X-Git-Url: https://git.cworth.org/git?p=notmuch-wiki;a=blobdiff_plain;f=howto.mdwn;h=584d89df2e26b5087d1f19fcacb93485abc0e02e;hp=8706f5d4e837b506cca3948627776b8fb45913d3;hb=HEAD;hpb=7bfbd597aad2a2a5342b22447ce178e104765d9f diff --git a/howto.mdwn b/howto.mdwn index 8706f5d..584d89d 100644 --- a/howto.mdwn +++ b/howto.mdwn @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ [[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]] -#How to... +# How to... Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the various "third party" notmuch utilities. @@ -8,13 +8,19 @@ various "third party" notmuch utilities. ## **Receive mail** -Notmuch requires either [maildir -flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or a "mh"-style -maildirectory to operate on. Basically any setup in which each mail -is in a file of its own will work. Here are some generally -well-regarded mail retrieval tools: +Notmuch does not fetch mail for you. For that, you need to use an +external mail syncing utility. Some recommended utilities are listed +below. -* [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) - +Notmuch requires that every individual message be in its own file. +The well-supported [maildir](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or +"mh"-style storage formats are compatible with notmuch. Basically any +setup in which each mail is in a file of its own will work. The older +mbox mail store formats is not supported, but fortunately it is very +easy to [[convert mbox to maildir|howto/#mbox]] . The following +utilities support these formats: + +* [offlineimap](http://offlineimap.org/) - quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that will come in useful a bit later in our setup. Also supports "presynchook" and "postsynchook" command that will get run @@ -26,106 +32,63 @@ well-regarded mail retrieval tools: * [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) -* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/) +* [fetchmail](http://www.fetchmail.info/) -See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages. +* [muchsync](http://www.muchsync.org/) - replicate and synchronize + your notmuch database (mail and tags) across machines -## **Use notmuch from python** +* [lieer](https://github.com/gauteh/lieer) - Fast email-fetching and two-way tag + synchronization between notmuch and GMail (Note that lieer was formerly known + as gmailieer.) + +* [mujmap](https://github.com/elizagamedev/mujmap/) - synchronize + notmuch mail with a JMAP server, i.e. synchronizing tags with keywords + and mailboxes. Analogous to lieer, but for [JMAP](https://jmap.io) + supporting mail hosts. + +See more exhaustive list of [[software]] notmuch works with and the +[[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages. + + +## **Send mail** + +Notmuch does not send your mail. The frontends (MUAs) that utilize notmuch +does that. Often these MUAs use sendmail(8) to send your mail. -Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared -library. Extensive API documentation [is -available](http://notmuch.readthedocs.org/). +If you prefer a simpler solution like msmtp, first +[install and configure msmtp](http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/). -The bindings are very simple to use. As an example, given you have -the python bindings installed (or simply set your PYTHONPATH -environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python directory), -this snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given -expression: +Then create a symbolic link so that msmtp will be called instead of sendmail +when you press the keyboard shortcut to send your message. + + $ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/msmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail - >>> import notmuch - >>> db = notmuch.Database() - >>> query = db.create_query('tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed') - >>> list(query.search_messages()) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS - [...] ## **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags** -notmuch **since version 0.5** syncs maildir flags and respective -tags in both directions. This part applies only to notmuch prior to -version 0.5 (but please consider updating to a more recent version -of notmuch; in addition to maildir tag syncing, it contains many -useful new features, and several important bug fixes): - -Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen", -"replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their -mail across mail clients (a [maildir -flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part -of their filename). Notmuch will by default happily ignore those -flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in -support for synchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir -flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2 -ways in which you can achieve synchronization. - -[notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility -(based on the cnotmuch python bindings) that allows synchronization -in either direction, as well as pruning of deleted files. - -The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag -synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the -notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail -*id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can -be viewed as a [source diff in this git -repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee). +notmuch has the ability to synchronize maildir flags and respective tags in both +directions. For more information on maildir flags see the [maildir +page](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) and [[Special tags|special-tags]], and for the respective tags see your +notmuch configuration file. This feature is enabled by default, but if you don't +need it, it is simple to disable it with the 'notmuch config' command: -## **Using notmuch with Mutt** + $ notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false + +The maildir flags may, in turn, be synchronized with IMAP flags by another tool, +such as offlineimap. + +For safety reasons, and because +[[notmuch does not support delete operations|deleting]], notmuch does +not sync the "trashed" flag. For discussion on this topic please +refer to the mailing list. + +## **Use notmuch from python** + +See