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Gmvault: gmail backup. Liberate your emails

364 points by zoobert 14y ago

creativityhurts 14y ago
OP: I understand I will collect down votes with this comment but, seriously, you gave credit to everybody in the footer except to Twitter Bootstrap, which you didn't even bother to personalize. Is that part of the brogrammer code, guzzle down some redbulls, fire up bootstrap and don't even bother about it? Invest a bit of time in the looks of your service/startup, if it looks like the next service/startup, it's just another Boostrap themed website that people (I assume) are tired of.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Uuuuh I think there is scale issue. This is an open source tool that I am willing to support. I do not intend to create a start-up here. Still you are right and I will reference bootstrap.
  - creativityhurts 14y ago
    I understand that and it's pretty awesome. Have the frontend on Github and I can help you tweak it out. Open source stuff should look awesome as well.
    - zoobert 14y ago
      It is available on the gh-pages branch of the Gmvault github repository (https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/tree/gh-pages https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/tree/gh-pages). Pull it and submit your suggestions. Many thanks.
kozubik 14y ago
No promises, but I think we will enable this on rsync.net storage arrays... We already have s3cmd in our environment, so you can: ssh user@rsync.net s3cmd get s3://rsynctest/mscdex.exe So if we put this into the environment, you could call it over SSH: ssh user@rsync.net gmvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com ... which is fantastic. More like this.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Awesome. Let me know if you need some support.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    Any chance you could build S3 support into Gmvault? So you could cron it on a linux box to connect to Google and push all the data into an S3 bucket? If money is an issue, I'd be interested in footing the bill.
    - zoobert 14y ago
      This is something I have in mind: Cloud save. It will be added in the roadmap. Please contact me and I will keep you in the loop. Regarding the money I am thinking of adding a donate button to support the project.
carterschonwald 14y ago
Hey: I"m trying it out, and its not entirely clear if its properly incremental. To whit, if I halt it mid backup and start it up again, it seems to start from scratch all over again. am I miss interpreting how its working?
dools 14y ago
I just use fetchmail to grab everything (except spam) from gmail anyway but this: "With the restore command Gmvault can recreate your gmail mailboxes in any Gmail account. All attributes such as Gmail labels are preserved and recreated. With restore, you will recover your Gmail account exactly as it was." I would use it just for that! When I wanted to unify my email/calendar etc. under one account there didn't seem to be anyway of transporting existing gmail over. Gmail doesn't even have a way to do it if you decide to start paying them!!
iloverobots 14y ago
I think it is great that you are getting a lot of good feedback and constructive criticism from the community, but I just wanted to say thank you! I've been looking for a simple tool like this for a while, and Gmvault is perfect. I'm sure that you will add polish and new features in the future, but I'm glad that you released when you did.
waynemr 14y ago
does this have any issues when you have 2-part authentication configured for Gmail? Well, I guess I'll find out in a second and report back :)
wooptoo 14y ago
I've been doing this for quite some time using getmail https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getmail https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getma...
- zoobert 14y ago
  It is only one way: Gmail to disk. When you restore the emails to a Gmail account you will loose part of the info (labels, ....).
zoobert 14y ago
Thank you all for the feedback and support. It's been great and proved that a simple tool up for that task is needed by plenty of people. If you would like to participate and help me developing Gmvault contact me on twitter at @zoobert or via email: guillaume((dot))aubert((at))gmail((dot))com I will now work hard to finalize Gmvault and produce the first final release (available within a month). If you would like to report some issues or would like extra features: submit them to https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues
csabapalfi 14y ago
How is this better than http://code.google.com/p/got-your-back/ http://code.google.com/p/got-your-back/ which does almost exactly the same thing?
epo 14y ago
As it stands, this could not work with local mail clients because of the custom storage format. Why is that, gmail meta data? It would be very impressive if gmailvault functionality could be combined with a local mail client then you could get both a full (uploadable to gmail) backup of the gmail-box and non-browser access.
Drbble 14y ago
Why would a techie need this product? We know how to turn on POP3 in a mail program.
zoobert 14y ago
tools is still in beta. Comments, features are welcome.
- carsonm 14y ago
  On Vista64: made it through all install screens. No desktop shortcut (even though I asked for one), had to nav to install dir to find it. Ran uninstall and it only did a partial uninstall (I've still got a gunky folder in program files).
- orta 14y ago
  I love the idea, but I wasn't able to use it. http://cl.ly/2m170D012X370n1g2K0S http://cl.ly/2m170D012X370n1g2K0S OSX has some niceties for python apps, you could use py2app to make it an actual binary rather than a folder or bundlebuilder.
  - Judson 14y ago
    Seems like the docs are a bit lacking at the moment, but if you open the terminal and change directories to (in your case) "~/Downloads/gmvault-v1.0-beta/bin" and then run "./gmvault" it should work.
    - mikemarotti 14y ago
      Still not working for me on OS X. I CDed my way into gmvault-v1.0-beta/bin, but when I ./gmvault sync mikemarotti@gmail.com, I get this: http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png
  - zoobert 14y ago
    Hi thanks for the feedback. I will try to use the py2app application. If the binary version doesn't work, you also do a standard python installation (http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install).
  - gglanzani 14y ago
    Same here. Installing with pip (not in a virtualenv), and I get Cannot find the python executable to set env var PYTHON_BIN. Please check where your python binary is.
espinchi 14y ago
My first thought was "cool, I certainly have to use this", and switched to something else. I just came back and started to perform a backup. I think you should, too. This is insurance. For the author: the link from the "Learn More" is broken. It should probably point to install, not documentation.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Thanks I fixed it. Sorry for the premature launch I think it was somehow a mistake (too early) but I needed a boost to be sure that I was doing something useful.
samuel1604 14y ago
wha's the difference between this and a tool like offlineimap?
- zoobert 14y ago
  Gmvault is a tool entirely dedicated to Gmail so it will recreate your account exactly as it was. Standard imap backuping tool like OfflineIMAP do not preserve labels when restoring emails on an imap server because your have to use a Gmail specific extension. For example it will take care of the Gmail labels and will recreate them when restoring the emails on an account. More features are available. Check the documentation.
