#mbsync — Public Fediverse posts

PSA: I don't know who else needs to know this but if you're trying to get #neomutt working in #ubuntu but #mbsync is failing then take a look at #apparmor. It took me about an hour to figure this out & another hour to find a fix (found a great post!). Have had neomutt working in #CachyOS for a long time without issue, but on a spare laptop with Ubuntu it was a no-go for a painful few hours. No idea why the terminal or OS doesnt flag apparmor as a poss culprit. Guess I need to learn more about AA

PSA: I don't know who else needs to know this but if you're trying to get #neomutt working in #ubuntu but #mbsync is failing then take a look at #apparmor. It took me about an hour to figure this out & another hour to find a fix (found a great post!). Have had neomutt working in #CachyOS for a long time without issue, but on a spare laptop with Ubuntu it was a no-go for a painful few hours. No idea why the terminal or OS doesnt flag apparmor as a poss culprit. Guess I need to learn more about AA

This week #kanchilug meet we discussed about syncing mail to local system using #mbsync (from #isync package). #archwiki is the one we relayed on and it worked flawlessly

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Isync

This week #kanchilug meet we discussed about syncing mail to local system using #mbsync (from #isync package). #archwiki is the one we relayed on and it worked flawlessly

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Isync

today, i set up emacs gnus as mail client for my work email at microsoft outlook. an administrator of our microsoft-tenant had to approve my client-id and -secret beforehand.

- emacs mail reader: gnus (with some custom elisp)
- sasl plugin kdexoauth2 for cyrus sasl method
- pizauth as oauth2 daemon
- msmtp for smtp
- isync / mbsync for imap

my custom elisp code ensures that pizauth server is running; opens the approval-URL in my browser; and asks me if i have clicked the button in the browser, before it fetches the emails.

as a final step, i'm going to set up mu as gnus search backend. just like i do for my personal emails on my personal computer.

#emacs #gnus #mail #email #outlook #microsoft #oauth #oauth2 #mbsync #isync #msmtp

Usually i am pretty amazed how much time i save while configuring my systems with NixOS/HomeManager. But this time i am trying to set up mbsync/mu/mu4e stack and i think some options are scattered all over.

I got a basic setup running now, but where do i put for example the inbox path if it differs from defaults?

#NixOS #HomeManager #Emacs #mu4e #MBSync

Usually i am pretty amazed how much time i save while configuring my systems with NixOS/HomeManager. But this time i am trying to set up mbsync/mu/mu4e stack and i think some options are scattered all over.

I got a basic setup running now, but where do i put for example the inbox path if it differs from defaults?

#NixOS #HomeManager #Emacs #mu4e #MBSync

BTW this is is my current mail setup using #niri + #danklinux  (on top of Fedora on M1 Air).  All the visual peace of  a console client but still  offering preview one shortcut away.

- #mbsync maintains my IMAP boxes synced locally
- #aerc friendly console mail client
- #qutebrowser to preview HTML when I really need to

BTW this is is my current mail setup using #niri + #danklinux  (on top of Fedora on M1 Air).  All the visual peace of  a console client but still  offering preview one shortcut away.

- #mbsync maintains my IMAP boxes synced locally
- #aerc friendly console mail client
- #qutebrowser to preview HTML when I really need to

OK, I'm going to give it another try to make #emacs, #msmtp, #mbsync, #notmuch work for taming email. I'm looking (sternly 😡 ) at you, gmail forced down my throat by my <insert-employer-entity-here>...

My ideal setup would likely be simple: edit messages from emacs, store messages locally, fuzzy search available, viewing email threads, and completion for filling *to* and *from* fields.

How hard could it be? -- Wish me luck.

OK, I'm going to give it another try to make #emacs, #msmtp, #mbsync, #notmuch work for taming email. I'm looking (sternly 😡 ) at you, gmail forced down my throat by my <insert-employer-entity-here>...

My ideal setup would likely be simple: edit messages from emacs, store messages locally, fuzzy search available, viewing email threads, and completion for filling *to* and *from* fields.

How hard could it be? -- Wish me luck.

