[nycbug-talk] Introducing some ubiquity to my email configuration

[N.J. Thomas]

* David Rio Deiros <driodeiros at gmail.com> [2006-04-25 09:42:59 -0700]:
> I have been using mutt + fetchmail + procmail + msmtp for quite long
> time (four years).

I have pretty much an identical setup, but instead of fetchmail, I use
getmail (see the FAQ on pyropus.ca to see why it is better than
fetchmail).

> I see a problem with this configuration though: All my email is
> removed from the server and is stored in my laptop, which means I have
> to backup the email periodically.

Here's what I do:

    - Use procmail/mutt to file a separate copy of inbound and outbound
      messages. For inbound mail, the procmail rule I use is:

            # archive inbox
            :0c
            *
            $MAILDIR/archives/in

      For outbound mail, the mutt feature I use is:

            set record = "=out"

    - At the end of every month, I go and archive all the mail into a
      tar file. I do this by hand right now (so I can clean out spam
      that was not caught by SA and delete messages with excessively
      large attachments), but there is no reason why you couldn't script
      this.

    - I encrypt this file with GnuPG

    - I store it in three places:

        - on my home FreeBSD box

        - on a second hard disk on my home FreeBSD box
          (in case my hard drive gets nuked)

        - on a GMail account used solely for this purpose
          (in case New York City gets nuked - but if that happens,
          retrieving my old email will probably be the least of my
          worries

hth,
Thomas

-- 
N.J. Thomas
njt at ayvali.org
Etiamsi occiderit me, in ipso sperabo