- rickmb 14y ago
  Apparently, it also backs up Gmail specific stuff like labels. Which is nice, but if Gmail every bites you in the ass so hard that this is the only way to recover, would you trust Gmail again? As for myself, I just imap my Gmail accounts and don't use those features exactly to avoid that kind of lock-in. I've used too many email services and clients in my lifetime to assume Google is the final solution. And safeguarding my mail offline with imap works just fine.
- callahad 14y ago
  As an OfflineIMAP user, I see a few immediate differences: 1. OfflineIMAP expects standard IMAP servers. GMVault has special casing to handle Google's wonky IMAP support, along with features like labels and the "All Mail" directory. 2. OfflineIMAP is GPLv2 (or 3, at your option). GMVault is GPLv3. 3. OfflineIMAP syncs to either a local Maildir or another IMAP server. GMVault syncs to its own custom on-disk representation. 4. OfflineIMAP uses a username/password to log in to servers. GMVault uses XOAuth. 5. OfflineIMAP is fully bi-directional by default; local deletion propagates to the remote server. GMVault notes that "manually deleting emails or emails' directories does not prevent Gmvault from working." 6. GMVault can encrypt its own archives. OfflineIMAP cannot. Basically, GMVault looks like a much less general-purpose tool, but in its specialization, should allow for a much nicer experience for users that simply want a backup for their GMail account. I'm fond of the versatility that OfflineIMAP gives me (I can restore my mail to any IMAP server, not just GMail; I can access the local Maildir with other applications like Dovecot and Mutt; etc.), but excited about the possibilities of GMVault for friends and family. "Do you have your GMail backed up? No? Here, let me install GMVault for you..."
ernestipark 14y ago
If this fails/stops in the middle of syncing, will it restart at the point of failure or start from the beginning again?
- zoobert 14y ago
  Yes it has these kind of mechanisms are embedded: If there is an error in the middle of a syncing then Gmvault will wait few seconds and try to restart the current operation. After 4 attempts it will leave in error. Gmail imap servers can start to throttle the transfer and also cut the connection. Gmvault also has a restart mode (option --restart) to restart where it was. Actually up to 20 emails before because Gmvault save its "position" (email id synced or restored sucessfully) regularly.
pdk 14y ago
Is there a way to make Thunderbird or Mac's Mail do the same thing?
- callahad 14y ago
  What do you mean? By default, both Thunderbird and Mail.app should fully download and locally save an archive of your mail. To verify this in Thunderbird, check out Tools -> Account Settings, then go to the "Synchronization & Storage" page. Make sure it's set to "Keep messages for this accounts on this computer," "Synchronize all messages locally regardless of age," and "Don't delete any messages." You can click the "Advanced..." button if you only want to sync certain folders. To force a sync, you can go to File -> Offline -> Download/Sync Now, but you shouldn't ever have to do that with the above settings.
- camiller 14y ago
  Yes, but it won't keep the gmail labels etc. And I doubt it would do a restore to gmail.
  - probably 14y ago
    Ah, so this is the value-added proposition.
DanBlake 14y ago
Great tool, awesome work. Gmail should really offer a link to backup your mail though. I know you can do it with mail clients and this, but its annoying I cant just download one big zip file from gmail itself.
- muyuu 14y ago
  This would be hard to implement effectively. HTTP sucks for downloading massive files.
- Drbble 14y ago
  Bizarre that you can download aggs of docsr and phoos-- and photos don't compress! But not a few hunded megs of zipped mail. www.google.com/takeout
- espinchi 14y ago
  I hope they'll eventually do this too. They have this *Data Liberation Front" (http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/), from where you can already download some data in simple zip files.
- jemfinch 14y ago
  I imagine (and I'm not speaking for my employer here) that it has to do with cost: if the easiest way to backup your email is by using IMAP or POP, it's essentially an incremental backup mechanism. If the easiest way to backup your email is by clicking a link which contains all your email in a .zip file, it would be a non-incremental backup system and its cost would be much higher, because people would be far more likely to repeatedly download the same emails.
  - DanBlake 14y ago
    Maybe there could be a few options? Download all mail, download by month, download by year? Seems like they could solve that problem pretty easily and would be very awesome.
    - kristiandupont 14y ago
Glowbox 14y ago
It didn't work for me (TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable), I opened an issue on github.
- mattjaynes 14y ago
  Here's a workaround from the GH issue's comments: Solution: set 'Show in IMAP' in Settings->Labels->All Mail on gmail.com https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/2#issuecomment-5557075 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/2#issuecomment-555...
- zoobert 14y ago
  ok thanks. I will study the issue and fix it.
utexaspunk 14y ago
Sweet! I'm gonna keep my gmail backup on my google drive!
- amouat 14y ago
  Err, isn't there a flaw in that plan? Surely the back-up should protect you in case you lose access to your Google account...
  - camiller 14y ago
    I think he was trying to be subtly ironic. Perhaps too subtle.
    - amouat 14y ago
      I wondered that after I wrote the reply. However, I bet some people do use google drive to back-up other google services. It's not ironic, just foolish IMO.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        You can always create different Google accounts for each service. My "main" account (Reader, Youtube, etc) was never tied to my Gmail & Calendar account, and the probability of losing both at the same time is rather small.
        mcherm 14y ago
        Not as small as you may think. Do you really believe that Google can't connect the dots (or the IP addresses) and figure out that both accounts are associated with the same person?
        skeletonjelly 14y ago
        They'd have to tread carefully. Would suck to have an entire university banned from Google services ;)
mikemarotti 14y ago
Granted this isn't working for me to begin with (http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png), but will this tool work to archive Google Apps email accounts? eg. Gmail accounts that do not end in gmail.com?
- weiran 14y ago
  It's working on my Apps account.
  - gglanzani 14y ago
    Also with mine.
    - zoobert 14y ago
      please gglanzani and weiran. Send me your errors or create an issue in https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues I would appreciate to have the logs with the debug activated: ./gmvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com --debug
      - boreacrat 14y ago
        they said it _is_ working for them:)
- zoobert 14y ago
  At the beginning of the bash script gmvault there is a variable called GMVAULT_HOME. If instead of .. you had the full path to the gmvault-v1.0-beta dir that should work. If there are more problem could you please run it like this: $>sh -x ./gmvault sync .... and send me the console print. I will fix that in the next version. Thanks for the feedback
  - mikemarotti 14y ago
