Alexander Gromnitsky's Blog

Gmail to NNTP

Latest update: 2020-02-13 12:12:00

How to read a mailing list via nntp if you already have a local INN installed & running.

Reqs:

• fetchmail
• procmail

The recipe is one-way only: you won't be able to respond to the list from your news reader.

1. Create a label that's going to serve as a sink for all mailing lists. Then create a filter to catch emails from a particular mailing list:

   

   The idea is not to clog you Inbox folder.

2. Add to ~/.fetchmailrc:

    poll imap.gmail.com protocol IMAP port 993
         user bob@gmail.com is bob
         folder "Mailing Lists"
         keep
         ssl
   

   Gmail maps label names to IMAP folders.

3. Create a newsgroup:

    # /usr/libexec/news/ctlinnd newgroup local.coff
   

   Then make sure your have

    server: localhost
   

   set in inn.conf. Otherwise expect warning: What server? errors from INN.

4. Add to ~/.procmailrc:

    MY_CACHE=$HOME/.cache/procmail
    MY_MAILPOST_DB=$MY_CACHE/mailpost
   
    :0
    * ^TO.*coff@(minnie.)?tuhs.org
    |/usr/libexec/news/mailpost -b $MY_MAILPOST_DB local.coff
   

   You'll also need to manually create $MY_MAILPOST_DB dir.

5. Run fetchmail!