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Managing Mail Between a Desktop and a Laptop?

Posted by Cliff on from the having-more-than-one-inbox-is-a-pain dept.

dotancohen asks: "I'll soon be getting a new Dell laptop that'll be running Fedora Core 5 or 6. I need to access the email stored on my home box from the laptop, and also to read new email sent to me while I'm not home (and the home box is shut down). If I run an IMAP server at home, then I can't read the mail when the home box is down. However, if I pull from the POP3 server (and leave the mail on the server) then I won't be able to sort and file the mail while on the go. I currently use Kmail, but I might switch to Eudora in April/March when it becomes available for Linux. Is there anyway to sync the mail accounts between two Linux boxen, assuming that I'm using the same mail client?"

4 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Disconnected IMAP... by Mendy · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...is probably what you want - and KMail appears to support it.

    Alternatively Thunderbird certainly supports cache'ing a copy of messages for working offline but I'm not sure if it supports the kind of resyncing that you're looking for.

  2. Simple answer is in the question - IMAP. by a16 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Use an IMAP server.

    You even answered it yourself, except decided it is of no use as it would be unavailable when your home connection goes down.

    So.. get a cheap hosting/email account with IMAP capabilities, so that it's accessible over the net. Every mail client setup to use the IMAP account will see the same folders/inbox, and it'll work from anywhere. If you're paranoid about having your data in someone else's hands, download it to an archive locally with fetchmail or similar.

  3. Well, here are 3 tools to look at... by emag · · Score: 4, Informative
    Continue pulling from your pop3 server that you mentioned. When the home box is off, pull using the laptop. Make sure your .procmailrc or whatever's in sync between the two. Then, keep your IMAP server on your home box, and investigate one of these 3 tools to propagate changes on both boxes to each other:

    • isync - Synchronize a local maildir with a remote IMAP4 mailbox
    • mailsync - Synchronize IMAP mailboxes
    • offlineimap - IMAP/Maildir synchronization and reader support


    --
    "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
  4. GMail...? by jdray · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use GMail. About any web-based mail should suffice. I suspect that some of the other web mail services have advanced capabilities for sorting and such. Google offers GMail for domains so you can use your own domain name, and you can access it through a POP3 interface. Just a thought...

    --
    The Spoon
    Updated 6/28/2011