Migrate #EMail from server A, to server B.
- #Thunderbird and drag them.
- #isync #mbsync, and read docs
- #imapsync, setup an Arch VM, because it's packaged there (as opposed to Debian/Ubuntu).

I wrote a new blog post about how to setup #neomutt #email with Office 365, using #mbsync #msmtp and #notmuch, along with how to make it work with multiple accounts:

https://cosroe.com/2025/04/neomutt-notmuch-mbsync.html

For quite some time I have sporadically run #mbsync configured to pull several IMAP accounts and it indeed brings in emails. BUT:

- #maildir format is weird. What's with the cur/new/tmp structure?
- why the heck is the hostname in the filenames?
- Feels like it doesn't like to be migrated and be continued from somewhere else.
- two-way sync seems to be kinda broken (not needed anyway)
- Holy cow is the configuration unnecessarily verbose and complicated 🤯 (should be well #nix-able though)

For quite some time I have sporadically run #mbsync configured to pull several IMAP accounts and it indeed brings in emails. BUT:

- #maildir format is weird. What's with the cur/new/tmp structure?
- why the heck is the hostname in the filenames?
- Feels like it doesn't like to be migrated and be continued from somewhere else.
- two-way sync seems to be kinda broken (not needed anyway)
- Holy cow is the configuration unnecessarily verbose and complicated 🤯 (should be well #nix-able though)

#homelab What didn't go as well:
- Needed flatpaks & appimages for more recent versions than in #leap but I'll live. I'm not ready for #tumbleweed for a daily driver.
- Using the Vorta GUI for Borg backup under sudo. Kludged it with waypipe.
- offlineimap (python2). There's a Py3 version but it was a no go even trying to use the git repo. Switched to #mbsync.
- Fighting the firewall. Default on. Pulled my hair out for a while with mDNS etc.
- atuin uses sqlite3 which behaves badly on ZFS.

#homelab What didn't go as well:
- Needed flatpaks & appimages for more recent versions than in #leap but I'll live. I'm not ready for #tumbleweed for a daily driver.
- Using the Vorta GUI for Borg backup under sudo. Kludged it with waypipe.
- offlineimap (python2). There's a Py3 version but it was a no go even trying to use the git repo. Switched to #mbsync.
- Fighting the firewall. Default on. Pulled my hair out for a while with mDNS etc.
- atuin uses sqlite3 which behaves badly on ZFS.

Spass: #mbsync synct alle Mailboxen. Beim nächsten Aufruf beschwert es sich. dasdie Foldertiefe zu hoch ist (vuiele Folder in der Hiearchie).... und will nimmer ;)

After a lot of other stuff I’m back at it. TIL that php ENUMS are kind of hard to do assertions on in PHPUnit. assertSame and assertEquals both don’t work.

What I can do though is this:
$this->assertSame(SyncStatus::Pending->value, $syncStatusAfter->value);
#buildinpublic #mbsync

After many hours of familystuff, I’m back trying to see why one of the tests is still failing, now that my sidequest about the seeder is complete. #buildinpublic #mbsync

I’m working on a little side quest atm. I’m creating a database seeder that automatically adds a user to the db so that I can reset the db quicker. It’s pretty easy with laravel and I love the distinction between migrations (schema changes) and seeders (data additions) #buildinpublic #mbsync

Today I’m spending time in the library working on my notes. I thought I’d try to do a #buildinpublic kind of thing, since it was fun the last couple of days to post about what I’m doing as regards to #mbsync. so I’m going to try this here, too. Hashtags will be #buildinpublic and #zknstuff.

#buildinpublic #mbsync That’s it for today. Lots of little things done. Learned some stuff and realized a lot of things about how to structure the sync state. This’ll be the most important part of the app, so it’s alright if it takes some time and some attempts to get right.

