path: root/blog/offline-email.md



---
title: "Offline Email"
date: 2021-10-02
draft: false
---

First things first, I want to apologize for missing last month's status update.
The transition from high school and the summer break to the new rigor of college
has hit me and I still need time to adjust. I'll definitely be writing a status
update for October though!

Onto the post: Recently I came upon an older
[post](https://drewdevault.com/2021/05/17/aerc-with-mbsync-postfix.html) by Drew
Devault about how he uses mbsync and postfix for offline email, and I was
inspired to recreate it myself. My college will sometimes refuse to allow my old
T430 to connect to the WiFi, leaving me unable to respond to emails until I can
get back online. Plus, it seems like a really cool thing to do!

I deviated a little from Drew's post, specifically in the software that I used.
I ran into issues using postfix as my MTA, which I'll detail further on. I also
decided against using aerc as my MUA, because I've had consistent performance
issues with it and it still sometimes crashes when I change folders. My final
software list is:

- mbsync/isync: Syncing IMAP to a Maildir on my laptop
- neomutt: Mail Client
- msmtp: sending email

The first thing I attempted was setting up mbsync/isync to grab new messages
from my IMAP account at Migadu. This was fairly easy using Drew's post and the
Arch Wiki page as guides. My final `.mbsyncrc` can be found
[here](https://git.sr.ht/~muirrum/dotfiles/tree/master/.mbsyncrc). Then, I set
it up to sync every minute with a simple crontab:
```
* * * * * chronic mbsync -a
```

Next came neomutt, which I use to read and manipulate mail. This took some
finicky configuration, because I had to get it to read the right directory.
Specifically, it kept adding a second `/` to the end of my folder, which turned
out to be my fault adding a `/` to the end of my `set spoolfile=+` line in
.muttrc. You can see my final configuration file
[here](https://git.sr.ht/~muirrum/dotfiles/tree/master/.muttrc). I had some
issues where neomutt would use my linux username instead of my configured email
address as part of my `From` header, which I fixed by adding the following line
to my muttrc:
```
my_hdr From: Cara Salter <cara@devcara.com>
```

Finally, msmtp. I decided on msmtp against postfix because postfix kept erasing
my `From` header and sending an empty sender to Migadu. Msmtp "Just Worked", so
I went with that. It's possible I might try postfix again soon, especially since
I want to learn how it works, and when I do I'll be sure to write it up for this
blog.
---
title: "Offline Email"
date: 2021-10-02
draft: false
---

First things first, I want to apologize for missing last month's status update.
The transition from high school and the summer break to the new rigor of college
has hit me and I still need time to adjust. I'll definitely be writing a status
update for October though!

Onto the post: Recently I came upon an older
[post](https://drewdevault.com/2021/05/17/aerc-with-mbsync-postfix.html) by Drew
Devault about how he uses mbsync and postfix for offline email, and I was
inspired to recreate it myself. My college will sometimes refuse to allow my old
T430 to connect to the WiFi, leaving me unable to respond to emails until I can
get back online. Plus, it seems like a really cool thing to do!

I deviated a little from Drew's post, specifically in the software that I used.
I ran into issues using postfix as my MTA, which I'll detail further on. I also
decided against using aerc as my MUA, because I've had consistent performance
issues with it and it still sometimes crashes when I change folders. My final
software list is:

- mbsync/isync: Syncing IMAP to a Maildir on my laptop
- neomutt: Mail Client
- msmtp: sending email

The first thing I attempted was setting up mbsync/isync to grab new messages
from my IMAP account at Migadu. This was fairly easy using Drew's post and the
Arch Wiki page as guides. My final `.mbsyncrc` can be found
[here](https://git.sr.ht/~muirrum/dotfiles/tree/master/.mbsyncrc). Then, I set
it up to sync every minute with a simple crontab:
```
* * * * * chronic mbsync -a
```

Next came neomutt, which I use to read and manipulate mail. This took some
finicky configuration, because I had to get it to read the right directory.
Specifically, it kept adding a second `/` to the end of my folder, which turned
out to be my fault adding a `/` to the end of my `set spoolfile=+` line in
.muttrc. You can see my final configuration file
[here](https://git.sr.ht/~muirrum/dotfiles/tree/master/.muttrc). I had some
issues where neomutt would use my linux username instead of my configured email
address as part of my `From` header, which I fixed by adding the following line
to my muttrc:
```
my_hdr From: Cara Salter <cara@devcara.com>
```

Finally, msmtp. I decided on msmtp against postfix because postfix kept erasing
my `From` header and sending an empty sender to Migadu. Msmtp "Just Worked", so
I went with that. It's possible I might try postfix again soon, especially since
I want to learn how it works, and when I do I'll be sure to write it up for this
blog.