NOTMUCH-PROPERTIES(7)
NAME
notmuch-properties - notmuch message property conventions and documen‐
tation
SYNOPSIS
notmuch count property:<key>=<value>
notmuch search property:<key>=<value>
notmuch show property:<key>=<value>
notmuch reindex property:<key>=<value>
notmuch tag +<tag> property:<key>=<value>
notmuch dump --include=properties
notmuch restore --include=properties
DESCRIPTION
Several notmuch commands can search for, modify, add or remove proper‐
ties associated with specific messages. Properties are key/value
pairs, and a message can have more than one key/value pair for the same
key.
While users can select based on a specific property in their search
terms with the prefix property:, the notmuch command-line interface
does not provide mechanisms for modifying properties directly to the
user.
Instead, message properties are expected to be set and used programmat‐
ically, according to logic in notmuch itself, or in extensions to it.
Extensions to notmuch which make use of properties are encouraged to
report the specific properties used to the upstream notmuch project, as
a way of avoiding collisions in the property namespace.
CONVENTIONS
Any property with a key that starts with "index." will be removed (and
possibly re-set) upon reindexing (see notmuch-reindex(1)).
MESSAGE PROPERTIES
The following properties are set by notmuch internally in the course of
its normal activity.
index.decryption
If a message contains encrypted content, and notmuch tries to
decrypt that content during indexing, it will add the property
index.decryption=success when the cleartext was successfully in‐
dexed. If notmuch attempts to decrypt any part of a message
during indexing and that decryption attempt fails, it will add
the property index.decryption=failure to the message.
Note that it's possible for a single message to have both in-
dex.decryption=success and index.decryption=failure. Consider
an encrypted e-mail message that contains another encrypted
e-mail message as an attachment -- if the outer message can be
decrypted, but the attached part cannot, then both properties
will be set on the message as a whole.
If notmuch never tried to decrypt an encrypted message during
indexing (which is the default, see index.decrypt in not‐
much-config(1)), then this property will not be set on that mes‐
sage.
session-key
When notmuch-show(1) or notmuch-reply(1) encounters a message with
an encrypted part, if notmuch finds a session-key property associ‐
ated with the message, it will try that stashed session key for de‐
cryption.
If you do not want to use any stashed session keys that might be
present, you should pass those programs --decrypt=false.
Using a stashed session key with "notmuch show" will speed up ren‐
dering of long encrypted threads. It also allows the user to de‐
stroy the secret part of any expired encryption-capable subkey while
still being able to read any retained messages for which they have
stashed the session key. This enables truly deletable e-mail, since
(once the session key and asymmetric subkey are both destroyed)
there are no keys left that can be used to decrypt any copy of the
original message previously stored by an adversary.
However, access to the stashed session key for an encrypted message
permits full byte-for-byte reconstruction of the cleartext message.
This includes attachments, cryptographic signatures, and other mate‐
rial that cannot be reconstructed from the index alone.
See index.decrypt in notmuch-config(1) for more details about how to
set notmuch's policy on when to store session keys.
The session key should be in the ASCII text form produced by GnuPG.
For OpenPGP, that consists of a decimal representation of the hash
algorithm used (identified by number from RFC 4880, e.g. 9 means
AES-256) followed by a colon, followed by a hexadecimal representa‐
tion of the algorithm-specific key. For example, an AES-128 key
might be stashed in a notmuch property as: ses-
sion-key=7:14B16AF65536C28AF209828DFE34C9E0.
index.repaired
Some messages arrive in forms that are confusing to view; they can
be mangled by mail transport agents, or the sending mail user agent
may structure them in a way that is confusing. If notmuch knows how
to both detect and repair such a problematic message, it will do so
during indexing.
If it applies a message repair during indexing, it will use the in-
dex.repaired property to note the type of repair(s) it performed.
index.repaired=skip-protected-headers-legacy-display indicates that
when indexing the cleartext of an encrypted message, notmuch skipped
over a "legacy-display" text/rfc822-headers part that it found in
that message, since it was able to index the built-in protected
headers directly.
index.repaired=mixedup indicates the repair of a "Mixed Up" en‐
crypted PGP/MIME message, a mangling typically produced by Micro‐
soft's
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dkg-openpgp-pgpmime-message-mangling
for more information.
SEE ALSO
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-insert(1), not‐
much-new(1), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1),
notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1)
AUTHOR
Carl Worth and many others
COPYRIGHT
2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others
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