    Still not working for me, I will send you an email. Thank you for working on this tool though - our company would gladly pay for an enterprise version of this (especially if it was a bit more seamless and integrated with Google Apps somehow).
igurari 14y ago
You might want to consider another name in light of the Google Vault product: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html?section=vault http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html...
pilif 14y ago
if your tagline is "For geek and non-geek users." then you probably should not be depending on users to open a shell and type commands there to access their emails. For this to be remotely useful for non-geeks, try adding a small IMAP server so people can access the mails through their mail clients. Having to re-upload all mail back to a (presumably new) gmail account will take ages and accessing the mails locally is not really helpful these days with mime encoding and HTML email. On a related note: If you have a small box with a PTR record laying around somewhere, you can use my setup described at http://pilif.github.com/2011/02/how-i-back-up-gmail/ http://pilif.github.com/2011/02/how-i-back-up-gmail/ to route all incoming and outgoing mail through a mail server you own as it moves to and from gmail. If you ever lose your google account or its data, all mails will be on your small box in convenient maildir format, ready to be served over IMAP.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Thanks for the comment. Yeah the "for geek and non-geek" is a bit premature. I would like to create a gui for the tool that will be for non geek. Regarding your second points, currently Gmvault is a tool to backup your Gmail account and restore it into a Gmail account preserving labels and unread emails, etc. The Gmail web interface I think is the premiere interface for Gmail and with Gmvault, I want to offer to users a "safety belt for Gmail" (backup and incremental backup) and allow them to restore all your emails as they were in the Gmail web interface.
  - v0cab 14y ago
    I really hate being called a geek. I associate it with bullying and social exclusion. It may be OK to be a geek in Silicon Valley, but that's not true everywhere. If you bring that line back, please replace it with 'For techies and non-techies' or similar.
- kijin 14y ago
  > try adding a small IMAP server so people can access the mails through their mail clients. Having to re-upload all mail back to a (presumably new) gmail account will take ages and accessing the mails locally is not really helpful these days with mime encoding and HTML email. One of the stated purposes of this tool is to "liberate your emails" by letting you keep local copies of every e-mail you send and receive. If you need to use a third-party IMAP server to keep a backup of your e-mails, how does that liberate you? Now you're dependent on two online services instead of one. Reading locally stored e-mails would be a problem for non-geeks, though. But I think the right way to solve that problem would be to offer a program to read those e-mails, or even better, a plugin to a popular mail client (such as Thunderbird) so that the e-mails can be accessed through the mail client. Depending on the "cloud" just detracts from the stated purpose of this tool.
andrewpi 14y ago
Does this use SSL to grab the emails?
- callahad 14y ago
  Be default, yes: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/imap_utils.py#L194 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/imap_... However, if I recall correctly, Python's built-in SSL support doesn't do certificate verification, so you're still completely open to man in the middle attacks.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    That's a good point, and a tool like this probably really should be verifying the host. (To the author) See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1087227/validate-ssl-certificates-with-python http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1087227/validate-ssl-cert... for multiple options to accomplish this.
afterburner 14y ago
I used another Gmail backup tool once that made all my emails "read". Does this do that too?
- zoobert 14y ago
  Normally yes or as I said above it is a bug and you should report it there: http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html
  - afterburner 14y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Your answer is confusing, but I see from your other replies that GMVault is supposed to preserve read/unread status.
    - zoobert 14y ago
      I responded to the wrong comment. Normally it should preserve unread messages
bvi 14y ago
When restoring a gmail account (say I want to upload all the backed-up emails to a new account), would the date information be preserved as well?
- zoobert 14y ago
  Yes of course. Date, Gmail labels and IMAP flags (READ, UNREAD, ...) are preserved. Otherwise it is a bug so please refer to http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html
  - bvi 14y ago
    Another question: Does gmvault work behind a proxy?
    - zoobert 14y ago
      If the proxy let you connect to the Gmail IMAP server, I don't see why it wouldn't work
jenius 14y ago
Crappy design + twitter bootstrap default = tab closed. If you are serious about releasing a product ffs make sure it's polished. If the attention to detail I see in the splash page is similar to the attention to detail in the actual product (which is what I assume automatically), my faith in it is close to zero. This is ESPECIALLY important when I'm authorizing you with access to my emails -- and there is no way I would do that for someone that I assume is not serious about their product.
- haldean 14y ago
  This seems to be an unpopular idea but I completely agree. I don't mind the Bootstrap default theme, but the icon is bad enough that I lose trust in it.
- Estragon 14y ago
  My taste for design is pretty weak, so I'm always interested in comments like this. The design looks OK to me. What are the problems with it?
  - kreek 14y ago
    The main issue, for me, is that "Gmvault Gmail Backup" and the logo are unbalanced. The logo is too big, and its colors could be more sophisticated. If those things were cleaned up it would look fine (unless you're allergic to boostrap).
- ardillamorris 14y ago
  I think you are misjudging. What if he spent a lot of time in the product making sure it works well without too much care for "shininess"? If anything, using twitter bootstrap shows that he cared a bit to make it look usable from a splash site point of view. I think we should give feedback on how the product is actually working rather than complaining that he's using twitter bootstrap.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    Thanks for the support. I am not a designer, I am not working full time on this product and my free time is quite limited. Still I spent lots of time designing the logo. I kind of like it as it is very simple and tells you what the product is. Regarding the website, yes I used bootstrap because it is convenient and give you a good modern look quickly. I am not a web designer and didn't want to spend 60% of my project time on that part. For the moment I prefer to spend more time on the tool itself. If somebody wants to help to improve the website and the documentation please contact me.
sneak 14y ago
I think people familiar with command-line tools are already probably doing what I do, which is to use mbsync to sync a remote gmail imap account to a local maildir. It even easily supports multiple sync account/maildir pairs via its somewhat confusing config file format. http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html
bob87 14y ago
