1 [[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
2 #Using notmuch remotely#
5 It is hard to keep nomuch tags in sync across multiple instances of
6 notmuch, on multiple computers. Though you can do this with "notmuch
7 dump" and "notmuch restore", it is often preferable to be able to use
8 notmuch on a remote computer as if it were present on a local
11 The following guidelines show how I have accomplished this. It isn't
12 perfect, but it works pretty well, and allows me to access notmuch on
13 my home computer, using only an emacs client on my netbook or work
14 computer, a trivial shell script, a few settings in my .emacs, and
17 Note that this is all something of a hack, and future versions of
18 notmuch will likely make all of these steps much more
19 transparent. I'll note particularly which things should become
20 unneccessary with future version. At the moment though, this does
21 work, and might enable some of you to use notmuch away from your
24 ##What you will need##
25 You will need to have the following items in place:
27 1. a working notmuch on one computer (let's call that computer
28 "server"). The notmuch should be at least version 0.2.
29 2. a working notmuch emacs interface on another computer (let's call
30 that computer "client")
31 3. password-free login (public key authentication) from client to
32 server. [Here](http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/) is a
33 good page on how to set it up.
34 4. a reasonably fast connection. (This isn't really *neccessary*, but
35 if your connection is too slow, this won't be very pleasant to use,
36 and certainly won't seem transparent.)
38 ##Write a wrapper shell script##
40 /!\ From reading about `notmuch show --format=raw` in the 0.5 (2010-11-11)
41 release's *New command-line features* section of the `NEWS` file, it appears to
42 me that step *2.* is no longer needed, and this whole procedure can be
43 simplified a lot. But I haven't tested / confirmed this yet.
45 Now we will need to write a simple shell script that does two things:
47 1. replaces the call to the notmuch binary with a call to notmuch
49 2. offers, via the "--get" option, a utility for downloading raw
50 message text over scp (this is necessary for attachments) and
51 caching for future use.
53 Note that this shell script also pauses briefly after every message
54 entries. This is currently necessary so that the emacs process-filter
55 doesn't chop off messages. It's an obvious hack, and hopefully won't
56 be necessary in the furture.
59 SSH_BIN="/path/to/ssh/on/client"
61 SSH_HOST="server_name"
62 NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN="/path/to/notmuch/on/server"
63 CACHE="${HOME}/.notmuch-cache.d"
67 if [ $1 = "search" ]; then
68 $SSH_BIN $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@ | while read line; do
73 $SSH_BIN $USER@$SSH_HOST $NOTMUCH_REMOTE_BIN $@
77 check_for_file_name ()
79 [ -f "${CACHE}/${1}" ]
84 FILE_DIR="${CACHE}/$(dirname ${1})"
85 [ -d "${FILE_DIR}" ] || mkdir -p "${FILE_DIR}"
86 scp ${SSH_HOST}:${1} "${FILE_DIR}" > /dev/null 2>&1
88 if [ "${retcode}" -ne "0" ]; then
89 echo "Failed to fetch file" 1>&2
96 [ -d "${CACHE}" ] || mkdir -p "${CACHE}"
98 check_for_file_name ||
100 printf "${CACHE}/${1}\n"
103 if [ ${1} = "--get" ]; then
109 Save this to a file, "remote-notmuch.sh", in your path.
111 Now you can run "remote-notmuch.sh new". You can call the script
112 anything you like. If you don't have a notmuch instance on your client
113 computer, you can even call it "notmuch" and have totally transparent
114 usage. (Since I run "new" from an emacs keybinding, I've never
115 bothered with this renaming.)
117 ##Configure your emacs client##
119 Add the following to your .emacs (this is on your client machine):
121 (setq notmuch-command "/path/to/your/remote-notmuch.sh")
123 Now add the following, to overwrite the way in which notmuch gets raw
126 (defun notmuch-show-get-filename ()
127 (let* ((orig-filename (notmuch-show-get-prop :filename))
129 (message "Downloading... ")
130 (shell-command-to-string (concat notmuch-command
133 (replace-regexp-in-string "\n" "" retvalue)))
135 This will will use the "--get" option of the above
136 script. Note that it only has to do this for attachments or for
137 viewing the raw file, and only the first time. After that, it is
140 ##A tip to speed things up##
141 If you have openssh >= 0.4, you can make use of the "ControlMaster"
142 feature. This allows you to reuse an existing connection. Therefore
143 if you keep a connection open, you won't have to authenticate every
146 Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config file:
150 ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p
152 You can also se the Host to "*", if you want to use it for all
153 connections. I usually have an interactive ssh connection to my home
154 computer open, so I don't need to do anything more. But if not, you
159 which will open up a background connection, which you can then reuse
160 for all of your notmuch commands.
163 Some things won't work perfectly, and there might be some unexpected
164 mismatches between normal usage and this sort of usage. If you're
165 using this approach and run into any problems, please feel free to
166 list them here. And, of course, if you improve on any of these
167 approaches, please do edit this page and let people know!