Re: Exchange server through Davmail?

[Martin Gross]

Well, I've needed a lot of time to get Gnus + Davmail _on MS Windows_
to communicate well to an Exchange server and would like to share here
my successes to help other people saving time and nerves.  But also I
will say right now that on the end I decided to use Alpine, with Emacs
as alternate editor, because I get a lot of mail in HTML and does not
want to struggle with w3m.

What I did:

I followed Carson's advice.

First
   
> $ git clone http://git.gnus.org/gnus.git

As I don't know how to do this on MS Windows I did it on a Linux
system.  The cloned "Gnus" folder went into my ~/.emacs.d.

And after that, I tried to continue Carson's advice:

> in ~/.emacs (add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/gnus/lisp")
> (require 'gnus-load)

but my new Gnus' folder did not ship any "gnus-load" which I could
load -- actually I am afraid such a file must be the result of a
compilation.  So I compiled Gnus as said in the "README", and voila:
got (among others) the file "gnus-load.el".

Then with the new Gnus and after endless trials, I finally found an
nnimap setup that worked:
  
;; INCOMING EXCHANGE (NNIMAP)
  (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnimap "exchange"
                (nnimap-address "localhost")
                (nnimap-server-port 1143)
                (nnimap-stream network)
                 ))

  machine localhost login XXX/XXX password XXXXXX port 1143

The fist in ".gnus.el", the second in ".authinfo"

;; OUTGOING EXCHANGE (SMTP)
  (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
   smtpmail-auth-credentials '(("localhost" 1025 "XXX/XXX" "XXXXXX")) 
   smtpmail-default-smtp-server "localhost"
 ;  smtpmail-smtp-server "localhost" 
   smtpmail-smtp-service 1025)

Sadly, doing it so, imaping is horribly slow and the Gnus' buffer with
just the list of mails shows alls addressers as "nobody" and subjects as
"none".  Thunderbird, Evolution, Alpine do this better, but I like to
edit in Emacs (won't renounce org-mode), thus I tried to POP instead.

I found the following POP settings to work fine:

;; INCOMING EXCHANGE (POP)
  ((setq gnus-select-method '(nnml ""))
  (setq mail-sources '((pop :server "localhost"
                            :port 1110 
                            :user "XXX/XXX" 
                            :password "XXXXXX")
                            ))
 
It seems not possible to make POP look for ".authinfo"
   
Gnus and Davmail harmonize very good this way, but I need at least to
let the messeges on the server, and pop3-leave-mail-on-server does not
work.  Imap should do the trick with:

((setq gnus-select-method '(nnml ""))
(setq mail-sources '((imap :server "localhost" 
                           :port 1143
                           :authentication login 
                           :user "XXX/XXX"
                           :password "XXXXXX"
;                          :mailbox "Inbox"
                           :stream network
                           :dontexpunge t)))

but I get first the error message: 

error in process filter: Imap-mailbox-data is nil, prop recent value 0
mailbox buffer *imap-source*

and then

Mail source (imap :server localhost :port 1143 :authentication login
:user XXX/XXX :password ******** :stream network) error (IMAP error:
command authentication required).  

A workaround that would be enough for me could be use pop and create an
archive folder on the Exchange server (via webmail) or in Outlook and
set a rule to write a copy of every incoming message there, although
this implies a lot of disadvantages.  Davmail can then save a copy of
sent mails to the sent box on the server (Advanced -> "SMTP save in
sent").

Hopefully Gnus and Davmail will develop their capabilities and hopefully
this report will help somebody.

Regards

MG