Le 22 nov. 04, à 12:26, Bertrand LUPART a écrit :

I daily connect to my MacOS X box while disconnected, and i sometimes get the same error with Safari. Reloading the page solves it.

Doesn't asking Mail.app to go online for this account help?

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately it does not work: it seems to try to do something, then says that there is a network problem and that it cannot access the server. The weird thing is that it does not even try: there is nothing in the log showing that it tries to log in.

If not, maybe try to make a specific network configuration where all network interfaces are disabled.

I tried that, and it did not work. I guess Mail.app must be trying to resolve some name (that is not localhost), and failing somehow.

Alan Schmitt

Le 23 nov. 04, à 02:52, Rob Davies a écrit :

Morning On 22 Nov 2004, at 6:26pm, Alan Schmitt wrote:

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Hello,

Sorry for the offtopic subject, but I tried asking this on some Apple mailing lists and could not find an answer there, and as it's related to imap (provided by dovecot), someone might know something about this.

The problem is the following: I have a local IMAP server provided by dovecot,

Local as your machine you are using or local area network?

Local as my machine.

...

so that I can store my mail in maildir format, and read it both using mutt and Apple Mail.app. Mail.app is configured to access localhost:143 to access mail.

So this says it is machine you are using?

Yes.

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However, I discovered that when there is no network connection (no ethernet cable plugged in and no wifi network), Mail.app is saying that it's working in disconnected mode and refuses to access the imap server.

If it is your machine you are using try using its actual IP address.

| did try 127.0.0.1, and it did not work. Otherwise I might not have an IP address, as I'm not connected to any network.

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Would someone have a suggestion as to what to do to allow connected access to localhost when no network is present? I'm very new to OS X (I come from Linux).

If you have specified a specific interface through dovecot.conf, change it too imap_listen = *

Well, I'm able to login using "telnet localhost 143", so I guess this is not really the problem. Somehow Apple Mail is convinced that it cannot connect to localhost.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Alan Schmitt

Le 23 nov. 04, à 11:01, Rob Davies a écrit :

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| did try 127.0.0.1, and it did not work. Otherwise I might not have an IP address, as I'm not connected to any network.

Maybe this is problem no viable network, also what are you using as your MTA. Dovecot is just the storage device, MTA is what actually receives mail through smtp and delivers it throughout your network. So mail is saying OK I do not recognise this server I will work offline, ie no viable /home or other area where mail is stored on IMAP machine or its address, hence the workstation you are using?

I'm using postfix (running locally as well) as MTA. The goal here is to have full local access to mail, even when there is no network (this is why I have dovecot running on the machine).

...

Well, I'm able to login using "telnet localhost 143", so I guess this is not really the problem. Somehow Apple Mail is convinced that it cannot connect to localhost.

Have you tried other mail clients, I suspect you will find the same problem.I am not certain as I have never tried to run an IMAP email server of my working desktop. For this single computer environment, I always used POP and utilised ISP's email servers or other generous soles variations.

I will try mutt tonight, but I'm pretty sure it's going to work.

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a (possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers. (www.imap.org)

I agree with all this, and here the server is "localhost", which is perfectly accessible (at least by telnet). I guess Mail.app developers have not considered this possibility, so they just test for network connectivity instead of access to the server.

Thanks a lot.

Alan Schmitt

Le 23 nov. 04, à 18:50, Sean Porter a écrit :

Undoubtedly there's some CFNetwork function that Mail checks to see if the network is up and mailboxes can be 'online.' This is desired behavior for 99.99999999999% of OS X laptop users. ;^)

You could try using Thunderbird, as (like Firefox and Safari) this is nearly a note-by-note clone of Mail.app in terms of UI.

Thanks for the suggestion. I guess I'll install Thunderbird to access my mail when I'm without network (I was using mutt, but I'm slowly getting used to these graphical tools ;-) ).

Alan Schmitt

Le 24 nov. 04, à 11:19, Johannes Berg a écrit :

Alan Schmitt said:

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I agree with all this, and here the server is "localhost", which is perfectly accessible (at least by telnet). I guess Mail.app developers have not considered this possibility, so they just test for network connectivity instead of access to the server.

Here's another thought, I don't know if mail.app allows you to do this. Evolution allows me to configure a so-called "IMAP command" that is called instead of making a connection to localhost:143 and provides an already authenticated IMAP connection on stdin/out. I've been using a small script that exports a few environment variables and then exec's /usr/lib/dovecot/imap to do exactly this -- no network involved and the best thing is that I don't even need to enter a password for local access.

Unfortunately I'm afraid this is not possible with Mail.app (I know it's possible with recent versions of mutt though). Thanks for the suggestion.

Alan Schmitt

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 12:23, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Hmm - what environment variables is that? Could you maybe provide the script?

Sure, see below.

I want to connect directly to dovecot from offlineimap through an SSH tunnel (to avoid storing passwords in cleartext on my laptop), but have failed so far.

This script is what I use -- note that you need to have it on the server, and then call ssh to execute that script (on the server) immediately.

#!/bin/sh # arch-tag: dbfe44f6-0d80-40c4-948a-bac05a804bf5

export MAIL=/home/johannes/Maildir export MAILBOX_CHECK_INTERVAL=60 exec /usr/lib/dovecot/imap

johannes