What is the switch to encrypt the archives? gmvault -e? I haven't been able to find it in the documentation.
zyb09 14y ago
Wow, very cool! This is exactly what I needed right now. I had bad dreams about what would happen if my Google account disappeared all of the sudden, but didn't do anything about it yet. Now I will be able to sleep better!
fogol 14y ago
Is there any data transmitted to servers other than Google's?
- zoobert 14y ago
  Nop of course not. You can check the sources to be sure that Gmvault is only talking to Gmail. You can also use XOAuth (token security mechanism) to allow Gmvault accessing your account. This is by the way the recommended authentication way.
digitalsushi 14y ago
Just a few weeks ago I was looking for exactly this piece of software! What brilliant timing. But a quick question of concern - gmail is pretty smart and can tell when I am just using it for bulk storage. If you send yourself 8 emails in a short amount of time, each with maximum sized attachment sizes, gmail will politely tell you to cut it out for a while. Does this software run the same risk? I am wary to let it just keep barging in after connection errors, if there's a chance gmail will get upset and ban me from my own account. My gmail is my lifeblood, and I want to back it up from the entity that scares me the most of taking it away from me. Thanks for making this!!
- zoobert 14y ago
  Well so far I've been doing many download and upload of my entire mailbox (5 GB) and the Gmail team did not contact me to tell me to slow down a bit. Sometimes (especially during the week-end ?) the connection was cut and I could had to wait to finish to restore my gmail account.
- justincormack 14y ago
  It should be no different from what would happen if you connect a new imap program that does a full sync of your mailbox, which many do.
PanMan 14y ago
Nice tool! I think the default sync interface should show a progress bar (like wget). Now it says: Processing 7890 emails, but then it prints a line for every email. I don't need to see every email in a list, but I would like to see how long it takes to complete. Update: I see it does print that every once in a while. I would skip the other lines... :)
- zoobert 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I will think on how to present operation progresses (progress bar and so on with curses and so on)
villagefool 14y ago
"After that Gmvault will automatically authenticate itself using the credentials stored in $HOME/.gmvault (or %HOME%/.gmvault for Windows). " how are the credentials stored offline?
- hmottestad 14y ago
  Probably as clear text. You can delete the file if you want to.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    Nop they are stored encrypted with a key randomly generated
LyleK 14y ago
Can this store mail in mbox format? In what header do the gmail labels go?
- callahad 14y ago
  The source is pretty easy to read. Here's how it's working: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/gmvault.py#L38 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/gmvau... (It stores each mail in two separate files: a .eml file with the message body, and a .meta file with metadata.)
  - zoobert 14y ago
    I will take that as a compliment. Yes files are all stored individually as .eml file. All the extra Gmail info (labels, ...) goes in .meta
michaelmior 14y ago
For anyone trying to get the Linux version to work, here's what worked for me. 1. Download the tgz and unzip. 2. Create and activate a new virtualenv in that directory. 3. easy_install -U distribute (in my case, the version of distribute installed by pip was too old for imapclient) 3. pip install logbook gdata imapclient 4. Replace bin/gmvault with the following #!/usr/bin/env python import sys import os sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath(os.path.join(sys.path[0], '../lib'))) import gmv.gmv_cmd as runner runner.bootstrap_run()
- zoobert 14y ago
  the release on HackerNews is a bit premature. I wanted to test the response and was not expecting so much interest. I will fix the deployment issues on Linux and Mac OS X. You can download the tgz and run a michael said. You can also use easy_install or pip. It is on Pypi Create a virtualenv as it is better and do: pip install gmvault (or easy_install gmvault) See http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install for further info
chbrown 14y ago
No resume functionality? Or am I just missing something? I've got ~3 GB of emails in my Gmail, and GVault's ETA is 4 hours. It already timed-out once (no discernable reason), and after restarting, went right to email number 1 (forgetting about the 1800 emails it had already gotten through).
- zoobert 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. There is a restart functionality use the --restart option (see gmvault sync -h for more info). Also note that when you restart from scratch, if the email has already been downloaded and is identical then the download is not performed. So only scanning the mailbox is faster than having downloads. Regarding the timeout, please send me the error message you had and if it is a bug I will fix it but note that sometimes Gmail cut the connection without any reasons. There is also a retry reconnect process (up to 4 times) if it is not a fatal error (cannot recover from them).
  - chbrown 14y ago
    Seems like this guy is getting the same error: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 (Issue number 4 on the github project.) I added my output to the issue. I'm on Gmvault v1.0-beta from pypi. It doesn't recognize the --restart option. "gmvault: error: unrecognized arguments: --restart"
  - davidradcliffe 14y ago
    Restart doesn't seem to be available. https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4
    - zoobert 14y ago
      yes it is there for the restore operation but not for sync. It will be available in the next version (to be released in 2 weeks)
eblume 14y ago
Oh wow - this is really interesting. I just released a VERY similar program called `gmail-safe` yesterday. I was going to do a Show HN sometime today. If anyone is interested, here is the URI: http://eblume.github.com/gmail_safe/ http://eblume.github.com/gmail_safe/ Note that this is my first Node app. It needs a lot of polish. It is published under the MIT license, though, which some people here might enjoy.
rcthompson 14y ago
Small nitpick: the application name "Gmvault" is inconsistent with the tagline "Liberate your emails", since one does not normally associate vaults with liberation. Maybe something like "protect your email" would be more vault-appropriate?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- zoobert 14y ago
  ;-) I like that. Thanks for helping me keeping the theme right
  - rcthompson 14y ago
    Also, don't go with exactly "Protect your email", since it sounds kind of bland. Just something like that. Maybe "Safeguard your email". Find an exciting synonym for "protect"!
    - minikomi 14y ago
      Or maybe "Stash your mail"
delinquentme 14y ago
Has no one mentioned search? intra-gmail search is nothing short of an atrocity compared to the google.com search... A search feature capturing partial terms "Aft" in "Afternoon" would more than make this service viable.
ljosa 14y ago
How does this compare to mbsync?
- zoobert 14y ago
  mbsync is a IMAP sync tool. Gmvault is a dedicated Gmail tool so it preserves all Gmail specific attributes like the labels, ... and allow you to restore all your emails in a Gmail account. With mbsync you might be able to upload your emails on a gmail account but you would then loose lots of information and your restored gmail account would be end up being very different.