the [[Notmuch Library Language Bindings|bindings]] page. -Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool that can also be used *in conjunction* -with existing Mail User Agents (MUA) instead of replacing them. The advantage -of such mixed solutions is that users can benefit from notmuch features (such -as full-text search and thread reconstruction) without *having to* change -MUA. - -A popular geek MUA is [the Mutt e-mail client](http://www.mutt.org); -integrating notmuch with Mutt is not seamless, but fairly straightforward. -There are two principal possibilities, each with its own ups and downs: - -* Using mutt-notmuch, which will create a "virtual" maildir folder with - search results whenever a search is made. The upside is that you can - search all your folders simultanously; the downside is that your - modifications in the results listing do not carry over, also having - to switch folders comes with some more annoyances. - - An - [**how to use Notmuch with Mutt**](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) - has been written by Stefano Zacchiroli. Check out the - [howto](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) - for more information. - - (Note by the howto author: I've linked the howto from this wiki rather - than splicing it in, in order to avoid duplication of information. If you - think it would be better to have it here, feel free to copy the text - here. The howto is - [available](http://git.upsilon.cc/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=zack-homepage.git;a=history;f=blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt.mdwn) - in markdown syntax from the Git repository of my homepage.) - -* Using a simple macro that will emulate the "limit" mutt functionality - using notmuch. - - See the [**alternative notmuch integration**](http://log.or.cz/?p=228) - blog post for instructions and details, - or simply put these two macros to your muttrc: - - # 'L' performs a notmuch query, showing only the results - macro index L "unset wait_keyread -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern" - # 'a' shows all messages again (supersedes default binding) - macro index a "all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)" - - The upside (if you are used to working in the context of a single folder) - is that this really does use the limit functionality of mutt - and you are still in your original folder. - The downside is that this approach has scaling problems - and works well only for reasonably specific queries. +## **Using notmuch with Mutt** +See [[notmuch-mutt]]. ## **Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)** @@ -135,23 +98,23 @@ However, for users running with databases created in older versions of notmuch, these tags are missing in pre-existing messages and need to be added. One way to do this is as follows: - $ notmuch dump ~/out.nm - $ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak - $ notmuch new - $ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*' - $ notmuch restore --accumulate ~/out.nm + $ notmuch dump --output=$HOME/out.nm + $ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak + $ notmuch new + $ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*' + $ notmuch restore --accumulate --input=$HOME/out.nm At this point, one should run a sanity check on the tags, and if everything has merged correctly, the ~/.notmuch.bak directory is expendable, as is -~/out.nm. +$HOME/out.nm. -## **Dealing with mbox and other formats** +## **Dealing with mbox and other formats** notmuch by itself is unable to handle non-maildir mail archives. One tool to solve this is called mb2md. Assuming an mbox in ~/test.mbox and ones mail archives to be in ~/Mail, an invocation would look like - $ mb2md -s ~/test.mbox -d ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname + $ mb2md -s ~/test.mbox -d ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname Note that specifying the paths for -s and -d is necessary. This will create a new maildir in ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname from the mbox at ~/test.mbox. @@ -170,6 +133,52 @@ output. Using the instructions from [Gmane's site](http://gmane.org/export.php), we can download an mbox file, which we can then convert to maildir using mb2md or other utility. +Please note that mail delivered by Postfix will have envelope headers +that may cause notmuch to complain about "single-message mbox files". +Removing the first line from the message or passing it through +reformail will solve the problem. + ## **Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch** See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]]. + + +## **Index all your gpg-encrypted email** + +If you don't mind replacing your encrypted emails with cleartext versions and +re-indexing them, there are some scripts that do that at +[github](https://github.com/mmehnert/maildir-decrypt) . That would make sense +in a scenario where you have encrypted your hard disk anyway and are +comfortable with the security implications (and until notmuch can index +encrypted email itself). + +## **Index and search emails written in CJK scripts** + +CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) languages do not use spaces for word +separation. The full-text indexer (Xapian) must first perform word segmentation +on the sentence in its TermGenerator. Otherwise, large amount of long terms +will be included in the database, leading to extremely slow indexing and +ineffective searching with CJK search terms. + +Xapian supports [N-gram](https://xapian.org/docs/sourcedoc/html/classXapian_1_1TermGenerator.html) +term generator [since 2011](https://u7fa9.org/memo/HEAD/archives/2012-06/2012-06-01.rst) +to as a simple substitute for word segmentation. It can be turned on by +setting the environment variable + + $ export XAPIAN_CJK_NGRAM=1 + $ notmuch new + +For existing databases, one can reindex the database (since notmuch 0.26) +with + + $ export XAPIAN_CJK_NGRAM=1 + $ notmuch reindex '*' + +Xapian has an on-going [pull-request](https://github.com/xapian/xapian/pull/114) +that adds support for real CJK word-segmentation based on the ICU library. +When it gets merged, one probably will gets better indexing and searching +results with this new method. + +## Translations + +- A translation of this page into [[Russian|howto-ru]]