#buildinpublic #mbsync Alright. The test for a post that is unchanged does the ting and I created already a similar test for a newly created post. However I don’t like how the sync status is saved in the db. Or rather how differnt kinds of logic are reduced to only the sync state. We need to differentiate between the state of the sync itself and (pending/synchronized/error) and what we sync ... https://blog.martin-haehnel.de/2024/04/13/buildinpublic-mbsync-alright.html

#buildinpublic #mbsync So. Me the last few hours:

"I’m not distracted, I’m on a side quest.
— https://beige.party/@RickiTarr/112264314660393539"

Where was I? Oh yes. Refactoring/Writing a test for the markForSync method. I have the starting point for the test, which creates a post using a factory and writes that same data to disk. Now we need to run the post through our method and see that the posts sync_status is not marked for creation/update/deletion.

#buildinpublic #mbsync Ugh. And even more problems. I use the laravel validated dto package, because I like working with DTOs and getting validation “for free” is nice. However:

If a post doesn’t have a category the mb api returns an empty array. Fine. I can validate this as 'categories' => ['present', 'array'],, but interestingly the DTOs saves this internally as null. And guess what? categories in not nullable anymore when I try to save a post with empty categories to the db. Hmpf.

I've finally found a setup for getting mail from #Office365 using #OAUTH2 with #mbsync that works for me:

https://simondobson.org/2024/02/03/getting-email/

Thanks @simoninireland!

Helped a friend migrate mail providers yesterday, suggesting server1→local→server2 via #mbsync. Only to find out old mails were being shown as from today in Apple mail clients.

Thankfully a solution exists: CopyArrivalDate! (disabled by default 😅)

https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/isync/mbsync.1.en.html#CopyArrivalDate

I'm syncing my mail manually for 2 years now. Switched from #OfflineIMAP to #mbsync in the meantime. I'm still not sure if it's good or bad or neutral that it says:

Maildir warning: ignoring INBOX

I wonder what to do with #mbsync's .mbsyncstate files. Put them into :git: #git or even :gitannex: #gitAnnex as well? 🤔 Are those merge conflict-prone?

Also it seems to not like special chars like umlauts in the folder names and escapes them weirdly, e.g. 'ü' → '&APw-'.

The files are indeed .eml but they're not suffixed with .eml, so :thunderbird: #Thunderbird is confused opening them and makes a new empty mail with that file as attachment 🤦‍♂️

Thanks for all the suggestions. Maildir format is the term I was looking for, apparently. I'm now on a journey trying #mbsync. It's amazing so far and works very well with :gitannex: #gitAnnex. The indexing and search is the next step then.

mbsync puts local info like the sync time and the hostname into the Maildir email files. Might make a mess when running mbsync from different PCs. Though git annex will deduplicate it anyway and cleanup shouldn't be too hard.

I am looking for a solution to my email problem. I need a searchable backup system for all my emails and make room on the servers. Preferrably in a format that's (:gitannex: #gitAnnex) sync friendly (e.g. all just .eml files). A terminal-based Thunderbird alternative would also be nice. I see there's #mbsync #mutt #neomutt #supMail #nmail #alpine and so many more but no concise overview with feature comparison. What would you recommend?

Okay, jetzt habe ich mal #mbsync ausprobiert. Ja, es ist schneller. Aber es synct irgenwdie längst nicht alle Folder und bringt komische Fehlermeldungen (INBOX will er nicht aufmachen, einige Folder kann er lokal nicht öffnen, ...) das geht wohl wieder Richtung #offlineimap

I've added a new email account to my #mbsync config.

Now I realize I need to change my #notmuch configuration to ingest the parent folder.

I somehow bet that this will destroy the database, but I'm not sure. 🤔

Anyone here who changed #notmuch (e.g. used from #Emacs) config from
~/Mail/foo@bar/
to
~/Mail/
and survived?

ich versuche mich gerade an #mbsync, weil ich meine IMAP-Mailbox von einem zum anderen Provider umziehen will. Wenn ich das richtig sehe, hat mbsync aber längst nicht alle Mails der Inbox umgezogen - in der Inbox sind ~1100 Mails, er hat ~800 gesynced.
Wie kann ich debuggen was da schiefläuft? Gibt es da sowas wie ein Logfile welche Mail er gesehen / gesynched / ignoriert hat? Irgendwie finde ich da keine sinnvolle Doku zu ausser der manpage :(