Re: [gentoo-user] Simple installation on BTRFS
On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:01:21 BST Laurence Perkins wrote: > >-Original Message- > >From: Neil Bothwick > >Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2023 5:43 AM > >To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > >Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Simple installation on BTRFS > > > >On Sat, 29 Jul 2023 10:47:53 +0100, Michael wrote: > >> I doubt I will need anything so frequent, these days my data does not > >> change often enough. Daily snapshots should do the trick and I could > >> keep more of them. > > > >Snapshots don't take up any space if the data does not change, so frequent > >snapshots don't hurt. The biggest impact on snapshot sizes on a Gentoo > >system is kernel source package updates. > For informational purposes, I once fat-fingered my cron job that takes > hourly snapshots of my workspace during work hours and was taking minutely > snapshots instead. > > I didn't notice any adverse effects until I had well over 60,000 snapshots. > > The main adverse effect at that point was that doing anything with snapshots > started to get... sluggish. > > The second adverse effect was that listing the content of the snapshots > directory took several minutes, and I had to write a script to delete them > because it was too big for my kernel's process command line length limit. > (I also found out how to raise that limit if anyone wants to know, but > decided it wasn't worth the effort.) > > It all cleaned up fine in a few hours though. > > LMP You'd probably choose NILFS2 if you wanted that many snapshots! I haven't setup snapshots yet. I'm waiting for Neil to send me something, while I am occupied endlessly configuring the kernel from scratch ;-). signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Email clients
David On Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 4:22 PM Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko wrote: > > > > Jul 31, 2023 13:52:25 Grant Edwards : > > > >> On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko wrote: > >>> > Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not > going to make my life more difficult on principles. There are hills > worth dying on but this isn't mine. > >>> > >>> Iirc, you can setup mutt to open html emails either in a web browser > >>> or with something like w3m. > >> > >> Wait -- those are web engines. I thought the argument was that mutt > >> didn't need a web engine. If that was the case, then you would have no > >> need to set up mutt to use them to display HTML email. > > > > Why would you want a mail client to also be a web browser when you > > already have a web browser to do that job? > > I don't want a mail client that's also a web browser. I want a mail > client that renders HTML. That's only a small small of what a web > browser does. Most of what a web browser does these days is provide an > environment in which to run JavaScript. > > > I will never understand the mindset of trying to include web > > browsers into everything. Web browsers are massive pieces of > > software, including one in everything massively increases the > > compile time and resource usage of the software it's added into. > > That's because they do a lot more than just render HTML. > > >>> There's no need for a web engine in a mail client when you have a > >>> perfectly workable web engine in the browser. > >> > >> Composing HTML also e-mails requires a web-engine. Sure, you can do > >> that using emacs, markdown mode, a web browser for previewing, and so > >> on. It's a lot of work. > > > > I don't get the point of composing HTML emails. Let's be honest > > here, unless you're writing emails as part of a company with > > complicated messes of html signatures or marketing emails, the only > > difference between composing a plain text email and a html email for > > most people is unnoticeable. > > I found that not to be the case for the Outlook users to whom I sent > e-mails. I was unable to figure out how to get mutt to generate > plaintext e-mails that were rendered properly by Outlook (e.g. using a > fixed font, honoring newlines and multiple spaces, etc.) in Outlook. > > It's also difficult to get plaintext e-mails to display in a > reasonable way on both a large screen and a small screen > (i.e. phone). I was not happy seeing what my plaintext, 72 column > e-mails looked like on a small phone screen. > > -- > Grant > > > >
[gentoo-user] Re: Email clients
On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko wrote: > > Jul 31, 2023 13:52:25 Grant Edwards : > >> On 2023-07-31, Kusoneko wrote: >>> Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not going to make my life more difficult on principles. There are hills worth dying on but this isn't mine. >>> >>> Iirc, you can setup mutt to open html emails either in a web browser >>> or with something like w3m. >> >> Wait -- those are web engines. I thought the argument was that mutt >> didn't need a web engine. If that was the case, then you would have no >> need to set up mutt to use them to display HTML email. > > Why would you want a mail client to also be a web browser when you > already have a web browser to do that job? I don't want a mail client that's also a web browser. I want a mail client that renders HTML. That's only a small small of what a web browser does. Most of what a web browser does these days is provide an environment in which to run JavaScript. > I will never understand the mindset of trying to include web > browsers into everything. Web browsers are massive pieces of > software, including one in everything massively increases the > compile time and resource usage of the software it's added into. That's because they do a lot more than just render HTML. >>> There's no need for a web engine in a mail client when you have a >>> perfectly workable web engine in the browser. >> >> Composing HTML also e-mails requires a web-engine. Sure, you can do >> that using emacs, markdown mode, a web browser for previewing, and so >> on. It's a lot of work. > > I don't get the point of composing HTML emails. Let's be honest > here, unless you're writing emails as part of a company with > complicated messes of html signatures or marketing emails, the only > difference between composing a plain text email and a html email for > most people is unnoticeable. I found that not to be the case for the Outlook users to whom I sent e-mails. I was unable to figure out how to get mutt to generate plaintext e-mails that were rendered properly by Outlook (e.g. using a fixed font, honoring newlines and multiple spaces, etc.) in Outlook. It's also difficult to get plaintext e-mails to display in a reasonable way on both a large screen and a small screen (i.e. phone). I was not happy seeing what my plaintext, 72 column e-mails looked like on a small phone screen. -- Grant
