Ubuntu Manpage: notmuch-properties - notmuch message property conventions and documentation

Provided by: notmuch_0.37-1ubuntu2_amd64

NAME

       notmuch-properties - notmuch message property conventions and documentation

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch count property:<key>=<value>

       notmuch search property:<key>=<value>

       notmuch show property:<key>=<value>

       notmuch reindex property:<key>=<value>

       notmuch tag +<tag> property:<key>=<value>

       notmuch dump --include=properties

       notmuch restore --include=properties

DESCRIPTION

       Several  notmuch commands can search for, modify, add or remove properties associated with
       specific messages.  Properties are key/value pairs, and a message can have more  than  one
       key/value pair for the same key.

       While  users can select based on a specific property in their search terms with the prefix
       property:, the notmuch command-line interface does not provide  mechanisms  for  modifying
       properties directly to the user.

       Instead, message properties are expected to be set and used programmatically, according to
       logic in notmuch itself, or in extensions to it.

       Extensions to notmuch which make use of properties are encouraged to report  the  specific
       properties  used  to  the upstream notmuch project, as a way of avoiding collisions in the
       property namespace.

CONVENTIONS

       Any property with a key that starts with "index." will be removed  (and  possibly  re-set)
       upon reindexing (see notmuch-reindex).

MESSAGE PROPERTIES

The following properties are set by notmuch internally in the course of its normal
activity.

index.decryption
If a message contains encrypted content, and notmuch tries to decrypt that content
during indexing, it will add the property index.decryption=success when the
cleartext was successfully indexed. If notmuch attempts to decrypt any part of a
message during indexing and that decryption attempt fails, it will add the property
index.decryption=failure to the message.

Note that it's possible for a single message to have both index.decryption=success
and index.decryption=failure. Consider an encrypted e-mail message that contains
another encrypted e-mail message as an attachment -- if the outer message can be
decrypted, but the attached part cannot, then both properties will be set on the
message as a whole.

If notmuch never tried to decrypt an encrypted message during indexing (which is
the default, see index.decrypt in notmuch-config), then this property will not be
set on that message.

session-key
When notmuch-show or notmuch-reply encounters a message with an encrypted part, if
notmuch finds a session-key property associated with the message, it will try that
stashed session key for decryption.

If you do not want to use any stashed session keys that might be present, you
should pass those programs --decrypt=false.

Using a stashed session key with "notmuch show" will speed up rendering of long
encrypted threads. It also allows the user to destroy the secret part of any
expired encryption-capable subkey while still being able to read any retained
messages for which they have stashed the session key. This enables truly deletable
e-mail, since (once the session key and asymmetric subkey are both destroyed) there
are no keys left that can be used to decrypt any copy of the original message
previously stored by an adversary.

However, access to the stashed session key for an encrypted message permits full
byte-for-byte reconstruction of the cleartext message. This includes attachments,
cryptographic signatures, and other material that cannot be reconstructed from the
index alone.

See index.decrypt in notmuch-config for more details about how to set notmuch's
policy on when to store session keys.

The session key should be in the ASCII text form produced by GnuPG. For OpenPGP,
that consists of a decimal representation of the hash algorithm used (identified by
number from RFC 4880, e.g. 9 means AES-256) followed by a colon, followed by a
hexadecimal representation of the algorithm-specific key. For example, an AES-128
key might be stashed in a notmuch property as:
session-key=7:14B16AF65536C28AF209828DFE34C9E0.

index.repaired
Some messages arrive in forms that are confusing to view; they can be mangled by
mail transport agents, or the sending mail user agent may structure them in a way
that is confusing. If notmuch knows how to both detect and repair such a
problematic message, it will do so during indexing.

If it applies a message repair during indexing, it will use the index.repaired
property to note the type of repair(s) it performed.

index.repaired=skip-protected-headers-legacy-display indicates that when indexing
the cleartext of an encrypted message, notmuch skipped over a "legacy-display"
text/rfc822-headers part that it found in that message, since it was able to index
the built-in protected headers directly.

index.repaired=mixedup indicates the repair of a "Mixed Up" encrypted PGP/MIME
message, a mangling typically produced by Microsoft's Exchange MTA. See
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dkg-openpgp-pgpmime-message-mangling for more
information.

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT

       2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others