Can mail_daemon use aliases?

I’m moving away from Google and chose Mailbox.org as new provider.

Aside: Seems to be quite a nice service for 3€/month (30€/year) with mail, calender, contacts, cloud. The mail and calender web interface works nicely in Web+, their online office suite (word processor, spreadsheet etc.) to a varying degree, faster with Epiphany. Haven’t used the suite much at all. I prefer a local app exchanging files via WebDav - “cadaver” on Haiku works nicely for that (anyone up for a WebDav FS? :slight_smile: )

Back to my question:
I can set up a number of aliases at Mailbox.org. Is there a way to conveniently choose which alias to use when sending mail from Haiku?

Only way I found yet is to change “Real name” and “Return address” in the E-Mail preferences, close the preferences (an “Apply” is not enough!), compose and send my mail, and change those settings back.
Is there a better way?

2 Likes

Not really, sorry.

There would have to be a way to change the from header, maybe with a field. (and return adress and real name etc)
It’s a bit unfortunate because my mail server allows infinite adressed I could send from, with the smtp credentials I have configured now.

Webdav is a https based filesystem, what about nfs? :wink:

Wouldn’t creating multiple accounts in the Mail app work?

Yes, kinda. But this is more difficult than the workaround already described and undoable with infinite aliases, it would also make mail_darmon download copied of all emails severall times.

I don’t think Mailbox.org’s cloud supports that.

WRT my alias problem, I guess I’ll hack a little script to switch between two sets of settings files in /boot/home/config/settings/Mail/accounts

Would it make sense to create an enhancement ticket to add “Profiles” or “Aliases” to the E-Mail preferences’ “Account settings”:

emailprefs

Maybe a pop-up menu at the top similar to e.g. Terminal’s colour schemes?

2 Likes

Sure.

I’d suggest a From: field to the email settings which is editable, has the same dropdown UI as the other fields and only appears when (atleast one) alias is configured.

As a bonus maybe it remembering if you used an alias once, and a setting to match the sender adress to the one it was received for. : )

I filed #18556 (Add 'Aliases' to E-Mail preferences) – Haiku for this enhancement.

3 Likes

It looks like there is a FUSE one: davfs2 - Summary [Savannah] that should be possible to get working with uerlandfs

2 Likes

Sounds intruiging! How difficult do you think this would be for an experienced porter like, say, @Begasus ? :smile: :smile: :smile:

Getting it build would be one thing, getting it to interact with userlandfs is another one and out of my skills. :rofl:

2 Likes

You can have a look at the sshfs recipe for an example. It is mostly about linking with -luserlandfs_fuse instead of -lfuse, I think?

Thanks on the pointer, will try to see if I can give it a look today, first openldap. :slight_smile:

Problems:

  • Add Haiku to supported OS’s (done)
  • Fix not having sys/sysctl.h (done)
  • Not fixed, Haiku doesn’t have fstab (didn’t find any fixes for that on haikuports)
1 Like

Resurrecting this thread as @ilfelice ‘s EmailViews may be an indication that more people give Haiku’s mail system a try.

As I mentioned further up, I created a little script to switch email accounts. Have been using it ever since and it’s a nice stop-gap until Haiku’s mail system learns how to do it properly.

This is how it’s done:

  1. Create your first account as usual (referred to here as “Humdinger”).
  2. Close the E-Mail preferences.
  3. Go to /boot/home/config/settings/Mail and rename the folder “accounts” to “accounts_other”.
  4. Open the E-Mail preferences again - as you’ve renamed the accounts folder, the preference panel is empty - and create your second account (referred to here as “RealName”).
  5. Close the E-Mail preferences.

I usually use my “Humdinger” account, but when I want to write a mail from my “RealName” account, I invoke a ‘switching’ menu item from the context menu of the mailbox icon in the Deskbar before starting the Mail application. For that, I put a link to the script below into /boot/home/config/settings/Mail/Menu Links/ ⇔ Switch-to-RealName (I start the filename with a space so the entry appears first in the context menu):

The script:

#!/bin/sh

# Switches between two email account sets to use two
# aliases to the same email acount.

# Quit E-Mail preferences should they be running
quit application/x-vnd.Haiku-Mail
cd /boot/home/config/settings/Mail

mv accounts accounts_temp
mv accounts_other accounts
mv accounts_temp accounts_other

cd "Menu Links"

if [ -f " ⇔ Switch-to-RealName" ] ; then
	mv " ⇔ Switch-to-RealName" " ⇔ Switch-to-Humdinger"
else
	mv " ⇔ Switch-to-Humdinger" " ⇔ Switch-to-RealName"
fi

As you can see, it’s really just a simple switching of directories, accountsaccounts_other.

2 Likes