OpenBSD NC4200: Getting Alpine to work with DavMail.

Firstly, yeah I changed the blog's title. As I'm using ONLY OpenBSD nowadays, I think it's appropriate to change the title as I don't use other type of BSD. Now back to the main story.

So far, this is a brief description of what I (initially) wanted to achieve:

Alpine+LDAP <---> DavMail <---> CompanyEmail@OWA/Exchange

So here's what I'm currently doing. Getting Alpine + DavMail to play nicely together. I have posted earlier that I compiled my Alpine with LDAP support so I can check my company's email address book. Here's the current status of the project:

DavMail <---> CompanyEmail@OWA: Working fine
Thunderbird <---> DavMail: Working fine

As DavMail is working, I can just focus on configuring Alpine. The first time I start Alpine (by typing Alpine in xterm), the program will create ~/.pinerc configuration file. I don't need to blow my head to configure Alpine as it has a great built-in configuration tool.

Chapter 1: Receiving emails.
Inside Alpine's Main menu [M], I just key [S] (Setup), [L] (collectionLists). Then inside Alpine's Setup Collection List page, I hit [A] (Add collection). Here's my configurations:

Nickname: MyCompany
Server: localhost:1143/user=ASIA\karl
Path:
View:

After I save & exit the configuration [Ctrl+X], Alpine requested for my email's password. I keyed in my password and Alpine ask for confirmation to exit the page. No error messages, so it's all good. Now to test it.

I go to Main [M], then hit [L] (Folder List). I can see 2 folders:

MAIL
   Local folders in mail/

MyCompany
   Folders on localhost:1143/user=ASIA\karl in home directory

I choose MyCompany and using the Right Arrow [>] key, Alpine opened up my company email. I can see all the folders I have there and I can read my emails. So far so good.

Chapter 2: Sending emails (Working now!).
I'm still configuring this part as it's not working. I'll just put the steps for revising purpose. If you have a working solution, do comment.

Thanks to Christopher for commenting and posting a usefull link. Surely, I managed to tweak Alpine's setting and managed to get the SMTP portion working for sending emails. Do take note that I'm already running a new version of DavMail so it'll be better for you guys to update too.

Inside Alpine's Main menu, I choose [S] (Setup) and [C] (Config). The mandatory line to be update is this:

SMTP Server (for sending) = localhost:1025/user=ASIA\karl

So here, I don't need to use user=ASIA\\karl because the single \ is not escaped.
As I stated, it's currently not working. I kept getting "Error sending" message if I want to send out email. Previously I tried user=ASIA\karl but the "\" got escaped in ~/.pinerc and I still can't send email.

If I can't sort this out, I might have to go with using Sendmail instead of going thru DavMail. I will post any updates on this. I've also added this line in the same Config's screen:

Inbox Path = {localhost:1143/user=ASIA\karl}inbox

Note that this setting depends on whether you need it or not. As I use Alpine only for 1 OWA account, I set this up. Now press [E] to exit and save the setting. Press [Q] to quit Alpine.

Now vim your .pinerc file, normally in your home folder (~/.pinerc) and change this line:

disable-these-authenticators=GSSAPI,PLAIN

Save the .pinerc file and open Alpine back. I composed [C] an email and wallah! Alpine asked for my OWA password and email is sent! Great!. Again, thanks Christopher!

Chapter 3: Using LDAP.
As I've compiled my Alpine with LDAP support, I can use it to search my company's email address book. Inside Alpine's Main menu, I choose [S] (Setup) and [D] (Directory). Inside Alpine's Setup Directory Servers page, I hit [A] (Add dir) and this is my settings:

ldap-server= localhost
search-base= ou=people
port= 1389
bind-dn= ASIA\karl
nickname= MyCompany

Then I hit [E] (Exit Setup) and [Y] to save changes. [E] to exit the Setup Directory Servers page.

To test out, inside Alpine's Main menu, I hit [A] (Address Book) and select MyCompany. I hit the Right Arrow [>] key and type a name to search. Alpine then requested for my password and after a while, list of matches appears. So this part is working too.

Chapter 4: Offline email reading.
Yes, there's no offline reading for Alpine using IMAP. So now I know. That's one of the most important feature I wanted to use. After searching for solutions, I found the most suitable option. This is the latest description of the (possible) solution:

Alpine+LDAP <---> UW-IMAPD <---> OfflineIMAP <---> DavMail <---> CompanyEmail@OWA

So, instead of getting Alpine to directly access DavMail, Now I need to set up UW-IMAPD and OfflineIMAP. UW-IMAPD is built as dependency for Alpine+LDAP. UW-IMAPD is a local IMAP server and OfflineIMAP is like what the name means, reading emails from IMAP server in offline mode. Now OfflineIMAP will retrieve emails from my company's exchange thru DavMail (OfflineIMAP can't directly retrieve exchange emails), then OfflineIMAP will sync the emails to my local IMAP server which is UW-IMAPD so I will have a local offline copy of my emails that I can use with Alpine. Here's the checklist of needed softwares:

- Alpine+ldap
- UW-IMAPD
- DavMail
- OfflineIMAP

Update 13/04/11: Thanks to Christopher's comment, I got my email sending working! Thank you very much! You guys should read his comment and go to the link posted. I've update this post to reflect the changes. Later then.

OpenBSD NC4200: Alpine + DavMail, ftp_proxy / http_proxy problem again.

Here's the latest update for my Alpine + DavMail project. Installing Alpine via OpenBSD's package doesn't come with LDAP support enabled. I can verify that by using:

$ alpine -supported

So, I read the OpenBSD ports system man pages and Alpine ports man pages and found that I need to specify the ldap flavor when building the Alpine ports. So in /usr/ports/mail/alpine directory, I use this syntax to build Alpine port with ldap built-in.

$ sudo env FLAVOR="ldap" make install
$ sudo env FLAVOR="ldap" make clean

That's when I found out that my ftp_proxy / http_proxy is unusable. Again. Sheesh! I don't know what happened to it and I'm still searching for solution. So, I downloaded the needed dependencies manually and put it inside /usr/ports/distfiles/. After a while the Alpine with ldap support is installed. Oh I need to remove the previous Alpine installation before the new Alpine can be installed. Alpine-ldap is installed and so do DavMail. Now for the good stuff. Making them work (nicely) together. For that, I'll write it in another post.

Coming up next: My DavMail configurations

OpenBSD NC4200: DavMail LDAP is working..

Okay. Silly me. I found that instead of putting "localhost" in the Hostname tab, I put "locahost". Yeah. Without a freaking "L". Now it's working fine.