RE: [gentoo-user] Email clients
> Jul 31, 2023 13:23:21 Matt Connell : > > > On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 20:16 +0300, Alexe Stefan wrote: > >>> Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire > >>> web engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people > >>> who knows full well what the answer is. > >> > >> What is the answer? > >> Mutt doesn't need a web engine. > > > > For the reason that you just demonstrated for the class: HTML emails. > > > > Now, your simple mail shows just fine in a plain text only mail > > client, but in my world, and I'd wager most people's world, handling > > HTML messages (which includes CSS for legibility) is a necessity to > > some varying degree. > > > > Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not > > going to make my life more difficult on principles. There are hills > > worth dying on but this isn't mine. > Iirc, you can setup mutt to open html emails either in a web browser or with > something like w3m. There's no need for a web engine in a mail client when > you have a perfectly workable web engine in the browser. You can easily reply > to html mail in plain text either way, and most html mail are marketing or > newsletter emails from companies where replying isn't needed anyways. > That is totally not true any more unfortunately. The vast majority of email clients and web interfaces used by the technopeasants send HTML mail by default. So unless you're one of the lucky few who exchange emails only with fellow hackers you can expect to have to deal with a lot of HTML mail. Still, you don't technically need to have the HTML engine *in* the client itself... But that does make opening the silly things a bit quicker. LMP
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Email clients
On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 14:46 -0400, Kusoneko wrote: > Why would you want a mail client to also be a web browser when you already > have a web browser to do that job? I will never understand the mindset of > trying to include web browsers into everything. Web browsers are massive > pieces of software, including one in everything massively increases the > compile time and resource usage of the software it's added into. This is why webkit-gtk exists as it does: so it can fulfill this role as part of multiple packages. I'm not defending it, I'm just saying it isn't completely nonsensical to have "browser as a library/module". > > > > Composing HTML also e-mails requires a web-engine. Sure, you can do > > that using emacs, markdown mode, a web browser for previewing, and so > > on. It's a lot of work. > > I don't get the point of composing HTML emails. Let's be honest here, unless > you're writing emails as part of a company with complicated messes of html > signatures or marketing emails, the only difference between composing a plain > text email and a html email for most people is unnoticeable. Or your company forcibly converts emails to HTML so that it can apply a signature, and you have no say in the matter. Like mine. So I write HTML mails from the get-go so I can have a (better) chance to ensure they are formatted correctly.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 19:13:19 BST Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 18:26:03 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > I thought I should be able to specify where outgoing mail should be > > put, but I can't find it now. > > That's a setting in the mail client. Kmail Settings > Accounts > Identities > Advanced > Sent-mail folder. Also set the Outgoing Account at the same time to configure your SMTP. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 17:03:49 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > What should I do about backups of the server? Don't bother, hard disks are dead reliable these days ;-) -- Neil Bothwick .sig a .sog of sixpence. pgp0RnKsAawdG.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 18:26:03 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > I thought I should be able to specify where outgoing mail should be > put, but I can't find it now. That's a setting in the mail client. -- Neil Bothwick IBM: Itty Bitty Mentality pgp1DMtkh7ZVh.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:25:20 BST Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:03:49 BST Peter Humphrey wrote: > > I already have it set up, so I hope I'd only have to deselect "Download > > all > > messages for offline use" and then drag the locally stored emails to the > > IMAP Account, which is shown at the top of the folder list, attached. > > Does that create a copy of the local directory structure? > > Hah! I just tried the folder-move function in KMail, and it crashed. 79 > emails and 2.2MB. I have used Kmail to download large-ish IMAP folders (4000+ messages and ~800MB) to local folders, then upload them to different remote IMAP account/ folder. It has worked reliably here and ought to work in your case too, if: - Your Internet connectivity is stable and the bandwidth is > than dial up, or you work locally with dovecot. - You create the local/remote Kmail folders first and then copy messages over in small numbers. About 50-100 at a time should do it, depending on size of attachments. - You remain patient until the messages have downloaded, but then you really remain patient until akonadi finishes indexing them. This may take longer than you wish.[1] - Do not start with another folder, until the current folder migration has completed successfully and you can verify the content of at least a sample of messages has landed where you expect it to be. [1] Sometimes synchronising a large number of messages/folders will appear to be stuck, because Kmail won't display it. A workaround I use is to close Kmail and run in a terminal: akonadictl fsck akonadictl vacuum waiting for each command to finish, before I restart Kmail. This is not a regular occurrence, but when Kmail misbehaves the above forces a sync so the next batch of emails can be copied over. HTH. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Re: Email clients
