266. Back-up your gmail using getmail on debian testing/wheezy

Since I'm thinking about moving universities the issue of backing up my work email (which is hosted by gmail) account is weighing at the back of my mind.

I'm just following this post: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getmail

This post is duplicating most of what's done there (I like the Arch tutes -- well written and thorough) so this is more of a 'yes, I followed it and it works' kind of posts.

Don't forget that gmail has an imap bandwidth limit of ca 2.5 GB per day: https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1071518

First install getmail4. You can probably ignore bug =#633799 (I'm assuming that you use apt-listbugs and receive the warning below -- if not, you probably shouldn't be using testing...)

sudo apt-get install getmail4

#633799 - getmail causes irrecoverable mail corruption when using mbox

mkdir ~/.getmail
touch ~/.getmail/getmailrc
chmod og-rwx ~/.getmail/getmailrc
mkdir /media/backups/workmail
cd /media/backups/workmail
mkdir cur new tmp

If you don't make the last three folders getmail will complain.
Edit your ~/.getmail/getmailrc

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
mailboxes = ("[Gmail]/All Mail",)
username = firstname.lastname@mycompany.com
password = myPassword

[destination]
type = Maildir
path = /media/backups/workmail/

[options]
verbose = 2
message_log = ~/.getmail/log

# retrieve only new messages
# if set to true it will re-download ALL messages every time!
#read_all = false

# do not alter messages
delivered_to = false
received = false

Note that you may have a folder called [Google Mail/All Mail] instead

More options here: http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/configuration.html

Next run getmail

NOTE: if you interrrupt (by e.g. ctrl+c) and then resume by running getmail again you'll download all emails again. If you let it run to completion, everything will work properly, however, and in the future it will only download new emails. 

getmail

msg    1/5053 (5621 bytes) msgid 648042553/1 from someone@somewhere  delivered to Maildir /media/backups/workmail/
[..]
  msg  772/5053 (10839 bytes) from someone@somewhere delivered to Maildir /media/backups/workmail/
  msg  773/5053 (4377 bytes) from  someone@somewhere  delivered to Maildir /media/backups/workmail
[..]
  5053 messages (783074371 bytes) retrieved, 0 skipped
Summary:
Retrieved 5053 messages (783074371 bytes) from SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever:firstname.lastname@mycompany.com@imap.gmail.com:993

If that all worked ok, edit your crontab and make it run e.g. once per day:

crontab -e

00 23     * * *   getmail -q

Since I have a private gmail account as well I created a file called privatemailrc and use it with

getmail -r ~/.getmail/privatemailrc -q

I also created folders /media/backups/privatemail/cur, /media/backups/privatemail/tmp and /media/backups/privatemail/new and point to those in my privatemailrc file.