CentOS - Oct 2013 - Email access via Android device

I'm pretty sure that this is possible, but I don't currently know enough
about
email to know where to start.

My main desktop computer runs Centos 6 and my preferred email client is
Sylpheed, which supports both POP and IMAP email, and my "internal
network" has
a static IP address, so getting access to the computer from the big scary world
via my phone isn't a problem.

I have six different email accounts that live on various servers.  I have
Sylpheed set up to poll each account once every ten minutes using POP3 and
download all incoming mail.  Upon receipt, I have a whole lot of filters in
Sylpheed to sort the mail into various subdirectories of my Mail directory.
For example, one of my directory structures under Mail is inbox/1/2, and
email may be sorted in Mail/inbox or Mail/inbox/1 or Mail/inbox/1/2, or other
subdirectories outside of inbox like, for example, Mail/3.  In short, I
have a dozen or so subdirectories that Sylpheed sorts mail into based on
various criteria like From or Subject.

What I would like to do is somehow make this whole thing available on my Android
phone (Samsung Galaxy 3).  As it sits right now, if I am not sitting in front
of my computer the only way I can check my email is to ssh into it and
look at the files in each of those subdirectories using a text utility like
less; this is really inconvenient and I can't reply to emails that way until
I
get back in front of my computer.

I'm thinking that I need to run some kind of a mailserver on my computer
that
can be accessed by both Sylpheed locally and by ??? on my Android device.  I get
the impression that if I wanted to hand all of my email over to gmail I could
then have something like this working.  I don't particularly want to do
that; I would rather have something running on my own machine to do it.

I could use something else to poll for my email (fetchmail?).   Sylpheed does
have a configuration setting that I'm not currently using that says
"Enable
strict checking of summary caches -- enable this if the contents of the folders
may be changed by other applications" so based on that I think it can
handle
having messages magically changed by a program on my Android device.

What is the best way to approach this?  My best idea so far is to set up
fetchmail (or something) to do the pop downloads of incoming mail, and have
some kind of a local imap server running though which I access the actual mail
via any email client that can work with an imap account.  Then I can set up
Sylpheed to access only one account, that being the one on my local computer,
and run some imap-using mail client on the Android device for remote access.

Having never actually used an imap email account in this way, that leads to a
couple of other questions.  (The only thing I've ever done with imap is set
up squirrelmail.)  What about filtering the email into those directories?
Procmail? And what happens to sent email -- I assume that the SMTP part of the
mail client wouldn't actually change -- I would still send outbound mail
directly through the mailserver where my email account exists, right?  But does
it (can it) also send a copy to the imap mail store so I can send email from
Android and later on review what I sent with Sylpheed?

-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com

> I'm pretty sure that this is possible, but I don't currently know
enough
> about
> email to know where to start.
>
> My main desktop computer runs Centos 6 and my preferred email client is
> Sylpheed, which supports both POP and IMAP email, and my "internal
> network" has
> a static IP address, so getting access to the computer from the big scary
> world
> via my phone isn't a problem.
>
> I have six different email accounts that live on various servers.  I have
> Sylpheed set up to poll each account once every ten minutes using POP3 and
> download all incoming mail.  Upon receipt, I have a whole lot of filters
> in
> Sylpheed to sort the mail into various subdirectories of my Mail
> directory.
> For example, one of my directory structures under Mail is inbox/1/2, and
> email may be sorted in Mail/inbox or Mail/inbox/1 or Mail/inbox/1/2, or
> other
> subdirectories outside of inbox like, for example, Mail/3.  In short, I
> have a dozen or so subdirectories that Sylpheed sorts mail into based on
> various criteria like From or Subject.
>
> What I would like to do is somehow make this whole thing available on my
> Android
> phone (Samsung Galaxy 3).  As it sits right now, if I am not sitting in
> front
> of my computer the only way I can check my email is to ssh into it and
> look at the files in each of those subdirectories using a text utility
> like
> less; this is really inconvenient and I can't reply to emails that way
> until I
> get back in front of my computer.
>
> I'm thinking that I need to run some kind of a mailserver on my
computer
> that
> can be accessed by both Sylpheed locally and by ??? on my Android device.
> I get
> the impression that if I wanted to hand all of my email over to gmail I
> could
> then have something like this working.  I don't particularly want to do
> that; I would rather have something running on my own machine to do it.
>
> I could use something else to poll for my email (fetchmail?).   Sylpheed
> does
> have a configuration setting that I'm not currently using that says
> "Enable
> strict checking of summary caches -- enable this if the contents of the
> folders
> may be changed by other applications" so based on that I think it can
> handle
> having messages magically changed by a program on my Android device.
>
> What is the best way to approach this?  My best idea so far is to set up
> fetchmail (or something) to do the pop downloads of incoming mail, and
> have
> some kind of a local imap server running though which I access the actual
> mail
> via any email client that can work with an imap account.  Then I can set
> up
> Sylpheed to access only one account, that being the one on my local
> computer,
> and run some imap-using mail client on the Android device for remote
> access.
>
> Having never actually used an imap email account in this way, that leads
> to a
> couple of other questions.  (The only thing I've ever done with imap is
> set
> up squirrelmail.)  What about filtering the email into those directories?
> Procmail? And what happens to sent email -- I assume that the SMTP part of
> the
> mail client wouldn't actually change -- I would still send outbound
mail
> directly through the mailserver where my email account exists, right?  But
> does
> it (can it) also send a copy to the imap mail store so I can send email
> from
> Android and later on review what I sent with Sylpheed?
>
You could set up VNC on your desktop port forward to you desktop so you
can use a VNC viewer on the S3, the just use you normal desktop, but from
your phone. I do this, so I know it works.

On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 10:43:34 AM -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
> What is the best way to approach this?
the one you already mentioned:
> set up fetchmail (or something) to do the pop downloads of incoming
> mail, and have some kind of a local imap server running though which
> I access the actual mail via any email client that can work with an
> imap account.
set up fetchmail or equivalent to put incoming messages to local
maildir format mailboxes, and dovecot to serve them to any local or
remote client.

You'll still have to handle how to _send_ email, probably, but reading
email will just work from sylpheed, android clients or anything else
you may want to use in the future.

HTH,
		Marco
-- 
Percloud: easy, personal, Free Software cloud to replace Gmail,
Facebook &C: http://per-cloud.com

On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Frank Cox <theatre at
melvilletheatre.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that this is possible, but I don't currently know
enough about
> email to know where to start.
>
> My main desktop computer runs Centos 6 and my preferred email client is
> Sylpheed, which supports both POP and IMAP email, and my "internal
network" has
> a static IP address, so getting access to the computer from the big scary
world
> via my phone isn't a problem.
>
> I have six different email accounts that live on various servers.  I have
> Sylpheed set up to poll each account once every ten minutes using POP3 and
> download all incoming mail.  Upon receipt, I have a whole lot of filters in
> Sylpheed to sort the mail into various subdirectories of my Mail directory.
> For example, one of my directory structures under Mail is inbox/1/2, and
> email may be sorted in Mail/inbox or Mail/inbox/1 or Mail/inbox/1/2, or
other
> subdirectories outside of inbox like, for example, Mail/3.  In short, I
> have a dozen or so subdirectories that Sylpheed sorts mail into based on
> various criteria like From or Subject.
>
> What I would like to do is somehow make this whole thing available on my
Android
> phone (Samsung Galaxy 3).  As it sits right now, if I am not sitting in
front
> of my computer the only way I can check my email is to ssh into it and
> look at the files in each of those subdirectories using a text utility like
> less; this is really inconvenient and I can't reply to emails that way
until I
> get back in front of my computer.
>
> I'm thinking that I need to run some kind of a mailserver on my
computer that
> can be accessed by both Sylpheed locally and by ??? on my Android device. 
I get
> the impression that if I wanted to hand all of my email over to gmail I
could
> then have something like this working.  I don't particularly want to do
> that; I would rather have something running on my own machine to do it.
Hard to beat a free gmail account - if you are concerned about
privacy, you probably shouldn't be sending the stuff over the internet
in the first place.    But, the tools are available to run your own
imap server so you can see the same mailboxes from multiple devices.
  Alternatively your android device is perfectly capable of dealing
with 6 remote servers directly.
> I could use something else to poll for my email (fetchmail?).   Sylpheed
does
> have a configuration setting that I'm not currently using that says
"Enable
> strict checking of summary caches -- enable this if the contents of the
folders
> may be changed by other applications" so based on that I think it can
handle
> having messages magically changed by a program on my Android device.
>
> What is the best way to approach this?  My best idea so far is to set up
> fetchmail (or something) to do the pop downloads of incoming mail, and have
> some kind of a local imap server running though which I access the actual
mail
> via any email client that can work with an imap account.  Then I can set up
> Sylpheed to access only one account, that being the one on my local
computer,
> and run some imap-using mail client on the Android device for remote
access.
>
> Having never actually used an imap email account in this way, that leads to
a
> couple of other questions.  (The only thing I've ever done with imap is
set
> up squirrelmail.)  What about filtering the email into those directories?
> Procmail? And what happens to sent email -- I assume that the SMTP part of
the
> mail client wouldn't actually change -- I would still send outbound
mail
> directly through the mailserver where my email account exists, right?  But
does
> it (can it) also send a copy to the imap mail store so I can send email
from
> Android and later on review what I sent with Sylpheed?
Start with dovecot configured to run imap or the ssl variation and
using maildir format.   I don't know anything about sylpheed, but most
mailers that know pop and imap can push to imap folders.   So, if you
want to continue using sylpheed and let it run all the time you might
be able to simply connect it to the new imap account, create a
matching folder structure there, drag all of your current mail to the
corresponding folders, and change the rules for new messages to send
them there.   Then the android connected to the same account will see
the same folders and contents.

If you don't want to leave sylpheed running all the time for the
polling and rule processing, you can replace it with fetchmail and
procmail.  If your other accounts support imap, there is also
something called imapsync that can copy or move messages between
accounts.   If your concern with gmail is only that you want your own
archive for reliability, you could let them do the processing work and
(probably) act as your normal mail host, but use imapsync to pull your
own archive copy.   I think gmail has some rate limit so you probably
don't want to wait till you've filled a 15 GB mailbox before you start
to sync, though...

-- 
   Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell at gmail.com