On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 10:06:22AM -0700, Michael Elkins wrote: > >2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd > >like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and > >I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes > >horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that > >fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its > >own? Again, is there a best practice to follow? > > I believe offlineimap is what most people tend to use for offline IMAP > browsing. > > For message sending, you have your choice of either postponing messages > inside > of Mutt, and then recalling them later when you have Internet connectivity, > or > you can run a full-fledged MTA on your local machine that will send the > messages.
You don't need a full-fledged MTA for this (though that's certainly an option). You can also use a cut-down smtp client such as msmtp or esmtp. The msmtp source tarball includes the msmtpq shell script (in the scripts/ directory), which implements an offline message queue which caches messages that can't be sent because you're offline. The comments at the top of the msmtpq script explain how to configure mutt to use it. The esmtp source also includes a very similar script, but according to its author esmtp is no longer being maintained. Also, I find msmtp to be slightly more configurable (which comes in useful if you ever need to do unusual things like tunnelling your smtp connection over ssh). I've very recently switched over myself from esmtp to msmtp. You can either flush the queue when you're back online from the command line (try "msmtpq -h" for more information). Or, better still, set up a cron job that periodically tries to flush the queue, so that the mail will be sent as soon as you're back online. HTH, Toby -- Dr T. S. Cubitt Quantum Information Theory group Department of Mathematics University of Bristol United Kingdom email: ts...@cantab.net web: www.dr-qubit.org
