Gmail locks me out
I had being using fetchmail + exim4 + courier IMAP server at home to allow me get IMAP service for my Gmail service. One reason is of course, I like to use thunderbird or evolution better than web-based interface. Another important reason is that, as many developers, I have quite a few mailing list subscription for different open source projects, I would like to automatically sort emails from those subscription into different folders, which I have being using procmail for that purpose.
But my Ubuntu desktop at home somehow screwed up the root file system after I tried the "switch user" and "automatically login" feature(to allow my one-month-to-five-year-old son playing games from the web), and that old P4 server consumes 80-100 watts constantly while my laptop only consumes 25 or so, I decided to ditch the home server until I can get my hands to a NSLU2 or other similar devices.
With that decision, I would like to give Gmail web interface a chance as I do like the conversation view although many people seems to hate it. But, I need to sort emails from various mailing list subscription with correct label, so that I can read them when I like, delete them permanently easily while allow me to keep other emails in archive(I have used 800MB+ quota due to those archived emails).
Supposedly, I should be using filter and label systems to do that. But as you may know, Gmail does not offer filter based on arbitrary headers, although there are mailing lists put prefix on Subject, but that is less reliable than using headers like List-Id or List-Post. Thus, I decided to write a simple Ruby script with gmailer library to do just that.
Unfortunately, Google does not like the idea of scripting and locked my account. Shortly after the account was unlocked, even I apply label manually from the web caused another lock.
I don't really understand the mindset of not providing simple features like arbitrary header filter against regular expression, maybe 80-20 rule would explain. But not allowing people to do it with simple script?
Unless Google is willing to loosen the restriction a little bit or provide
a better solution to create filters, I guess I will have to setup another server.