On 2023-07-31, Alexe Stefan wrote: >> >> Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire web >> engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people who >> knows full well what the answer is. >> > > What is the answer? Most of us don't like reading HTML. > Mutt doesn't need a web engine. You must get e-mail from a different sort of sender than I do. -- Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On 2023.07.31 13:23, Matt Connell wrote: On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 20:16 +0300, Alexe Stefan wrote: > > Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire > > web > > engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people who > > knows full well what the answer is. > > What is the answer? > Mutt doesn't need a web engine. For the reason that you just demonstrated for the class: HTML emails. Now, your simple mail shows just fine in a plain text only mail client, but in my world, and I'd wager most people's world, handling HTML messages (which includes CSS for legibility) is a necessity to some varying degree. Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not going to make my life more difficult on principles. There are hills worth dying on but this isn't mine. I haven't tried it in a while, but Carbonyl (https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl) is a web browser that runs in a terminal. I wonder if it could be used for a text based email client to actually display HTML emails, without the overhead of one of the big graphics libs.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:25:20 BST Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:03:49 BST Peter Humphrey wrote: > > I already have it set up, so I hope I'd only have to deselect "Download > > all > > messages for offline use" and then drag the locally stored emails to the > > IMAP Account, which is shown at the top of the folder list, attached. > > Does that create a copy of the local directory structure? > > Hah! I just tried the folder-move function in KMail, and it crashed. 79 > emails and 2.2MB. It wasn't too hard after all, mostly. I still have sent-mail, outbox, wastebin, drafts and templates locally. I thought I should be able to specify where outgoing mail should be put, but I can't find it now. -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 20:16 +0300, Alexe Stefan wrote: > > Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire > > web > > engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people who > > knows full well what the answer is. > > What is the answer? > Mutt doesn't need a web engine. For the reason that you just demonstrated for the class: HTML emails. Now, your simple mail shows just fine in a plain text only mail client, but in my world, and I'd wager most people's world, handling HTML messages (which includes CSS for legibility) is a necessity to some varying degree. Don't get me wrong, I'm "team plaintext" all day every day but I'm not going to make my life more difficult on principles. There are hills worth dying on but this isn't mine.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
> > Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire web > engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people who > knows full well what the answer is. > What is the answer? Mutt doesn't need a web engine. >
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 17:14 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > I see it's a gnome program and has 17 new dependencies (to this box). Unfortunately one of them is webkit-gtk, which, if you don't have it already, is a compilation lift. Normally I would be in the chorus of "why do I need a whole entire web engine for an email client" but I'm also in the group of people who knows full well what the answer is.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 17:03:49 BST Peter Humphrey wrote: > I already have it set up, so I hope I'd only have to deselect "Download all > messages for offline use" and then drag the locally stored emails to the IMAP > Account, which is shown at the top of the folder list, attached. Does that > create a copy of the local directory structure? Hah! I just tried the folder-move function in KMail, and it crashed. 79 emails and 2.2MB. -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 02:12:00 BST Matt Connell wrote: > On Sat, 2023-07-29 at 01:29 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > I've been a loyal user of KMail for many years. (Loyal? Masochistic > > might be a better word.) It suits me exactly - or it would if it were > > reliable. It isn't, though, which drives me to consider alternatives. > > To present an alternative that I haven't seen mentioned in the thread: > Evolution. > > - Fully featured (calendar, contacts, tasks, memos) > - Oauth2 support > - Exchange Web Services support > - sane defaults > - sqlite database storage (as opposed to Akonadi's mysql) > - active community mailing list. I'll have a look at it - thanks. I see it's a gnome program and has 17 new dependencies (to this box). -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 14:26:16 BST Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:33:18 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > > > But you're running the IMAP server locally, so what difference does > > > > it make? > > > > It's just the way things have 'just growed'. I could start again with > > the server keeping the mails itself, but it's a good deal of work. > > Not really. Once you have set up the server and a folder for it in KMail, > you just move your mails from the local folder to the IMAP one. Is that all there is to it? I already have it set up, so I hope I'd only have to deselect "Download all messages for offline use" and then drag the locally stored emails to the IMAP Account, which is shown at the top of the folder list, attached. Does that create a copy of the local directory structure? What should I do about backups of the server? -- Regards, Peter.
