pidgin2imap is a daemon written in Python and uploads your conversation you do with Pidgin to your IMAP server. The daemon uses the DBus interface provided by Pidgin to receive signals about sent and received messages, to upload them.

pidgin2imap is based on a idea of a logging daemon written in Perl. The article describing this tool, can be found in Linux Magazin, Issue 06.2006 ¹⁾. The original idea is a daemon parsing the logs written by Pidgin and upload them to a IMAP server. There are some pros and cons in their implementation.

You can either pick a snapshot from the development tree:

• http://git.goatpr0n.de/?p=pidgin2imap.git;a=summary

or the current release:

• pidgin2imap v0.1.0 (.tar.gz)

or clone the whole repository:

git clone git://goatpr0n.de/pidgin2imap.git

Extracting a snapshot:

tar xf <pidgin2imap_archive>.tar.gz

When you have cloned the repository you can either use the cloned tree or create a clean source tree:

$ cd <pidgin2imap_git_dir>
$ git-archive --format=tar --prefix=pidgin2imap HEAD^{tree} | \
gzip >/tmp/pidgin2imap.tar.gz

To configure pidgin2iamp you need to edit either /etc/pidgin2imap.rc or ~/.pidgin2imap.rc. The user options do have a higher priority and overwrites the global options.

# Configuration file example.
# Store it as ~/.pidgin2imap.rc (user) or /etc/pidgin2imap.rc (global)
# Load order is global, than user. User settings have higher priority.
 
[Defaults]
host = imap.example.com
port = 143
 
# IMAP login, if password is unset, password will be asked
# on startup. If username is empty, system user name will
# be used.
username = some_user
#password = some_password
 
# When use_ssl, default port should be set to 993
use_ssl = no
 
# You can use ssl certification and key files:
#certfile=
#keyfile=
 
# Mailbox to store your conversation log:
# INBOX.Purple.<protocol>.<account>.<sender_from>
mbox_basedir = INBOX.Purple
 
# Auto subscribe newly added conversation mailboxes on your IMAP account.
auto_subscribe = yes

• host: the host address of your IMAP server
• port: the port your IMAP server listens on [Defaults: 143 (unsecure), 993 (SSL)]
• username: username used for IMAP authentication/login
• password: password user for IMAP authentication/login, can/should be left commented out. pidgin2imap asks for your password on startup.
• use_ssl: (yes|no) Toggle IMAP over SSL on or off
• certfile: used for SSL certificated logins
• keyfile: see certfile
• mbox_basedir: Folder to store the conversation logs in. pidgin2imp uses a Pidgin like logging structure.
• auto_subscribe: (yes|no) When a new converstion log is created and stored on your IMAP account, the folder automaticly gets subscribed.

For the moment pidgin2imap needs to be started, after pidgin has been launched. There are two ways to run the logging program. (Assume we are in then pidgin2imap directory!)

./pidgin2imap.py

will start the program in foreground. Hit Ctrl+c to terminate.

./pidgin2imap.py -D

will start the program in in background as daemon. There is also a logfile written to /tmp/pidgin2imap.log by default. Use the -l|–logfile option to put it somewhere else.

Usage: pidgin2imap.py [options]

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -D, --daemon          Run program as background process.
  -c RCFILE, --config=RCFILE
                        Specify a different config file location.
  -l LOGFILE, --logfile=LOGFILE
                        Logfile [Default: /tmp/pidgin2imap.log]