#!/bin/bash # mailsync.sh - fetch mail and reindex it. # # Copyright (C) 2026 Danilo M. # # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as # published by the Free Software Foundation. # # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the # GNU General Public License for more details. # # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License # along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software # Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. # # Runs mbsync followed by notmuch new, under a lock so a cron timer and a # click in qtmaildir cannot run two mbsync processes over one Maildir. # # Two audiences, which is what shapes the output handling below: a cron or # systemd timer, which wants a log file it can read afterwards, and # qtmaildir, which runs this as a subprocess and shows what it prints. # Output therefore goes to BOTH, and the exit status is real. # # The script owns the log, so the caller must NOT redirect into it as well. A # crontab line ending "> mailsync.log 2>&1" writes every line a second time, # because tee has already put it there. Just call the script. # # Usage: mailsync.sh [channel ...] # # With no arguments it syncs every channel, which is what a cron timer wants # and what every existing caller already does. Given channel names it syncs # only those, which is how qtmaildir syncs just the accounts it edited. The # names are mbsync CHANNEL names from ~/.mbsyncrc, which are not necessarily # the account names qtmaildir shows: see the `channel` key in qtmaildir.conf. # Defensive: don't rely on cron/systemd/whatever invokes this to have # set these correctly. Explicit beats inferred, especially after the # HOME-not-set failure we hit once already. Fall back to the invoking # user's home from passwd rather than a hardcoded path. export HOME="${HOME:-$(getent passwd "$(id -u)" | cut -d: -f6)}" export GNUPGHOME="${GNUPGHOME:-$HOME/.gnupg}" # Overridable for the test suite ONLY. A test must never take the real lock: # that is the mutex the user's cron sync uses, so a test run holding it would # block their mail. Production passes nothing and gets the real path. LOCKFILE="${MAILSYNC_LOCKFILE:-/tmp/mbsync.lock}" LOGFILE="$HOME/.local/state/mailsync.log" # What qtmaildir READS, as against the log, which is for a human (item 174). # The application used to infer a finished run from the log's RUN END banner # and from this lock's inode in /proc/locks. That made a human-readable line # into wire format, said nothing about WHICH channels a run carried, and left a # skipped run reporting nothing at all (item 125). This file is the interface; # the log stays the log. STATUSFILE="$HOME/.local/state/qtmaildir/syncstatus.json" mkdir -p "$(dirname "$LOGFILE")" mkdir -p "$(dirname "$STATUSFILE")" # Written atomically, because qtmaildir watches this file and a reader must # never see a half-written one: mv within a directory is atomic, a redirect # into the final path is not. # # Failure to write it is deliberately NOT fatal. The status file is a # convenience for the application; the sync itself has already happened, and # taking the run down over a report of it would turn a cosmetic problem into a # mail problem. write_status() { local state="$1" mbsync_status="$2" notmuch_status="$3" local started="$4" ended="$5" shift 5 local channels="" sep="" channel for channel in "$@"; do # The two characters JSON requires escaping in a string. A channel name # comes from ~/.mbsyncrc and is an identifier rather than free text, so # this is belt and braces rather than a real expectation. channel="${channel//\\/\\\\}" channel="${channel//\"/\\\"}" channels="${channels}${sep}\"${channel}\"" sep=", " done local tmp tmp="$(mktemp "${STATUSFILE}.XXXXXX")" || return 0 cat > "$tmp" </dev/null || rm -f "$tmp" } # Rotation is NOT this script's job: /etc/logrotate.d/mailsync owns this file, # keeping seven compressed days. An earlier version also rotated by size here, # and the two fought: the script's "mv $LOGFILE $LOGFILE.1" overwrote whatever # logrotate had just put at .1, losing a day of history and leaving an # uncompressed file where a compressed one belonged. # Resolved HERE, before the lock and before the pipeline below, for two # reasons. The block below is piped into tee and so runs in a subshell, where # a "set --" cannot be seen by the parent that writes the status file; and the # skip branch needs the list too, to report what the run WOULD have carried. # # -a is NOT equivalent to naming every channel: with no arguments at all mbsync # syncs nothing and exits, which would look like a clean sync that moved no # mail. It is reported to qtmaildir as "-a" rather than expanded, since only # ~/.mbsyncrc knows what every channel is, and the application reads "-a" as # "every account". [ "$#" -gt 0 ] || set -- -a CHANNELS=("$@") exec 200>"$LOCKFILE" if ! flock -n 200; then # Both streams again: a caller that skipped because the cron run holds # the lock needs to be told, not left with silence and an error code. SKIP_TS="$(date -Iseconds)" msg="$SKIP_TS === SKIPPED: previous run still in progress ===" echo "$msg" | tee -a "$LOGFILE" >&2 # Item 125. A skip used to report NOTHING a watcher could see: it releases # a lock it never took, so qtmaildir's spinner waited for a completion that # never came. A skipped run is a terminal state and says so, with -1 for # both statuses since neither program ran. write_status "skipped" -1 -1 "$SKIP_TS" "$SKIP_TS" "${CHANNELS[@]}" # 75 (EX_TEMPFAIL), not 1. A skip is not a failure: the other run is # doing the work. qtmaildir reports 1 as "sync failed" and shows its log # pane, which is wrong for a click that landed during the cron run, and # cron fires every ten minutes so that overlap is routine. exit 75 fi # Statuses are written to files rather than shell variables because the # block below is piped into tee, which puts it in a subshell: a variable # assigned in there is gone by the time the parent reads it. STATUS_DIR="$(mktemp -d)" trap 'rm -rf "$STATUS_DIR"' EXIT START_TS="$(date -Iseconds)" { echo "===== RUN START: $START_TS =====" # Timestamp every line of mbsync/notmuch output as it streams, # rather than only marking run boundaries, this is what actually # lets you tell which errors are from which run at a glance. # # -V, deliberately. Without it mbsync prints NOTHING until it exits, then # one summary line: a 100-second run is silent for all of it, so qtmaildir # has nothing to report and its status bar can only say "Syncing...". With # it, mbsync announces each channel as it reaches it ("Channel work"), # which is both the progress and the account name the status bar shows. # This is not a buffering problem and stdbuf does not help: the output # streams fine, there simply is none to stream. # "$@" when channels were named, -a otherwise, resolved into CHANNELS # before the lock above. Quoted and passed as separate words, never # flattened into a string: a channel name is an argument, and mbsync takes # an unknown one as a fatal error rather than skipping it, which would fail # the whole run. mbsync -V "${CHANNELS[@]}" 2>&1 | while IFS= read -r line; do echo "$(date '+%H:%M:%S') $line" done echo "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" > "$STATUS_DIR/mbsync" notmuch new 2>&1 | while IFS= read -r line; do echo "$(date '+%H:%M:%S') $line" done echo "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" > "$STATUS_DIR/notmuch" END_TS="$(date -Iseconds)" # Also to a file, for the same subshell reason the statuses are: the parent # writes the status file and cannot see a variable assigned in here. echo "$END_TS" > "$STATUS_DIR/end" MBSYNC_STATUS="$(cat "$STATUS_DIR/mbsync")" NOTMUCH_STATUS="$(cat "$STATUS_DIR/notmuch")" if [ "$MBSYNC_STATUS" -eq 0 ] && [ "$NOTMUCH_STATUS" -eq 0 ]; then echo "===== RUN END: $END_TS status=OK =====" else echo "===== RUN END: $END_TS status=FAILED mbsync=$MBSYNC_STATUS notmuch=$NOTMUCH_STATUS =====" fi # tee, not a plain redirect. Appending only to the log left every caller # that runs this as a subprocess with nothing to show: qtmaildir's sync # pane was empty for exactly this reason. Cron still gets its log. } 2>&1 | tee -a "$LOGFILE" MBSYNC_STATUS="$(cat "$STATUS_DIR/mbsync" 2>/dev/null || echo 1)" NOTMUCH_STATUS="$(cat "$STATUS_DIR/notmuch" 2>/dev/null || echo 1)" END_TS="$(cat "$STATUS_DIR/end" 2>/dev/null || date -Iseconds)" # Item 174. What qtmaildir reads, written before the exit below so it exists # whichever way this run went. "ok" only when BOTH programs succeeded, matching # the log banner and the exit status: a caller must not be able to read success # here and failure there. # # The two statuses are reported separately as well as folded into the state, # because they mean different things to the application: a failed mbsync means # the edits never reached the server, while a failed notmuch means they did and # only the local index is behind. if [ "$MBSYNC_STATUS" -eq 0 ] && [ "$NOTMUCH_STATUS" -eq 0 ]; then write_status "ok" "$MBSYNC_STATUS" "$NOTMUCH_STATUS" \ "$START_TS" "$END_TS" "${CHANNELS[@]}" else write_status "failed" "$MBSYNC_STATUS" "$NOTMUCH_STATUS" \ "$START_TS" "$END_TS" "${CHANNELS[@]}" fi # Report the real outcome. The old unconditional "exit 0" meant a caller # could not distinguish a clean sync from a failed one, so qtmaildir's # sync-on-exit prompt would report success over a sync that had not # happened, which is precisely the case that loses work. if [ "$MBSYNC_STATUS" -ne 0 ]; then exit "$MBSYNC_STATUS" fi exit "$NOTMUCH_STATUS"