Compared to using #DavMail to access a #MicrosoftExchange server, using #Kermit to fetch my mail over a dialup line a quarter century ago was lightning fast.

A #UUCP interface to Exchange might be more appropriate…

So the logic for davmail Tasks synchronisation with Exchange, when subscribed to a personal and a group calendar, seems to be:

1. client creates a task in personal calendar, and syncs it to the server

2. on the next sync, client receives a copy of the task, apparently in the group calendar!

3. but not really, server side. Whew!

4. removing either on the client removes "both", after more syncs.

#DAVmail #Exchange

@emory Probably something like this setup: https://jonathanh.co.uk/blog/mutt-setup/ Using #mbsync #msmtp and #davmail That's what I do at least :-)

#DavMail has always been slow (I’m using it with #mbsync to access my work e-mail), but now it has become unbearably slow: what used to take maybe 30 s, now takes 4–5 min. Has anybody else noticed this?

@linuxine
C'est un peu austère, mais tu peux utiliser #Davmail pour faire une passerelle et utiliser ton client mail (et agenda) habituel.

@sqrtminusone That’s interesting, thanks for sharing! I guess I’ll try #OfflineIMAP at some point then. With #DavMail in the loop, the performance difference between #mbsync and OfflineIMAP should be negligible…

@true_mxp I just switched to #OfflineIMAP for use with #DavMail.

But my problem was that my Exchange instance somehow assigned duplicate UIDs to different emails in different folders, so #mbsync just couldn't download a large part of my mail. And OffineIMAP had some way to handle that more gracefully.

Update on my experiences with #DavMail and #mbsync: after a lot of experimentation, it turned out that the problem of unsynced messages occurred with messages above a certain size. Apparently DavMail behaves in a way that differs from other #IMAP servers and that mbsync doesn’t handle well.

I’ve massively increased the size of buf in src/socket.h (from 100000 to 5000000), and this seems to have solved the problem. The real problem is probably in the protocol handling, but this is at least a workaround that allows me to continue reading mail with #mu4e in #Emacs.

@moritz Habe #davmail auf dem MacBook laufen, und da hat es sich gemeldet, als das token abgelaufen ist. Zumindest der teil sollte funktionieren… Mein problem ist vor allem, dass es überhaupt nicht mit #mbsync harmonisiert. Jetzt ist es ein paar tage ohne fehlermeldung gelaufen, aber schon jammert mbsync wieder über volle input buffers :-/ Immerhin fehlen anscheinend noch keine nachrichten … Wenn es zuverlässig funktionieren würde, wäre es auch nicht so schlimm, dass es lahm ist …

@Cnoceda @ericsfraga Yes, exactly, this was my idea as well. Authentication works, and the IMAP proxy server works *in principle*, too. But *in practice*, I couldn’t get #mbsync to reliably work with #davmail’s IMAP proxy; some messages were never synchronized.

@ericsfraga @Cnoceda I use #emacs #mu4e for mail, so I somehow need to get the mail into a maildir.

There are other tools that just do the #OAuth2 authentication (see, e.g., https://sites.uw.edu/bxf4/2022/09/01/getting-uw-outlook-365-oauth2-to-work-with-emacs-mu4e-mbsync-and-msmtp/), but I don’t see how I could create an “Azure Active Directory App,” so this already fails at Step 1… That’s why I tried tunneling #mbsync through #davmail.

@Cnoceda @ericsfraga Unfortunately, my experience so far with #davmail, #mbsync, and #MicrosoftExchange: it’s hopeless.

I’ve tried both mbsync 1.4.4 and the current git version. I thought I had it working when it finally didn’t stop with some error—but then I discovered that hundreds of messages were never synchronized.

This is a disaster.

Since I’ve just gotten another reminder that #OAuth2 will be required to access UNIL’s #MicrosoftExchange server, I decided to give it another try.

This time I let #mbsync sync to a new, empty directory. It ran into the same problem as last time:

IMAP error: unable to parse INTERNALDATE format

Apparently something is different with #davmail that makes mbsync think that lines in the body that start with “Date:” are headers… The solution seems to be to turn off the “CopyArrivalDate” option in the mbsync configuration (which is actually the default value).

The first run is not finished, but so far, things are looking good… Phew!

It seems that some component (#DavMail?) considers *all* lines starting with “Date:” as message dates, but of course with all the TOFU, there are tons of matching lines—but the rest isn’t conformant. I’ve already fixed those that follow some pattern, but there are tons that are completely off (like “Date: 3 f=C3=A9vrier 2022 =C3=A0 11:23:21 UTC+1”).

Of course, all of this could have been avoided by not migrating to #Microsoft hell and its oh-so-modern authentication.

Just when I thought I maybe had a working #DavMail setup, #mbsync suddenly decides that it is “unable to parse INTERNALDATE format” in some message in some folder :-(

@moritz I agree. I precisely needed the VPN yesterday because I was struggling to set up #DavMail so that I can continue to access my mail with a reasonable client.
#Microsoft has an extremely bad track record for… basically everything. One may also wonder how #sustainable it is to outsource the whole IT to a foreign company.

@jindam_vani I use #gnus with #davmail to access emails from an exchange server and #notmuch for searching. Emails are retrieved with POP and stored in nnml groups. I also use nntp for newsgroups.

@true_mxp give it a try. The instructions were quite straightforward. Once #davmail is running, any standard client MUA will be able to use IMAP, POP, SMTP protocols by taking to localhost.

@ellisgl @thunderbird I've been using #Thunderbird coupled with #DavMail for a while, but it suddenly became buggy as hell and my contacts started receiving a gazillion of fake calendar notifications so I had to stop using it before losing my job 🤣 . I don't know why #Evolution can have a proper EWS plugin an #Thunderbird not. They are both #FOSS apps and Thunderbird could really gain some user given that there are not many options in Linux when looking for email clients supporting MS Exchange.

@im Je viens de voir que les extensions de Thunderbird qui vont bien pour ça sont incompatibles avec les versions récentes.

Mais il reste possible de jouer avec #Davmail (c’est ce que je fais). Je ne sais pas quelles sont tes compétences. C’est pas très compliqué, mais c’est pas trivial non plus (ya un peu de ligne de commande).