Ryabitsev: Tracking kernel development with korgalore

[Posted January 20, 2026 by corbet]

Konstantin Ryabitsev has put up a blog post about korgalore, a tool he has written to circumvent delivery problems experienced by kernel developers using the large, centralized email systems.

We cannot fix email delivery, but we can sidestep it entirely. Public-inbox archives like lore.kernel.org store all mailing list traffic in git repositories. In its simplest configuration, korgalore can shallow-clone these repositories directly and upload any new messages straight to your mailbox using the provider's API.

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Cool

Posted Jan 20, 2026 22:30 UTC (Tue) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (1 responses)

Sounds like a great idea. I'll have to look into what it takes to host the server side.

Cool

Posted Jan 20, 2026 22:36 UTC (Tue) by mricon (subscriber, #59252) [Link]

There is no server side. :)

(Other than public-inbox)

GMail API

Posted Jan 20, 2026 22:53 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Just wanted to note that you don't _need_ to do the OAuth shenanigans with Google to get the IMAP access.

You can create a dedicated app password: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/185833 It can be disabled on the organization level, but it's available for personal emails.

GMail API

Posted Jan 20, 2026 22:55 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Given Google's proclivity for killing features, I'm not sure I'd trust App Passwords to endure...

GMail API

Posted Jan 20, 2026 23:28 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

No, they'll replace it with AI-enabled Gemini Secure Helpful Identity Test that'll require you to do an interpretive dance to explain the need for the app password.

GMail API

Posted Jan 21, 2026 3:06 UTC (Wed) by mricon (subscriber, #59252) [Link]

They also recently killed POP functionality with very little notice, so I wanted to create something they are not likely to kill off.

gmail second?

Posted Jan 21, 2026 4:23 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

My 2 "marketing" cents: I would start with a simple case like regular IMAP or maildir and THEN transition to the whole "gmail auth is horrible" scary section. So:
- gmail users are encouraged by seeing a simple, working case first.
- non-gmail users don't have scroll down past scary stuff not applicable to them.

Accessing public-inbox / lore via NNTP and Usenet reader (e.g., Usenet support in e-mail client)

Posted Jan 21, 2026 8:39 UTC (Wed) by jnareb (subscriber, #46500) [Link] (3 responses)

To make sure that you don't miss mails from mailing list, and to avoid polluting your inbox with a large amount of traffic, you can always use NNTP interface that public-inbox provides, together with Usenet / newsreader support that your e-mail client has (or a separate Usenet reader application).

This setup does not have all features that korgalore provides, but can be enough.

Accessing public-inbox / lore via NNTP and Usenet reader (e.g., Usenet support in e-mail client)

Posted Jan 22, 2026 22:18 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

I've been using NNTP with https://subspace.kernel.org/subscribing.html and gmane.org before that and it's great. Hey, the "compatibility" with SMTP is almost seamless even.

Except... it's hard to find a good client. Thunderbird works but it's heavy and slow, gnus requires learning Emacs and more...

SMTP and mailing lists were always the wrong tool for the job - massive missed opportunity. In terms of "market share", they are _both_ dying now.

Accessing public-inbox / lore via NNTP and Usenet reader (e.g., Usenet support in e-mail client)

Posted Jan 23, 2026 5:44 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I used `slrn` when I was reading mailing lists all the time. I…don't have time anymore. It looks to largely be abandoned though. I used `tin` before that and it had a release within the last month…that might be the better option (for TTY clients) these days.

Accessing public-inbox / lore via NNTP and Usenet reader (e.g., Usenet support in e-mail client)

Posted Jan 24, 2026 7:01 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

For news on gmane.io I use (gtk3-based) pan... which now has Dominique Domont, pan's Debian maintainer, as upstream pan maintainer as well, so support into the future is looking rather more solid than it did for most of the two-decades plus I've used it for news, as it went through several maintainers in that time.

Pan and its user community are proud of its continued 100% GNKSA approval so it should fit in well with the kernel community: no HTML, reply in quote context, configurable to wrap at 80 char or not (in keeping with GNKSA posts with long lines get a warning but you can continue), and it supports both plain text (no html!) and binary reading and posting. The biggest caveat with mailing list compatibility is don't send attachments as they'll be yenc encoded (efficient for news attachments but few mail-primary clients support it), but (with posting autowrap off) code can be pasted in as text and retain formatting. TLS connections are supported as is message signing (via gmime, tho the build defaults that to off). Posts/replies can be direct to news server, reply to sender (invokes your email client), or both (choose one and add the other in the reply-compose window). CCing a big list as is common on kernel lists is possible but manual (add in the reply-compose window).

For gentoo it's in the guru overlay for releases, or ask on the pan-user list if you want a copy of my live ebuild.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pan

This brings back memories...

Posted Jan 21, 2026 9:09 UTC (Wed) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link]

NNTP strikes back?

Back to the FIDO and POP3 days...

Posted Jan 21, 2026 9:27 UTC (Wed) by jorgegv (subscriber, #60484) [Link]

Reading his post, it reminded me of the good old days when I connected a couple of times per day to my regular BBS to download my FIDO messages and upload my replies...or when I had dialup Internet and had my first POP3 account configured...

It seems we are back in the days where email was delivered in some sort of "virtual post office" and you had to connect periodically, instead of having email directly delivered to your Inbox.

Alternative: skip the remote mailbox completely

Posted Jan 21, 2026 9:53 UTC (Wed) by bjackman (subscriber, #109548) [Link] (1 responses)

FWIW, I use Gmail but my approach is just not to involve it in receiving LKML mail at all. Instead I just have an old-fashioned mailbox directory on my hard drive and then I fetch mail direcly from Lore using lei. Then the only job for Gmail is sending replies.

This means that if someone emails me directly without CCing the list, I won't see it in my local mailbox. For that, I just use the plain Gmail UI to reply and hope the formatting isn't too bad. (I don't think the spam filters are too much of an issue here since those email are usually just a few sentences of English).

The command to do the fetching is here in case anyone wants to crib from it: https://github.com/bjackman/boxen/blob/08c15a3d33c3cea78b...

Alternative: skip the remote mailbox completely

Posted Jan 21, 2026 9:56 UTC (Wed) by bjackman (subscriber, #109548) [Link]

(Also if anyone wants to crib from that mail setup more generally, there are some notes here, I wrote them for myself but maybe you can still make sense of them: https://github.com/bjackman/boxen/tree/master?tab=readme-...)