[Arm-netbook] offlineimap syncing off of gmail...

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

after trying for 90 minutes to connect to accounts.google.com last
night, with over twenty refreshes, finally obtaining just the HTML of
a page then having to spend ANOTHER hour just to get the matching
CSS... only to run into HTTP proxy problems and having to clear the
cache and DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN....

... i'm absolutely sick and tired of the fucking fucked internet here,
how it's interfering with my ability to communicate, get source code
and much more.

so, i'm converting to offline imap, setting up the "prayer webmail"
client, a cyrus imap server, and syncing everything to my laptop now i
have the spare space on the 500GB SSD.

the only thing is... well... look at the numbers:

Folder INBOX [acc: lkcl]:
 Copy message UID 143 (98/155030) Remote:INBOX -> Local
Folder INBOX.bak.sent [remote name [Gmail]/Sent Mail] [acc: lkcl]:
 Copy message UID 307 (116/55244) Remote:[Gmail]/Sent Mail -> Local
Folder INBOX.bak.flagged [remote name [Gmail]/Starred] [acc: lkcl]:
 Copy message UID 508 (161/3185) Remote:[Gmail]/Starred -> Local
Folder INBOX.bak.important [remote name [Gmail]/Important] [acc: lkcl]:
 Copy message UID 296 (114/51381) Remote:[Gmail]/Important -> Local

that's nearly 10 GIGABYTES of mail over a ten year period (i created
the gmail account in 2006 when i was running out of space on my laptop
to hold all the email i had in mutt Maildirs).

55 *thousand* messages in the "sent mail" folder.  a hundred and fifty
five thousand in the inbox.

after hacking offlineimap so that it would only use HTTPS proxy for
connecting to accounts.google.com but would connect direct to
imap.gmail.com (using a fixed IP address because the china government
MODIFIES the DNS entries to point to the wrong locations...)....

... i was able to initiate the download / sync process.  connectivity
is so fucking slow it's about one message every... two to five
seconds.  at this rate it's going to take TWO HUNDRED hours to sync
the entire mailbox.  that's ten DAYS for god's sake.

we may actually have to go stay in a hotel in hong kong (where they
have a 100 mbytes / sec internet connection) just so i can sync all
the email.

dang.

l.