364 points by zoobert 14y ago

OP: I understand I will collect down votes with this comment but, seriously, you gave credit to everybody in the footer except to Twitter Bootstrap, which you didn't even bother to personalize. Is that part of the brogrammer code, guzzle down some redbulls, fire up bootstrap and don't even bother about it? Invest a bit of time in the looks of your service/startup, if it looks like the next service/startup, it's just another Boostrap themed website that people (I assume) are tired of.

zoobert 14y ago
Uuuuh I think there is scale issue. This is an open source tool that I am willing to support. I do not intend to create a start-up here. Still you are right and I will reference bootstrap.
- creativityhurts 14y ago
  I understand that and it's pretty awesome. Have the frontend on Github and I can help you tweak it out. Open source stuff should look awesome as well.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    It is available on the gh-pages branch of the Gmvault github repository (https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/tree/gh-pages https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/tree/gh-pages). Pull it and submit your suggestions. Many thanks.

kozubik 14y ago

No promises, but I think we will enable this on rsync.net storage arrays... We already have s3cmd in our environment, so you can: ssh user@rsync.net s3cmd get s3://rsynctest/mscdex.exe So if we put this into the environment, you could call it over SSH: ssh user@rsync.net gmvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com ... which is fantastic. More like this.

zoobert 14y ago
Awesome. Let me know if you need some support.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  Any chance you could build S3 support into Gmvault? So you could cron it on a linux box to connect to Google and push all the data into an S3 bucket? If money is an issue, I'd be interested in footing the bill.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    This is something I have in mind: Cloud save. It will be added in the roadmap. Please contact me and I will keep you in the loop. Regarding the money I am thinking of adding a donate button to support the project.

carterschonwald 14y ago

Hey: I"m trying it out, and its not entirely clear if its properly incremental. To whit, if I halt it mid backup and start it up again, it seems to start from scratch all over again. am I miss interpreting how its working?

dools 14y ago

I just use fetchmail to grab everything (except spam) from gmail anyway but this: "With the restore command Gmvault can recreate your gmail mailboxes in any Gmail account. All attributes such as Gmail labels are preserved and recreated. With restore, you will recover your Gmail account exactly as it was." I would use it just for that! When I wanted to unify my email/calendar etc. under one account there didn't seem to be anyway of transporting existing gmail over. Gmail doesn't even have a way to do it if you decide to start paying them!!

iloverobots 14y ago

I think it is great that you are getting a lot of good feedback and constructive criticism from the community, but I just wanted to say thank you! I've been looking for a simple tool like this for a while, and Gmvault is perfect. I'm sure that you will add polish and new features in the future, but I'm glad that you released when you did.

waynemr 14y ago

does this have any issues when you have 2-part authentication configured for Gmail? Well, I guess I'll find out in a second and report back :)

wooptoo 14y ago

I've been doing this for quite some time using getmail https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getmail https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getma...

zoobert 14y ago
It is only one way: Gmail to disk. When you restore the emails to a Gmail account you will loose part of the info (labels, ....).

zoobert 14y ago

Thank you all for the feedback and support. It's been great and proved that a simple tool up for that task is needed by plenty of people. If you would like to participate and help me developing Gmvault contact me on twitter at @zoobert or via email: guillaume((dot))aubert((at))gmail((dot))com I will now work hard to finalize Gmvault and produce the first final release (available within a month). If you would like to report some issues or would like extra features: submit them to https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues

csabapalfi 14y ago

How is this better than http://code.google.com/p/got-your-back/ http://code.google.com/p/got-your-back/ which does almost exactly the same thing?

epo 14y ago

As it stands, this could not work with local mail clients because of the custom storage format. Why is that, gmail meta data? It would be very impressive if gmailvault functionality could be combined with a local mail client then you could get both a full (uploadable to gmail) backup of the gmail-box and non-browser access.

Drbble 14y ago

Why would a techie need this product? We know how to turn on POP3 in a mail program.

zoobert 14y ago

tools is still in beta. Comments, features are welcome.

carsonm 14y ago
On Vista64: made it through all install screens. No desktop shortcut (even though I asked for one), had to nav to install dir to find it. Ran uninstall and it only did a partial uninstall (I've still got a gunky folder in program files).
orta 14y ago
I love the idea, but I wasn't able to use it. http://cl.ly/2m170D012X370n1g2K0S http://cl.ly/2m170D012X370n1g2K0S OSX has some niceties for python apps, you could use py2app to make it an actual binary rather than a folder or bundlebuilder.
- Judson 14y ago
  Seems like the docs are a bit lacking at the moment, but if you open the terminal and change directories to (in your case) "~/Downloads/gmvault-v1.0-beta/bin" and then run "./gmvault" it should work.
  - mikemarotti 14y ago
    Still not working for me on OS X. I CDed my way into gmvault-v1.0-beta/bin, but when I ./gmvault sync mikemarotti@gmail.com, I get this: http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png
- zoobert 14y ago
  Hi thanks for the feedback. I will try to use the py2app application. If the binary version doesn't work, you also do a standard python installation (http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install).
- gglanzani 14y ago
  Same here. Installing with pip (not in a virtualenv), and I get Cannot find the python executable to set env var PYTHON_BIN. Please check where your python binary is.

espinchi 14y ago

My first thought was "cool, I certainly have to use this", and switched to something else. I just came back and started to perform a backup. I think you should, too. This is insurance. For the author: the link from the "Learn More" is broken. It should probably point to install, not documentation.

zoobert 14y ago
Thanks I fixed it. Sorry for the premature launch I think it was somehow a mistake (too early) but I needed a boost to be sure that I was doing something useful.

samuel1604 14y ago

wha's the difference between this and a tool like offlineimap?

zoobert 14y ago
Gmvault is a tool entirely dedicated to Gmail so it will recreate your account exactly as it was. Standard imap backuping tool like OfflineIMAP do not preserve labels when restoring emails on an imap server because your have to use a Gmail specific extension. For example it will take care of the Gmail labels and will recreate them when restoring the emails on an account. More features are available. Check the documentation.
rickmb 14y ago
Apparently, it also backs up Gmail specific stuff like labels. Which is nice, but if Gmail every bites you in the ass so hard that this is the only way to recover, would you trust Gmail again? As for myself, I just imap my Gmail accounts and don't use those features exactly to avoid that kind of lock-in. I've used too many email services and clients in my lifetime to assume Google is the final solution. And safeguarding my mail offline with imap works just fine.
callahad 14y ago
As an OfflineIMAP user, I see a few immediate differences: 1. OfflineIMAP expects standard IMAP servers. GMVault has special casing to handle Google's wonky IMAP support, along with features like labels and the "All Mail" directory. 2. OfflineIMAP is GPLv2 (or 3, at your option). GMVault is GPLv3. 3. OfflineIMAP syncs to either a local Maildir or another IMAP server. GMVault syncs to its own custom on-disk representation. 4. OfflineIMAP uses a username/password to log in to servers. GMVault uses XOAuth. 5. OfflineIMAP is fully bi-directional by default; local deletion propagates to the remote server. GMVault notes that "manually deleting emails or emails' directories does not prevent Gmvault from working." 6. GMVault can encrypt its own archives. OfflineIMAP cannot. Basically, GMVault looks like a much less general-purpose tool, but in its specialization, should allow for a much nicer experience for users that simply want a backup for their GMail account. I'm fond of the versatility that OfflineIMAP gives me (I can restore my mail to any IMAP server, not just GMail; I can access the local Maildir with other applications like Dovecot and Mutt; etc.), but excited about the possibilities of GMVault for friends and family. "Do you have your GMail backed up? No? Here, let me install GMVault for you..."

ernestipark 14y ago

If this fails/stops in the middle of syncing, will it restart at the point of failure or start from the beginning again?

zoobert 14y ago
Yes it has these kind of mechanisms are embedded: If there is an error in the middle of a syncing then Gmvault will wait few seconds and try to restart the current operation. After 4 attempts it will leave in error. Gmail imap servers can start to throttle the transfer and also cut the connection. Gmvault also has a restart mode (option --restart) to restart where it was. Actually up to 20 emails before because Gmvault save its "position" (email id synced or restored sucessfully) regularly.

pdk 14y ago

Is there a way to make Thunderbird or Mac's Mail do the same thing?

callahad 14y ago
What do you mean? By default, both Thunderbird and Mail.app should fully download and locally save an archive of your mail. To verify this in Thunderbird, check out Tools -> Account Settings, then go to the "Synchronization & Storage" page. Make sure it's set to "Keep messages for this accounts on this computer," "Synchronize all messages locally regardless of age," and "Don't delete any messages." You can click the "Advanced..." button if you only want to sync certain folders. To force a sync, you can go to File -> Offline -> Download/Sync Now, but you shouldn't ever have to do that with the above settings.
camiller 14y ago
Yes, but it won't keep the gmail labels etc. And I doubt it would do a restore to gmail.
- probably 14y ago
  Ah, so this is the value-added proposition.

DanBlake 14y ago

Great tool, awesome work. Gmail should really offer a link to backup your mail though. I know you can do it with mail clients and this, but its annoying I cant just download one big zip file from gmail itself.

muyuu 14y ago
This would be hard to implement effectively. HTTP sucks for downloading massive files.
Drbble 14y ago
Bizarre that you can download aggs of docsr and phoos-- and photos don't compress! But not a few hunded megs of zipped mail. www.google.com/takeout
espinchi 14y ago
I hope they'll eventually do this too. They have this *Data Liberation Front" (http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/), from where you can already download some data in simple zip files.
jemfinch 14y ago
I imagine (and I'm not speaking for my employer here) that it has to do with cost: if the easiest way to backup your email is by using IMAP or POP, it's essentially an incremental backup mechanism. If the easiest way to backup your email is by clicking a link which contains all your email in a .zip file, it would be a non-incremental backup system and its cost would be much higher, because people would be far more likely to repeatedly download the same emails.
- DanBlake 14y ago
  Maybe there could be a few options? Download all mail, download by month, download by year? Seems like they could solve that problem pretty easily and would be very awesome.
  - kristiandupont 14y ago

Glowbox 14y ago

It didn't work for me (TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable), I opened an issue on github.

mattjaynes 14y ago
Here's a workaround from the GH issue's comments: Solution: set 'Show in IMAP' in Settings->Labels->All Mail on gmail.com https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/2#issuecomment-5557075 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/2#issuecomment-555...
zoobert 14y ago
ok thanks. I will study the issue and fix it.

utexaspunk 14y ago

Sweet! I'm gonna keep my gmail backup on my google drive!

amouat 14y ago
Err, isn't there a flaw in that plan? Surely the back-up should protect you in case you lose access to your Google account...
- camiller 14y ago
  I think he was trying to be subtly ironic. Perhaps too subtle.
  - amouat 14y ago
    I wondered that after I wrote the reply. However, I bet some people do use google drive to back-up other google services. It's not ironic, just foolish IMO.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      You can always create different Google accounts for each service. My "main" account (Reader, Youtube, etc) was never tied to my Gmail & Calendar account, and the probability of losing both at the same time is rather small.
      - mcherm 14y ago
        Not as small as you may think. Do you really believe that Google can't connect the dots (or the IP addresses) and figure out that both accounts are associated with the same person?
        skeletonjelly 14y ago
        They'd have to tread carefully. Would suck to have an entire university banned from Google services ;)

mikemarotti 14y ago

Granted this isn't working for me to begin with (http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png http://i.imgur.com/yLzyy.png), but will this tool work to archive Google Apps email accounts? eg. Gmail accounts that do not end in gmail.com?

weiran 14y ago
It's working on my Apps account.
- gglanzani 14y ago
  Also with mine.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    please gglanzani and weiran. Send me your errors or create an issue in https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues I would appreciate to have the logs with the debug activated: ./gmvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com --debug
    - boreacrat 14y ago
      they said it _is_ working for them:)
zoobert 14y ago
At the beginning of the bash script gmvault there is a variable called GMVAULT_HOME. If instead of .. you had the full path to the gmvault-v1.0-beta dir that should work. If there are more problem could you please run it like this: $>sh -x ./gmvault sync .... and send me the console print. I will fix that in the next version. Thanks for the feedback
- mikemarotti 14y ago
  Still not working for me, I will send you an email. Thank you for working on this tool though - our company would gladly pay for an enterprise version of this (especially if it was a bit more seamless and integrated with Google Apps somehow).

igurari 14y ago

You might want to consider another name in light of the Google Vault product: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html?section=vault http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html...

pilif 14y ago

if your tagline is "For geek and non-geek users." then you probably should not be depending on users to open a shell and type commands there to access their emails. For this to be remotely useful for non-geeks, try adding a small IMAP server so people can access the mails through their mail clients. Having to re-upload all mail back to a (presumably new) gmail account will take ages and accessing the mails locally is not really helpful these days with mime encoding and HTML email. On a related note: If you have a small box with a PTR record laying around somewhere, you can use my setup described at http://pilif.github.com/2011/02/how-i-back-up-gmail/ http://pilif.github.com/2011/02/how-i-back-up-gmail/ to route all incoming and outgoing mail through a mail server you own as it moves to and from gmail. If you ever lose your google account or its data, all mails will be on your small box in convenient maildir format, ready to be served over IMAP.

zoobert 14y ago
Thanks for the comment. Yeah the "for geek and non-geek" is a bit premature. I would like to create a gui for the tool that will be for non geek. Regarding your second points, currently Gmvault is a tool to backup your Gmail account and restore it into a Gmail account preserving labels and unread emails, etc. The Gmail web interface I think is the premiere interface for Gmail and with Gmvault, I want to offer to users a "safety belt for Gmail" (backup and incremental backup) and allow them to restore all your emails as they were in the Gmail web interface.
- v0cab 14y ago
  I really hate being called a geek. I associate it with bullying and social exclusion. It may be OK to be a geek in Silicon Valley, but that's not true everywhere. If you bring that line back, please replace it with 'For techies and non-techies' or similar.
kijin 14y ago
> try adding a small IMAP server so people can access the mails through their mail clients. Having to re-upload all mail back to a (presumably new) gmail account will take ages and accessing the mails locally is not really helpful these days with mime encoding and HTML email. One of the stated purposes of this tool is to "liberate your emails" by letting you keep local copies of every e-mail you send and receive. If you need to use a third-party IMAP server to keep a backup of your e-mails, how does that liberate you? Now you're dependent on two online services instead of one. Reading locally stored e-mails would be a problem for non-geeks, though. But I think the right way to solve that problem would be to offer a program to read those e-mails, or even better, a plugin to a popular mail client (such as Thunderbird) so that the e-mails can be accessed through the mail client. Depending on the "cloud" just detracts from the stated purpose of this tool.

andrewpi 14y ago

Does this use SSL to grab the emails?

callahad 14y ago
Be default, yes: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/imap_utils.py#L194 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/imap_... However, if I recall correctly, Python's built-in SSL support doesn't do certificate verification, so you're still completely open to man in the middle attacks.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  That's a good point, and a tool like this probably really should be verifying the host. (To the author) See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1087227/validate-ssl-certificates-with-python http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1087227/validate-ssl-cert... for multiple options to accomplish this.

afterburner 14y ago

I used another Gmail backup tool once that made all my emails "read". Does this do that too?

zoobert 14y ago
Normally yes or as I said above it is a bug and you should report it there: http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html
- afterburner 14y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Your answer is confusing, but I see from your other replies that GMVault is supposed to preserve read/unread status.
  - zoobert 14y ago
    I responded to the wrong comment. Normally it should preserve unread messages

bvi 14y ago

When restoring a gmail account (say I want to upload all the backed-up emails to a new account), would the date information be preserved as well?

zoobert 14y ago
Yes of course. Date, Gmail labels and IMAP flags (READ, UNREAD, ...) are preserved. Otherwise it is a bug so please refer to http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html
- bvi 14y ago
  Another question: Does gmvault work behind a proxy?
  - zoobert 14y ago
    If the proxy let you connect to the Gmail IMAP server, I don't see why it wouldn't work

jenius 14y ago

Crappy design + twitter bootstrap default = tab closed. If you are serious about releasing a product ffs make sure it's polished. If the attention to detail I see in the splash page is similar to the attention to detail in the actual product (which is what I assume automatically), my faith in it is close to zero. This is ESPECIALLY important when I'm authorizing you with access to my emails -- and there is no way I would do that for someone that I assume is not serious about their product.

haldean 14y ago
This seems to be an unpopular idea but I completely agree. I don't mind the Bootstrap default theme, but the icon is bad enough that I lose trust in it.
Estragon 14y ago
My taste for design is pretty weak, so I'm always interested in comments like this. The design looks OK to me. What are the problems with it?
- kreek 14y ago
  The main issue, for me, is that "Gmvault Gmail Backup" and the logo are unbalanced. The logo is too big, and its colors could be more sophisticated. If those things were cleaned up it would look fine (unless you're allergic to boostrap).
ardillamorris 14y ago
I think you are misjudging. What if he spent a lot of time in the product making sure it works well without too much care for "shininess"? If anything, using twitter bootstrap shows that he cared a bit to make it look usable from a splash site point of view. I think we should give feedback on how the product is actually working rather than complaining that he's using twitter bootstrap.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Thanks for the support. I am not a designer, I am not working full time on this product and my free time is quite limited. Still I spent lots of time designing the logo. I kind of like it as it is very simple and tells you what the product is. Regarding the website, yes I used bootstrap because it is convenient and give you a good modern look quickly. I am not a web designer and didn't want to spend 60% of my project time on that part. For the moment I prefer to spend more time on the tool itself. If somebody wants to help to improve the website and the documentation please contact me.

sneak 14y ago

I think people familiar with command-line tools are already probably doing what I do, which is to use mbsync to sync a remote gmail imap account to a local maildir. It even easily supports multiple sync account/maildir pairs via its somewhat confusing config file format. http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html

bob87 14y ago

What is the switch to encrypt the archives? gmvault -e? I haven't been able to find it in the documentation.

zyb09 14y ago

Wow, very cool! This is exactly what I needed right now. I had bad dreams about what would happen if my Google account disappeared all of the sudden, but didn't do anything about it yet. Now I will be able to sleep better!

fogol 14y ago

Is there any data transmitted to servers other than Google's?

zoobert 14y ago
Nop of course not. You can check the sources to be sure that Gmvault is only talking to Gmail. You can also use XOAuth (token security mechanism) to allow Gmvault accessing your account. This is by the way the recommended authentication way.

digitalsushi 14y ago

Just a few weeks ago I was looking for exactly this piece of software! What brilliant timing. But a quick question of concern - gmail is pretty smart and can tell when I am just using it for bulk storage. If you send yourself 8 emails in a short amount of time, each with maximum sized attachment sizes, gmail will politely tell you to cut it out for a while. Does this software run the same risk? I am wary to let it just keep barging in after connection errors, if there's a chance gmail will get upset and ban me from my own account. My gmail is my lifeblood, and I want to back it up from the entity that scares me the most of taking it away from me. Thanks for making this!!

zoobert 14y ago
Well so far I've been doing many download and upload of my entire mailbox (5 GB) and the Gmail team did not contact me to tell me to slow down a bit. Sometimes (especially during the week-end ?) the connection was cut and I could had to wait to finish to restore my gmail account.
justincormack 14y ago
It should be no different from what would happen if you connect a new imap program that does a full sync of your mailbox, which many do.

PanMan 14y ago

Nice tool! I think the default sync interface should show a progress bar (like wget). Now it says: Processing 7890 emails, but then it prints a line for every email. I don't need to see every email in a list, but I would like to see how long it takes to complete. Update: I see it does print that every once in a while. I would skip the other lines... :)

zoobert 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I will think on how to present operation progresses (progress bar and so on with curses and so on)

villagefool 14y ago

"After that Gmvault will automatically authenticate itself using the credentials stored in $HOME/.gmvault (or %HOME%/.gmvault for Windows). " how are the credentials stored offline?

hmottestad 14y ago
Probably as clear text. You can delete the file if you want to.
- zoobert 14y ago
  Nop they are stored encrypted with a key randomly generated

LyleK 14y ago

Can this store mail in mbox format? In what header do the gmail labels go?

callahad 14y ago
The source is pretty easy to read. Here's how it's working: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/gmvault.py#L38 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/blob/master/src/gmv/gmvau... (It stores each mail in two separate files: a .eml file with the message body, and a .meta file with metadata.)
- zoobert 14y ago
  I will take that as a compliment. Yes files are all stored individually as .eml file. All the extra Gmail info (labels, ...) goes in .meta

michaelmior 14y ago

For anyone trying to get the Linux version to work, here's what worked for me. 1. Download the tgz and unzip. 2. Create and activate a new virtualenv in that directory. 3. easy_install -U distribute (in my case, the version of distribute installed by pip was too old for imapclient) 3. pip install logbook gdata imapclient 4. Replace bin/gmvault with the following #!/usr/bin/env python import sys import os sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath(os.path.join(sys.path[0], '../lib'))) import gmv.gmv_cmd as runner runner.bootstrap_run()

zoobert 14y ago
the release on HackerNews is a bit premature. I wanted to test the response and was not expecting so much interest. I will fix the deployment issues on Linux and Mac OS X. You can download the tgz and run a michael said. You can also use easy_install or pip. It is on Pypi Create a virtualenv as it is better and do: pip install gmvault (or easy_install gmvault) See http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install http://gmvault.org/install.html#py_install for further info

chbrown 14y ago

No resume functionality? Or am I just missing something? I've got ~3 GB of emails in my Gmail, and GVault's ETA is 4 hours. It already timed-out once (no discernable reason), and after restarting, went right to email number 1 (forgetting about the 1800 emails it had already gotten through).

zoobert 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback. There is a restart functionality use the --restart option (see gmvault sync -h for more info). Also note that when you restart from scratch, if the email has already been downloaded and is identical then the download is not performed. So only scanning the mailbox is faster than having downloads. Regarding the timeout, please send me the error message you had and if it is a bug I will fix it but note that sometimes Gmail cut the connection without any reasons. There is also a retry reconnect process (up to 4 times) if it is not a fatal error (cannot recover from them).
- chbrown 14y ago
  Seems like this guy is getting the same error: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 (Issue number 4 on the github project.) I added my output to the issue. I'm on Gmvault v1.0-beta from pypi. It doesn't recognize the --restart option. "gmvault: error: unrecognized arguments: --restart"
- davidradcliffe 14y ago
  Restart doesn't seem to be available. https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4 https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/4
  - zoobert 14y ago
    yes it is there for the restore operation but not for sync. It will be available in the next version (to be released in 2 weeks)

eblume 14y ago

Oh wow - this is really interesting. I just released a VERY similar program called `gmail-safe` yesterday. I was going to do a Show HN sometime today. If anyone is interested, here is the URI: http://eblume.github.com/gmail_safe/ http://eblume.github.com/gmail_safe/ Note that this is my first Node app. It needs a lot of polish. It is published under the MIT license, though, which some people here might enjoy.

rcthompson 14y ago

Small nitpick: the application name "Gmvault" is inconsistent with the tagline "Liberate your emails", since one does not normally associate vaults with liberation. Maybe something like "protect your email" would be more vault-appropriate?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
zoobert 14y ago
;-) I like that. Thanks for helping me keeping the theme right
- rcthompson 14y ago
  Also, don't go with exactly "Protect your email", since it sounds kind of bland. Just something like that. Maybe "Safeguard your email". Find an exciting synonym for "protect"!
  - minikomi 14y ago
    Or maybe "Stash your mail"

delinquentme 14y ago

Has no one mentioned search? intra-gmail search is nothing short of an atrocity compared to the google.com search... A search feature capturing partial terms "Aft" in "Afternoon" would more than make this service viable.

ljosa 14y ago

How does this compare to mbsync?

zoobert 14y ago
mbsync is a IMAP sync tool. Gmvault is a dedicated Gmail tool so it preserves all Gmail specific attributes like the labels, ... and allow you to restore all your emails in a Gmail account. With mbsync you might be able to upload your emails on a gmail account but you would then loose lots of information and your restored gmail account would be end up being very different.