMAP. &OfflineIMAP; will detect changes to the mail folders on your IMAP server and your own computer and bi-directionally synchronize them, copying, marking, and deleting messages as necessary. Quick Start If you have already installed &OfflineIMAP; system-wide, or your system adminstrator has done that for you, your task for setting up &OfflineIMAP; for the first time is quite simple. You just need to set up your configuration file, make your folder directory, and run it! You can quickly set up your configuration file. The distribution includes a file offlineimap.conf.minimal (Debian users may find this at /usr/share/doc/offlineimap/examples/offlineimap.conf.minimal) that is a basic example of setting of &OfflineIMAP;. You can simply copy this file into your home directory and name it .offlineimaprc (note the leading period). A command such as cp offlineimap.conf.minimal ~/.offlineimaprc will do it. Or, if you prefer, you can just copy this text to ~/.offlineimaprc: [general] accounts = Test [Test] localfolders = ~/Test remotehost = examplehost remoteuser = jgoerzen Now, edit the ~/.offlineimaprc file with your favorite editor. All you have to do is specify a directory for your folders to be in (on the localfolders line), the host name of your IMAP server (on the remotehost line), and your login name on the remote (on the remoteuser line). That's it! To run &OfflineIMAP;, you just have to say offlineimap -- it will fire up, ask you for a login password if necessary, synchronize your folders, and exit. See? You can just throw away the rest of this finely-crafted, perfectly-honed manual! Of course, if you want to see how you can make &OfflineIMAP; FIVE TIMES FASTER FOR JUST $19.95 (err, well, $0), you have to read on! Installation If you are reading this document via the "man" command, it is likely that you have no installation tasks to perform; your system administrator has already installed it. If you need to install it yourself, you have three options: a system-wide installation with Debian, system-wide installation with other systems, and a single-user installation. You can download the latest version of &OfflineIMAP; from the &OfflineIMAP; website. Prerequisites In order to use &OfflineIMAP;, you need to have these conditions satisfied: Your mail server must support IMAP. Most Internet Service Providers and corporate networks do, and most operating systems have an IMAP implementation readily available. You must have Python version 2.2.1 or above installed. If you are running on Debian GNU/Linux, this requirement will automatically be taken care of for you. If you do not have Python already, check with your system administrator or operating system vendor; or, download it from the Python website. If you intend to use the Tk interface, you must have Tkinter (python-tk) installed. If you intend to use the SSL interface, your Python must have been built with SSL support. Have a mail reader that supports the Maildir mailbox format. Most modern mail readers have this support built-in, so you can choose from a wide variety of mail servers. This format is also known as the "qmail" format, so any mail reader compatible with it will work with &OfflineIMAP;. System-Wide Installation, Debian If you are tracking Debian unstable, you may install &OfflineIMAP; by simply running the following command as root: apt-get install offlineimap If you are not tracking Debian unstable, download the Debian .deb package from the &OfflineIMAP; website and then run dpkg -i to install the downloaded package. Then, skip to below. You will type offlineimap to invoke the program. System-Wide Installation, Other Download the tar.gz version of the package from the website. Then run these commands, making sure that you are the "root" user first: tar -zxvf offlineimap_x.y.z.tar.gz cd offlineimap-x.y.z python2.2 setup.py install On some systems, you will need to use python instead of python2.2. Next, proceed to below. You will type offlineimap to invoke the program. Single-Account Installation Download the tar.gz version of the package from the website. Then run these commands: tar -zxvf offlineimap_x.y.z.tar.gz cd offlineimap-x.y.z When you want to run &OfflineIMAP;, you will issue the cd command as above and then type ./offlineimap.py; there is no installation step necessary. Configruation &OfflineIMAP; is regulated by a configuration file that is normally stored in ~/.offlineimaprc. &OfflineIMAP; ships with a file named offlineimap.conf that you should copy to that location and then edit. This file is vital to proper operation of the system; it sets everything you need to run &OfflineIMAP;. Full documentation for the configuration file is included within the sample file. &OfflineIMAP; also ships a file named offlineimap.conf.minimal that you can also try. It's useful if you want to get started with the most basic feature set, and you can read about