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.
+[[Here|remotewrapper]] is a version that does not require dtach.)
+
+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 wrapper shell script##
+
Now we will need to write a simple shell script that does two things:
1. replaces the call to the notmuch binary with a call to notmuch
over ssh.
-2. offers, via the "--get" option, a utility for downloading raw
-message text over scp (this is necessary for attachments) and
-caching for future use.
-
-Note that this shell script also pauses briefly after every message
-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"
- SSH_HOST="server_name"
- NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN="/path/to/notmuch/on/server"
- CACHE=${HOME}/.notmuch-cache.d
-
- notmuch_run ()
- {
- if [ $1 = "search" ]; then
- OUT=$($SSH_BIN $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@)
- echo "$OUT" | while read line; do
- echo "$line";
- sleep 0.1;
- done
- else
- $SSH_BIN $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@
- fi
- }
-
- check_for_file_name ()
- {
- [ -f "${CACHE}/${1}" ]
- }
-
- fetch_file ()
- {
- FILE_DIR="${CACHE}/$(dirname ${1})"
- [ -d "${FILE_DIR}" ] || mkdir -p "${FILE_DIR}"
- scp ${SSH_HOST}:${1} "${FILE_DIR}" > /dev/null 2>&1
- retcode="${?}"
- if [ "${retcode}" -ne "0" ]; then
- echo "Failed to fetch file" 1>&2
- exit ${retcode}
- fi
- }
-
- notmuch_get ()
- {
- [ -d "${CACHE}" ] || mkdir -p "${CACHE}"
-
- check_for_file_name ||
- fetch_file ${1} &&
- printf "${CACHE}/${1}\n"
- }
-
- if [ ${1} = "--get" ]; then
- notmuch_get $2
- else
- notmuch_run $@
- fi
+
+2. sets up a running, detached, ssh connection to the server, so that
+future calls can reuse the socket.
+
+ #!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+ SSH_BIN="ssh"
+ USER="example_user"
+ SSH_HOST="example.com"
+ SOCKET_DIR="/tmp/notmuch_$(id -u)"
+ SSH_SOCKET="${SOCKET_DIR}/ssh.socket"
+ NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN="notmuch"
+ DTACH="/usr/bin/dtach"
+ DTACH_SOCKET="${SOCKET_DIR}/dtach.socket"
+
+ check_for_socket_dir ()
+ {
+ [ -d "${SOCKET_DIR}" ]
+ }
+
+ check_socket_dir_owner_and_perm ()
+ {
+ [ "$(stat -c %U ${SOCKET_DIR})" = "$(whoami)" ] &&
+ [ "$(stat -c %a ${SOCKET_DIR})" = "700" ]
+ }
+
+ create_socket_dir ()
+ {
+ mkdir "${SOCKET_DIR}"
+ chmod 700 "${SOCKET_DIR}"
+ }
+
+ check_for_socket ()
+ {
+ [ -S "${SSH_SOCKET}" ]
+ }
+
+ start_socket ()
+ {
+ dtach_command="${DTACH} -n ${DTACH_SOCKET} ${SSH_BIN} -M -S ${SSH_SOCKET} ${USER}@${SSH_HOST}"
+ command -v ${DTACH} &>/dev/null && ${dtach_command}
+ }
+
+ notmuch_run ()
+ {
+ if check_for_socket_dir; then
+ if check_socket_dir_owner_and_perm; then
+ if ! check_for_socket; then
+ start_socket
+ fi
+ else echo "Wrong permissions of ${SOCKET_DIR}" >&2
+ exit 1
+ fi
+ elif create_socket_dir; then
+ start_socket
+ else
+ exit 1
+ fi
+ printf -v ARGS "%q " "$@"
+ $SSH_BIN -S $SSH_SOCKET $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN ${ARGS}
+ }
+
+ notmuch_run "$@"
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.)
+anything you like. I actually have $HOME/bin/notmuch linked to that
+script, so I can have transparent
+usage.
##Configure your emacs client##
-Add the following to your .emacs (this is on your client machine):
+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):
(setq notmuch-command "/path/to/your/remote-notmuch.sh")
-Now add the following, to overwrite the way in which notmuch gets raw
-message text.
-
- (defun notmuch-show-get-filename ()
- (let* ((orig-filename (notmuch-show-get-prop :filename))
- (retvalue (shell-command-to-string (concat notmuch-command
- " --get "
- orig-filename))))
- (replace-regexp-in-string "\n" "" retvalue)))
-
-This will will use the "--get" option of the above
-script. Note that it only has to do this for attachments or for
-viewing the raw file, and only the first time. After that, it is
-cached.
-
-##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.
-
-Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config file:
-
- Host server_name
- ControlMaster auto
- ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%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:
-
- ssh -Nf server_name
-
-which will open up a background connection, which you can then reuse
-for all of your notmuch commands.
-
##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 / obsolete / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff