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+---
+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.