The following guidelines show how I have accomplished this. It isn't
perfect, but it works pretty well, and allows me to access notmuch on
my home computer, using only an emacs client on my netbook or work
-computer, a trivial shell script, a few settings in my .emacs, and
-ssh.
-
-Note that this is all something of a hack, and future versions of
-notmuch will likely make all of these steps much more
-transparent. I'll note particularly which things should become
-unneccessary with future version. At the moment though, this does
-work, and might enable some of you to use notmuch away from your
-primary computer.
+computer, a trivial shell script, a few settings in my .emacs, and a
+couple of common unix utilities (ssh and dtach).
##What you will need##
You will need to have the following items in place:
1. a working notmuch on one computer (let's call that computer
-"server"). The notmuch should be at least version 0.2.
+"server").
2. a working notmuch emacs interface on another computer (let's call
that computer "client")
-3. password-free login (public key authentication) from client to
-server. [Here](http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/) is a
+3. `ssh` and `dtach` on your client computer. (TODO: Make dtach
+optional, or allow screen or tmux to be used instead.)
+4. password-free login (public key authentication) from client to
+server. [Here](http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/152) is a
good page on how to set it up.
-4. a reasonably fast connection. (This isn't really *neccessary*, but
+5. a reasonably fast connection. (This isn't really *neccessary*, but
if your connection is too slow, this won't be very pleasant to use,
and certainly won't seem transparent.)
-##Write a simple wrapper shell script##
-Now we will need to write a simple shell script that replaces the
-call to the notmuch binary with a call to notmuch over ssh.
-
-Note that this shell script also pauses briefly after every ten search
-entries. This is currently necessary so that the emacs process-filter
-doesn't chop off messages. It's an obvious hack, and hopefully won't
-be necessary in the furture.
-
- #!/usr/bin/env bash
-
- SSH_BIN="/path/to/ssh/on/client"
- USER="user_name"
- HOST="server_name"
- NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN="/path/to/notmuch/on/server"
-
- if [ $1 = "search" ]; then
- COUNT=0;
- OUT=`$SSH_BIN $USER@$HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@`
- echo "$OUT" | while read line; do
- COUNT=`expr $COUNT + 1`
- echo "$line";
- if [ $COUNT = 10 ]; then
- sleep 0.1;
- fi
- done
- else
- $SSH_BIN $USER@$HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@
- fi
-
-Save this to a file, "remote-notmuch.sh", in your path.
-
-Now you can run "remote-notmuch.sh new". You can call the script
-anything you like. If you don't have a notmuch instance on your client
-computer, you can even call it "notmuch" and have totally transparent
-usage. (Since I run "new" from an emacs keybinding, I've never
-bothered with this renaming.)
-
-##Configure your emacs client##
-Add the following to your .emacs (this is on your client machine):
+##Write a wrapper shell script##
- (setq notmuch-command "/path/to/your/remote-notmuch.sh")
+Now we will need to write a simple shell script that does two things:
-At least until 0.3 or 0.4, you will also need to add the following. It
-should become unnecessary pretty soon though:
+1. replaces the call to the notmuch binary with a call to notmuch
+over ssh.
+2. sets up a running, detached, ssh connection to the server, so that
+future calls can reuse the socket.
- (setq notmuch-remote-host "user_name@server_name")
+ #!/usr/bin/env bash
- (defadvice notmuch-show-get-filename (around
- notmuch-show-get-remote-filename
- activate)
- (setq ad-return-value (concat "/ssh:"
- notmuch-remote-host
- ":"
- ad-do-it)))
-
-The purpose of these lines is to allow emacs to have access to the raw
-files, via TRAMP, so that it can extract attachments and parse
-HTML. Work is afoot to make notmuch handle these tasks itself, so this
-part should soon be unecessary.
+ SSH_BIN="ssh"
+ USER="example_user"
+ SSH_HOST="example.com"
+ SSH_SOCKET="/tmp/notmuch_ssh.socket"
+ NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN="notmuch"
+ DTACH="dtach"
+ DTACH_SOCKET="/tmp/notmuch_dtach.socket"
+
+ check_for_socket ()
+ {
+ [ -S "${SSH_SOCKET}" ]
+ }
+
+ check_if_socket_alive ()
+ {
+ timeout 1 $SSH_BIN -S ${SSH_SOCKET} $USER@$SSH_HOST true > /dev/null
+ }
+
+ start_socket ()
+ {
+ dtach_command="${DTACH} -n ${DTACH_SOCKET} ${SSH_BIN} -M -S ${SSH_SOCKET} ${USER}@${SSH_HOST}"
+ command -v ${DTACH} &>/dev/null && ${dtach_command} ||
+ echo "${DTACH} not installed"
+ }
+
+ notmuch_run ()
+ {
+ check_for_socket || start_socket
+ CMD=$1
+ shift
+ printf -v ARGS "%q " "$@"
+ $SSH_BIN -S $SSH_SOCKET $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN ${CMD} ${ARGS}
+ }
+
+ notmuch_run $@
-##A tip to speed things up##
-If you have openssh >= 0.4, you can make use of the "ControlMaster"
-feature. This allows you to reuse an existing connection. Therefore
-if you keep a connection open, you won't have to authenticate every
-time.
+
+Save this to a file, "remote-notmuch.sh", in your path.
-Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config file:
+Now you can run "remote-notmuch.sh new". You can call the script
+anything you like. I actually have $HOME/bin/notmuch linked to that
+script, so I can have transparent
+usage.
- Host server_name
- ControlMaster auto
- ControlPath ~/.ssh/master0%r@%h:%p
-
-You can also se the Host to "*", if you want to use it for all
-connections. I usually have an interactive ssh connection to my home
-computer open, so I don't need to do anything more. But if not, you
-can always run:
+##Configure your emacs client##
- ssh -Nf server_name
+The only thing you need to do is tell your emacs client to use the
+script. Add the following to your .emacs (this is on your client
+machine):
-which will open up a background connection, which you can then reuse
-for all of your notmuch commands.
+ (setq notmuch-command "/path/to/your/remote-notmuch.sh")
##Problems##
-Some things won't work perfectly, and there might be some unexpected
+Some things probably won't work perfectly, and there might be some unexpected
mismatches between normal usage and this sort of usage. If you're
using this approach and run into any problems, please feel free to
list them here. And, of course, if you improve on any of these
approaches, please do edit this page and let people know!
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projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff