Dec
23
Evolution + Gmail IMAP = …really slow?
Filed Under EMail | 23 Comments
I set up Evolution again today to tie into my gmail IMAP but I notice the performance is terribly slow. Does anyone else have this same issue? I’ve been using webmail for some time now, is that comparing apples to oranges? If anyone has any tips on speeding up Evolution when tied into Gmail’s IMAP I would appreciate hearing about them.
I post tutorials very regularly on this site. You may want to consider subscribing to the RSS feed. Or if you'd prefer these tips sent to your inbox you can use Email Subscriptions.
Jul
20
Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 : Security Update
Filed Under EMail | 3 Comments
For any of you running the Thunderbird 2.x series, perhaps based on my tutorial on manually installing the latest Thunderbird, there has been a security patch released today. Below are instructions on upgrading manually, and a quick outline of some of the major security fixes.
Upgrading
Download Thunderbird (Save as…)
sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
One of the security patches looks specific to Windows, but the other could be Linux related. They are outlined below:
MFSA 2007-23 Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer
MFSA 2007-18 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption
Note: manually installing Thunderbird or any other application not from the official Ubuntu repository limits the level of support that can be received from the community. Please keep this in mind or know what you are doing.
Jul
10
Thunder(bird) and Lightning! : Read and Write access to Google Calendar
Filed Under EMail | 13 Comments
First line: thanks to bordy for piecing this together.
Now on to the business at hand. Who uses Thunderbird? Ok, a large number of you. Who uses a calendaring system? Whoa, a lot of you ehh. Well how would you like to tie Thunderbird into Google Calendar with read and write access? Cool, keep reading. You’ll be setup in five minutes. It’s really pretty painless.
Getting the Plugins
Download the Lightning Addon for Mozilla Thunderbird
Download the Google Provider Addon for Mozilla Thunderbird (requires Thunderbird 2.x, see here)
Installing the Plugins
Open Thunderbird, navigate to “Tools” and select “Addons”. Drag-and-Drop the two files you just downloaded into the box. They will ask for installation confirmation, select Yes. When these are done you’ll need to restart Thunderbird. You will be prompted with a window to do so.
Visit Google Calendar
Before we can configure your new calendar in Thunderbird we’ll need to get just a bit of data from your Google Calendar account. Login to Google Calendar (I’m assuming you already have an account, if not you’ll want to set one up.. but that is outside the context of this tutorial.)
Navigate your way to “Settings” (top right).
Navigate to “Calendars” in the Calendar Settings area.
Navigate to the calendar you want to share (as you can have multiple calendars, we need to do one at a time)
Navigate to the “Private Address” and select the XML link via right-click. Select “Copy Link Location” in your Firefox browser.
Configure Lightning
Now that you have the link to your private Google Calendar address we can configure Lightning to use it. Go back to Thunderbird now and select “New” in the Calendar tab of Lightning (bottom right, third tab).
Select “On the Network” for the location of your calendar system.
Select “Google Calendar” on the next prompt. If you don’t see a Google Calendar option you’ll want to verify that the Google Provider Addon was installed properly.
Paste the link we copied from Google Calendar (the XML we copied just in the section previous) into the “Location” box.
The next step will ask for a calendar name and color. I’ll leave that part up to you. 
The last step is providing Lightning / Thunderbird with your Google Calendar username and password for Google Calendar. The username should have been auto-harvested from the link you pasted, but the password will be needed.
Using Your Calendar
At this point you should be able to create appointments within Lightning and they’ll very quickly propogate to Google Calendar. To get started select the Calendar tab within Lightning, right-click on a date and time and select New. I’m sure you can take it from here.. Enjoy.
(some of these steps taken from here.)
Jul
8
Configuring Mutt To Use An Alternate MTA : ESMTP
Filed Under EMail | 4 Comments
Some of you may remember that I went on a Mutt kick there a while back and gave up for a few different reasons. I have been using Thunderbird 2.x series since, which has been pretty good, but I still think all mail clients suck. I don’t know exactly what it is about them– maybe I just don’t like email in general.
Anyway, last nite I got to thinking about Mutt again and what I didn’t like about it. One of my main complaints is that it relies on postfix and relays through your local machine. I would prefer if it were able to send outgoing through one of my many domains, my ISP, etc. Granted I still have a few other complaints with Mutt, but this tutorial will take care of the mail relaying anyway.
In this tutorial I’ll outline installing, configuring and using ESMTP to handle your outgoing mail. This will allow you to send your email, via Mutt, through gmail, your ISP, or some other mail relay that you have access to. I’ll outline using gmail here, but you should easily be able to customize it for your own needs.
Install and Configure ESMTP
First we’ll replace postfix with ESMTP for our mail relaying. Use a command such as the one below to install ESMTP, which should auto-remove postfix.
sudo aptitude install esmtp
On the Ubuntu 6.06.1 server that I tested this on it auto-removed postfix at this point. If dependencies or packages have changed since then you might find different results. I have yet to test on current (Ubuntu 7.04).
We can now configure esmtp to use your ISP or, in this case, to use a gmail account to send email through.
Open and edit a new file in your home folder called $HOME/.esmtprc (there is also a global in /etc/esmtprc).
To use gmail for your outgoing mail set your $HOME/.esmtprc to the following settings:
identity username@gmail.com
hostname smtp.gmail.com:587
username "username@gmail.com"
password "password"
starttls required
mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"
You’ll need to set the permissions on this file to private before esmtp will function properly. Use this command to set the permissions:
chmod 0600 .esmtprc
After you’ve done this you need to tell Mutt to use these settings. You can do this by setting a symlink from what Mutt normally looks for in sendmail to the new esmtp, or we can just tell it the path within the mutt configuration file. We’ll do the latter here. Add the following two lines into your .muttrc file:
set sendmail="/usr/bin/esmtp"set envelope_from=yes
or (if you want debug logging done during testing)
set sendmail="/usr/bin/esmtp -v -X /tmp/esmtp.log"
Now one last thing that needs to be done here is put the Gmail Certificate Authority (CA) in the proper place so that the tls will work for encrypted outgoing connection. If you are not using gmail you may not need this step. Run the following commands to put the CA in the proper place for use by ESMTP and the gmail connection.
mkdir ~/.authenticate
chmod 0700 ~/.authenticate
sudo aptitude install ca-certificates (this may already be in place, it was on my Dapper machine)
cp -a /etc/ssl/certs/ ~/.authenticate/ca
chmod -R go-rwx ~/.authenticate/ca
At this point Mutt should be configured to use ESMTP for outgoing mail and will relay through whatever host you specify (that you have access to, of course). You can test this by opening Mutt and trying to send a message. Check the /tmp/esmtp.log for details on troubleshooting or whether or not things worked as planned. Of course you’ll need the logging configured as above to troubleshoot this.
This, I think, solves one of my major concerns with Mutt and makes it a bit more flexible for my needs. I may come back to Mutt for a while… at least until I get tired of it again and come to another client looking for something more. It’s inevitable considering all mail clients suck, right?
(much of these instructions were based on information in the esmtp manual, see there for more details.)
May
18
Manually Install Thunderbird 2 : Ubuntu 7.04
Filed Under EMail | 20 Comments
Since my exodus yesterday from Mutt I have installed and am playing with Thunderbird 2 for email. So far I don’t hate it like I did 1.5, but we’re still in the test stages. We’ll see how it all turns out. In any event I wanted to share with you how I installed Thunderbird 2 manually since it is not yet in the Ubuntu repositories.
- Download Thunderbird 2. (Save to disk)
- sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
- sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/local/bin/thunderbird
- create a menu item: sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird
Comment=Thunderbird Mail Client
Exec=thunderbird
Icon=/opt/thunderbird/icons/mozicon16.xpm
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Applications;Network
Enjoy the latest build while we wait for the official package to come down the pipe. You can be sure I’ll keep you updated on my thoughts on Thunderbird 2.
The Ubuntu Wiki has similar instructions and also contains details on having the repository version and the manually installed version side by side. See “Thunderbird New Version“.
Apr
28
Mastering Mutt : A Few Basic Commands
Filed Under EMail | 3 Comments
To update based on my earlier post concerning use of the Mutt email client I wanted to share some of the quick tips that I’ve learned. Now, Mutt can be very complex and very granular in its configuration. This is by no means a comprehensive overview of Mutt usage. I mainly want to point out some of its basic uses, navigation and configuration and you can go from there.
Now, why in the world would I want to use a text-based email client? It’s 2007 already. We’re using Feisty with Beryl and can burn our windows into oblivion upon closing. We can spin our cubes of virtual desktops until we’re motion sick. Ohh, and let’s not forget that Mozilla just released the long awaited Thunderbird 2.0! So, despite all this, why would I bother spending any time on the text based Mutt client? One, because I can (isn’t that the driving reason behind half of what we do sometimes!) and two, because it can come in handy. I’ve actually grown now to prefer it over Evolution or Thunderbird… but I’ll let you decide for yourself.
First of all, the thing that held me up, was not knowing how to access my account when I first opened Mutt. No in-application config to create your inbox settings and no handy ‘wizard’ to walk you through. So that led me to asking questions and doing a bit of reading. Here are a few of the methods I found for accessing your mail accounts:
mutt -f protocol://username:password(optional)@mail.server.commutt -f pops://christer.edwards@pop.gmail.com (example gmail setup, replace with your user)
mutt -f imaps://christer@mail.imapserver.com (example imap account access, user your own settings)
Again, these are examples and you’ll need to replace the sections with your own settings. Account types that are supported, pop, pops, imap, imaps and local mail (ie; Maildir, /var/mail/user, etc).
Using this format, without the password, will prompt you for the password once you’ve connected to the server and you’ll see a listing of any email in your inbox. Some of the basic commands are listed across the top of the screen within Mutt, and for more you can press ?. Some of the basics:
d - delete selected messagem - compose message
h - toggle header detail
q - quit current message / quit mutt
r - reply to single user
g - reply to group (ie; mailing list)
u - undelete message tagged for deletion
v - view attachments (if email has attachment, of course)
s - save email or attachment
Again, I don’t mean to be comprehensive in the shortcut keys and usage of mutt, but those should get you around for the most part.
This’ll be enough for today, but I have plans for a second tutorial on some of the more useful settings within the .muttrc file. Things such as GPG verification and signing, header settings, preferred editors, etc.
If you’d like to give mutt a try, maybe give some of the above commands a test run and shoot me an email for testing at christer DOT edwards AT ubuntu DOT com.
Apr
14
Learning the Mutt Mail Client
Filed Under EMail | 9 Comments
I’ve decided over the past few days that I wanted to learn more about and start using Mutt for my mail client. After reading numerous pages and seeing dozens of examples of .muttrc files I’ll say that I’m still a bit lost on what I should and shouldn’t be setting. For those of you that have experience with Mutt I’d appreciate any tips you might have. Here is some of my basic setup.
- Gmail: I need to follow this account and be able to send as @gmail and @ubuntu from this account.
- IMAP: My office uses an IMAP server for email that I’ll also need to follow.
- From what I can tell these both need pops:// and imaps:// for connection.
- This makes two incoming accounts to track and three accounts I need to be able to send-as. (I have already configured postfix to handle outgoing)
- I also would like to PGP sign all of these accounts and validate incoming signed emails.
I know that kind of looks like a lot. I have much of it roughly figured out but don’t feel terribly confident about how I have it pieced together so far. I’m do have some of these options missing..
I appreciate any help in getting this setup. Thanks.
Mar
5
How To Set Mozilla Thunderbird to NON-HTML
Filed Under EMail | 4 Comments
In an addition to yesterdays post I realize that Evolution doesn’t seem to be the most popular program. I think I might be the only person I know that uses it. In any event I thought I would outline a few steps for accomplishing the same results in Mozilla Thunderbird.. fancy, popular, trendy Thunderbird.
I installed it last night, partly because I thought I would try something new and partly so I could outline these steps for you. I hope you’re happy! Ok, now down to business.
How To Set Mozilla Thunderbird to NON-HTML
Within Thunderbird you’ll need to navigate to Edit > Account Settings : Composition & Addressing. From here look for the check-box that says “Compose message in HTML format“. Go ahead and un-check that.
Anything more? Not that I can think of. Now those of you that use Thunderbird can join the fun too.
Mar
4
How To Set Evolution E-Mail To NON-HTML
Filed Under EMail | 3 Comments
For those of you that have received email from me you might have noticed that I’m part of the ASCII Ribbon Campaign. This is definitely something that I believe in and hope you might take a second to check it out too. It doesn’t require much on your end. Just a simple configuration change in your email client, but it can make a big difference. If nothing else it’ll make your email contacts a little happier because they won’t have to deal with over-sized, dangerous HTML laced emails.
A few points on HTML email quickly and then I’ll show a few steps on how and where you can make sure you’re not adding to the problem. In one sentence: “HTML belongs on the web and out of your inbox”
-
Blogroll
Subscribe to the RSS feed!