other features later with offlineimap.conf. Options Most configuration is done via the configuration file. Nevertheless, there are a few command-line options that you may set for &OfflineIMAP;. OfflineIMAP arguments -1 Disable most multithreading operations and use solely a single-connection sync. This effectively sets the maxsyncaccounts and all maxconnections configuration file variables to 1. -P profiledir Sets &OfflineIMAP; into profile mode. The program will create profiledir (it must not already exist). As it runs, Python profiling information about each thread is logged into profiledir. Please note: This option is present for debugging and optimization only, and should NOT be used unless you have a specific reason to do so. It will significantly slow program performance, may reduce reliability, and can generate huge amounts of data. You must use the option when you use . -a accountlist Overrides the accounts option in the general section of the configuration file. You might use this to exclude certain accounts, or to sync some accounts that you normally prefer not to. Separate the accounts by commas, and use no embedded spaces. -c configfile Specifies a configuration file to use in lieu of the default, ~/.offlineimaprc. -d debugtype[,...] Enables debugging for OfflineIMAP. This is useful if you are trying to track down a malfunction or figure out what is going on under the hood. I suggest that you use this with to make the results more sensible. requires one or more debugtypes, separated by commas. These define what exactly will be debugged, and include two options: imap and maildir. The imap option will enable IMAP protocol stream and parsing debugging. Note that the output may contain passwords, so take care to remove that from the debugging output before sending it to anyone else. The maildir option will enable debugging for certain Maildir operations. -o Run only once, ignoring all autorefresh settings in the configuration file. -h --help Show summary of options. -u interface Specifies an alternative user interface module to use. This overrides the defailt specified in the configuration file. The pre-defined options are listed in the User Interfaces section. User Interfaces &OfflineIMAP; has a pluggable user interface system that lets you choose how the program communicates information to you. There are two graphical interfaces, two terminal interfaces, and two noninteractive interfaces suitable for scripting or logging purposes. The ui option in the configuration file specifies user interface preferences. The command-line option can override the configuration file setting. The available values for the configuration file or command-line are described in this section. Tk.Blinkenlights Tk.Blinkenlights is an interface designed to be sleek, fun to watch, and informative of the overall picture of what &OfflineIMAP; is doing. I consider it to be the best general-purpose interface in &OfflineIMAP;. Tk.Blinkenlights contains, by default, a small window with a row of LEDs, a small log, and a row of command buttons. The total size of the window is very small, so it uses little desktop space, yet it is quite functional. The optional, toggleable, log shows more detail about what is happening and is color-coded to match the color of the lights. Tk.Blinkenlights is the only user interface that has configurable parameters; see the example offlineimap.conf for more details. Each light in the Blinkenlights interface represents a thread of execution -- that is, a particular task that &OfflineIMAP; is performing right now. The colors indicate what task the particular thread is performing, and are as follows: Blinkenlights Colors Black indicates that this light's thread has terminated; it will light up again later when new threads start up. So, black indicates no activity. Red (Meaning 1) is the color of the main program's thread, which basically does nothing but monitor the others. It might remind you of HAL 9000 in 2001. Gray indicates that the thread is establishing a new connection to the IMAP server. Purple is the color of an account synchronization thread that is monitoring the progress of the folders in that account (not generating any I/O). Cyan indicates that the thread is syncing a folder. Green means that a folder's message list is being loaded. Blue is the color of a message synchronization controller thread. Orange indicates that an actual message is being copied. (We use fuschia for fake messages.) Red (meaning 2) indicates that a message is being deleted. Yellow / bright orange indicates that message flags are being added. Pink / bright red indicates that message flags are being removed. Red / Black Flashing corresponds to the countdown timer that runs between synchronizations. The name of this interfaces derives from a bit of computer history. Eric Raymond's Jargon File defines blinkenlights, in part, as:
Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a dinosaur. Now that dinosaurs are rare, this term usually refers to status lights on a modem, network hub, or the like. This term derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as follows: ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
Curses.Blinkenlights Curses.Blinkenlights is an interface very similar to Tk.Blinkenlights, but is designed to be run in a console window (an xterm, Linux virtual terminal, etc.) Since it doesn't have access to graphics, it isn't quite as pretty, but it still gets the job done. Please see the Tk.Blinkenlights section above for more information about the colors used in this interface. Tk.VerboseUI Tk.VerboseUI (formerly known as Tk.TkUI) is a graphical interface that presents a variable-sized window. In the window, each currently-executing thread has a section where its name and current status are displayed. This interface is best suited to people running on slower connections, as you get a lot of detail, but for fast connections, the detail may go by too quickly to be useful. People with fast connections may wish to use Tk.Blinkenlights instead. TTY.TTYUI TTY.TTYUI interface is for people running in basic, non-color terminals. It prints out basic status messages and is generally friendly to use on a console or xterm. Noninteractive.Basic Noninteractive.Basic is designed for situations in which &OfflineIMAP; will be run non-attended and the status of its execution will be logged. You might use it, for instance, to have the system run automatically and e-mail you the results of the synchronization. This user interface is not capable of reading a password from the keyboard; account passwords must be specified using one of the configuration file options. Noninteractive.Quiet Noninteractive.Quiet is designed for non-attended running in situations where normal status messages are not desired. It will output nothing except errors and serious warnings. Like Noninteractive.Basic, this user interface is not capable of reading a password from the keyboard; account passwords must be specified using one of the configuration file options. Examples Here are some example configurations for various situations. Please e-mail any other examples you have that may be useful to me. Multiple Accounts with Mutt This example shows you how to set up &OfflineIMAP; to synchronize multiple accounts with the mutt mail reader. Start by creating a directory to hold your folders by running mkdir ~/Mail. Then, in your ~/.offlineimaprc, specify: accounts = Personal, Work Make sure that you have both a [Personal] and a [Work] section, each with different localfolder path names. Also, make sure to enable [mbnames]. In each account section, write something like this: localfolders = ~/Mail/Personal Finally, add these lines to your ~/.muttrc: source ~/path-to-mbnames-muttrc-mailboxes folder-hook Personal set from="youremail@personal.com" folder-hook Work set from="youremail@work.com" set mbox_type=Maildir set folder=$HOME/Mail spoolfile=+Personal/INBOX That's it! UW-IMAPD and References Some users with a UW-IMAPD server need to use &OfflineIMAP;'s "reference" feature to get at their mailboxes, specifying a reference of "~/Mail" or "#mh/" depending on the configuration. The below configuration from docwhat@gerf.org shows using a reference of Mail, a nametrans that strips the leading Mail/ off incoming folder names, and a folderfilter that limits the folders synced to just three. [Gerf] localfolders = ~/Mail remotehost = gerf.org ssl = yes remoteuser = docwhat reference = Mail # Trims off the preceeding Mail on all the folder names. nametrans = lambda foldername: \ re.sub('^Mail/', '', foldername) # Yeah, you have to mention the Mail dir, even though it # would seem intuitive that reference would trim it. folderfilter = lambda foldername: foldername in [ 'Mail/INBOX', 'Mail/list/zaurus-general', 'Mail/list/zaurus-dev', ] maxconnections = 1 holdconnectionopen = no pythonfile Configuration File Option You can have &OfflineIMAP; load up a Python file before evaluating the configuration file options that are Python expressions. This example is based on one supplied by Tommi Virtanen for this feature. In ~/.offlineimap.rc, he adds these options: [general] pythonfile=~/.offlineimap.py [foo] foldersort=mycmp Then, the ~/.offlineimap.py file will contain: prioritized = ['INBOX', 'personal', 'announce', 'list'] def mycmp(x, y): for prefix in prioritized: if x.startswith(prefix): return -1 elif y.startswith(prefix): return +1 return cmp(x, y) def test_mycmp(): import os, os.path folders=os.listdir(os.path.expanduser('~/data/mail/tv@hq.yok.utu.fi')) folders.sort(mycmp) print folders This code snippet illustrates how the foldersort option can be customized with a Python function from the pythonfile to always synchronize certain folders first. See Also This is also a test. Foo bar.