arecker/mailman repository overview

This is a docker container that synchronizes an IMAP account and serves it locally with a hard coded password.

⁠Running

Run the docker container with these environment variables. Be sure to bind to a local port.

docker run \
       --restart always \
       -p 127.0.0.1:143:143 \
       -e IMAP_USER="[email protected]" \
       -e IMAP_PASSWORD="yoursecretpassword" \
       --name mailman-personal \
       -d arecker/mailman:latest

Put this in your ~/.authinfo (yes… it really is a hard-coded password). These are the credentials for the mail server running in the container.

machine localhost login docker password frozenfish port 143

You can now connect to the mail server through clients like gnus. Here is what my config looks like.

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
       '(nnimap "personal"
		(nnimap-stream network)
		(nnimap-address "localhost")
		(nnimap-server-port 143)
		(nnimap-authenticator login)))

⁠Customization

You can over ride certain config files by mounting over them. For example, you could do something like this to provide your own .offlineimaprc.

docker run -v yourconfig.conf:/home/docker/.offlineimaprc # ...

Or provide your own python file…

docker run -v yourpython.py:/home/docker/.offlineimap.py #...

⁠Debugging

Since I was having so much trouble with dovecot, the config logs verbosely to /var/log/dovecot.log within the container. That should help you with your own dovecot configuration journey.

⁠Improvment

Here are some things that probably need improvement.

• Get rid of the frozenfish password silliness (anonymous login?)
• Better logging for offlineimap and dovecot