Offlineimap + Mailpile

intro

Mailpile is "a modern, fast web-mail client with user-friendly encryption and privacy features. 100% Free and Open Source software".

After contributing to the french language version (look mum, my name is here !), I decided to give it a try.

This is pre-ALPHA quality code! Please expect everything to be broken. (from Mailpile readme file)

Mailpile is more an epic mail search engine with a frontend than a client.

We need a bunch of mails saved locally (for now. IMAP sync is in development, see "Importing and Protocols" here). And you'll need to configure an smtp client for sending mails (I haven't tried that).

offlineimap

OfflineIMAP is an IMAP synchronization utility software, capable of synchronizing mail on IMAP server with local Maildir folder or another server (thank you wikipedia).

You will need to create a .offlineimaprc file in your home directory with the following contents:

[general]
accounts = FastMail
metadata = ~/Mail/.offlineimap
maxsyncaccounts = 1

[Account FastMail]
localrepository = LocalFM
remoterepository = RemoteFM

[Repository LocalFM]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/Mail/fastmail

[Repository RemoteFM]
type = IMAP
remotehost = mail.messagingengine.com
remoteport = 993
remoteuser = my.name@fastmail.fm
remotepassfile = ~/.config/offlineimap/my.name.fastmail.fm
ssl = yes
cert_fingerprint = 05:0E:9B:F2:0F:0E:4C:DE:F9:8B:D3:2D:9B:FB:B6:CE
expunge = no
folderfilter = lambda foldername: foldername not in ['INBOX.Trash']
maxconnections = 3

You need to create:

• the folder ~/Mail/fastmail which will receive your mails
• the file ~/.config/offlineimap/my.name.fastmail.fm which contains your password.

More info about ssl and cert_fingerprint here.

Then, when you run the command offlineimap, it should start retrieving your emails. All of them. Be patient :-).

For non-testing purpose, you can add a cron task to call offlineimap regularly.

mailpile

initialization

Creation of mailpile folder where it will store indexes and all stuff related to your emails:

./mp --setup

Give Mailpile some information about you:

./mp --set "profiles.0.email = my.name@fastmail.fm"
./mp --set "profiles.0.name = My Name"

And add your mail folder:

./mp --add /home/mailpile/Mail/fastmail/ --rescan all

It will scan all your mailbox subfolder, extracting data to feed its indexes.

launch the server

Enabling Mailpile to be called from another computer:

./mp --set sys.http_host=0.0.0.0

Launching the server:

 ./mp --www

Then, go to your server on port 33411 to see Mailpile's frontend: http://my-server.com:33411/

You should see Mailpile interface:

nginx

Here is my nginx configuration to redirect request to mailpile without using its 33411 port.

My example is: /etc/nginx/sites-available/mail.my.server.com

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name yourdomain.com;
  return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name yourdomain.com;

  ssl_certificate /home/path/to/the/certificate/certificate.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /home/path/to/the/certificate/myserver.key;

  # optional: tell browsers to require SSL
  add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=31536000;
  root /home/mailpile/Mailpile/;
  try_files $uri @mailpile;

  location @mailpile {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:33411;
    break;
  }

Then:

• go to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
• run ln -s ../mail.my.server.com as root to enable the new site
• nginx -t to validate the config
• run service nginx restart as root to restart the server.

conclusion

Mailpile is easy to install and run (for an alpha software !) and the UI is nice (and in progress !). It will definitely be worth the try in a few months.

Alpha version this after new years and hopefully a beta summer 2014! A full release hasn't been scheduled. (https://twitter.com/MailpileTeam/status/406700289756901376)

There is also a CLI interface (describe in the project's readme file).

Go to their website to learn more about the project and support these guys !