RE: [gentoo-user] Simple installation on BTRFS
>-Original Message- >From: Neil Bothwick >Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2023 5:43 AM >To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org >Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Simple installation on BTRFS > >On Sat, 29 Jul 2023 10:47:53 +0100, Michael wrote: >> I doubt I will need anything so frequent, these days my data does not >> change often enough. Daily snapshots should do the trick and I could >> keep more of them. > >Snapshots don't take up any space if the data does not change, so frequent >snapshots don't hurt. The biggest impact on snapshot sizes on a Gentoo system >is kernel source package updates. > > For informational purposes, I once fat-fingered my cron job that takes hourly snapshots of my workspace during work hours and was taking minutely snapshots instead. I didn't notice any adverse effects until I had well over 60,000 snapshots. The main adverse effect at that point was that doing anything with snapshots started to get... sluggish. The second adverse effect was that listing the content of the snapshots directory took several minutes, and I had to write a script to delete them because it was too big for my kernel's process command line length limit. (I also found out how to raise that limit if anyone wants to know, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.) It all cleaned up fine in a few hours though. LMP
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 15:19:22 BST Wols Lists wrote: > The big question that needs answering is "Are you storing your emails in > dovecot, or in kmail?" In KMail. My server has fetchmail -> postfix -> dovecot. Fetchmail collects POP3 emails from my ISP and forwards it to postfix, and dovecot serves IMAP4 to my workstation. My backup method is simple: I archive KMail's emails daily to a local disk, then shut the system down on a Sunday to back up the entire system to an external USB-3 disk. The server is taken down on a Saturday for complete system backup, to another USB-3 disk. -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On 31/07/2023 13:33, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Monday, 31 July 2023 08:34:05 BST Wols Lists wrote: On 31/07/2023 00:11, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 30 Jul 2023 23:53:39 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: ... I use Claws 99% of the time, but occasionally run Thunderbird. Neither program cares that I have also used the other to read my mail. Ah, but you're using IMAP4 and leaving your emails on the server. I don't want to do that. But you're running the IMAP server locally, so what difference does it make? It's just the way things have 'just growed'. I could start again with the server keeping the mails itself, but it's a good deal of work. My server IS my workstation. And if *you* don't want to leave your mail "centrally", why are you running a dovecot server? Because KMail is horribly buggy with POP3 and my ISP doesn't offer IMAP4. I'm trying to get my head round your setup then. My setup is simple. I couldn't get postfix/fetchmail to behave, so my workstation/server runs dovecot. Thunderbird (on my server) has an account pointing at my ISP, that retrieves all my mail and moves it into dovecot. Am I right you've got postfix/fetchmail working correctly? All you need to do is make it chuck it into dovecot on your server (or not even that). But the point is, if you have a working instance of dovecot, and you are using kmail/imap4 to read your emails FROM DOVECOT, just point claws at dovecot as well. Or are you using kmail/pop3 to pull your emails from dovecot into your local kmail instance? The big question that needs answering is "Are you storing your emails in dovecot, or in kmail?" Cheers, Wol
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:33:18 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > > But you're running the IMAP server locally, so what difference does > > > it make? > > It's just the way things have 'just growed'. I could start again with > the server keeping the mails itself, but it's a good deal of work. Not really. Once you have set up the server and a folder for it in KMail, you just move your mails from the local folder to the IMAP one. -- Neil Bothwick I can't walk on water, but I can stagger on alcohol. pgpZ98bVaLEHH.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On Monday, 31 July 2023 08:34:05 BST Wols Lists wrote: > On 31/07/2023 00:11, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > On Sun, 30 Jul 2023 23:53:39 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > >>> ... I use Claws 99% of the time, but occasionally run Thunderbird. > >>> Neither program cares that I have also used the other to read my > >>> mail. > >> > >> Ah, but you're using IMAP4 and leaving your emails on the server. I > >> don't want to do that. > > > > But you're running the IMAP server locally, so what difference does it > > make? It's just the way things have 'just growed'. I could start again with the server keeping the mails itself, but it's a good deal of work. > My server IS my workstation. And if *you* don't want to leave your mail > "centrally", why are you running a dovecot server? Because KMail is horribly buggy with POP3 and my ISP doesn't offer IMAP4. -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] Email clients
On 31/07/2023 00:11, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 30 Jul 2023 23:53:39 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: ... I use Claws 99% of the time, but occasionally run Thunderbird. Neither program cares that I have also used the other to read my mail. Ah, but you're using IMAP4 and leaving your emails on the server. I don't want to do that. But you're running the IMAP server locally, so what difference does it make? My server IS my workstation. And if *you* don't want to leave your mail "centrally", why are you running a dovecot server? Cheers, Wol
