Slashdot Mirror
Managing Mail Between a Desktop and a Laptop?
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?"
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I was going to tell you how, but then you said "boxen".
I keep two copies of my mail. One goes into a pop account, and gets pulled into my main machine, and the other goes to gmail. But you could send one to an IMAP account, one to a POP account, etc.
.forward file to send it to a pop account provided by my cable modem company, and to my gmail account. I've configured the gmail account to send mail from my vanity domain.
My SMTP mail server is running on a VPS. I send incoming mail to an account on that machine, and use a
It's not a perfect solution -- if I send an email from gmail, it doesn't show up in the sent folder on my main machine. But it's very easy to set up, and I can get at gmail from anywhere.
I think it would be better to use an IMAP server, to roll my own webmail solution that talks to the IMAP server, and to make it possible for the laptop to talk to the IMAP server. But the amount of work that would take deters me. My solution was easy to set up, even if its flawed.
You can even use something AOL's AIM Mail which allows you to access it via IMAP. Forward your mail there, but otherwise don't use the address.
...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.
Simply use any mail client you can run entirely off of a USB flash drive. There is no need to sync when you only have one client!
Pine + SSH, now you've got your mail synced anywhere on the planet.
1. The proper.
Use IMAP server that is online. Like at your ISP if you can't provide aviability yourself.
2. Poor mans IMAP.
Use POP with few accounts and aliases. This also requires the server to be aviable.
Make one account name it - main@account.tld - make it forward all incoming email to other two (or N) accounts like: desktop@account.tld, laptop@account.tld... Make your desktop client use the desktop account and laptop use the laptop account. Make your both (or N clients) do BCC to your main@account.tld for any sent meassage.
Voila - done, you have the same messages (incoming and outgoing) on both (or N) POP accounts. You just need to download them to clients.
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.
Gmail?
Maybe I'm not fully understanding what it is you're trying to do....but if you're running an IMAP server at home, why would it ever be turned off? That's your *mail* server. And if there's the possibility of it being turned off, maybe you should look for a hosted solution or something?
How do I manage mail between a laptop and a desktop? I bought my own domain and pay for budget hosting. They provide IMAP mail servers. I used to check everything with Thunderbird using IMAP, and then when I wasn't at my computer with Thunderbird, I could log into the webmail interface and everything would be there.
Now, I actually have everything forwarded to my gmail account. Yes, I went to the dark side, but gmail's web interface and spam control can't be beat. And now I don't have to maintain a local Thunderbird install or anything else. All of my email can be checked and worked with remotely from anywhere. It really isn't that hard!
1. POP on both home and laptop machines. Configure your primary machine (home?) to leave mail on the server for X days. [I believe most clients support this, but I couldn't tell you for sure; I haven't used POP for a couple of years now.] Make sure X is large enough that you will get mail on the laptop or desktop, whichever is used least. Configure your secondary machine to leave mail on the server. This will allow both machines to get mail at the same time, has only one machine deleting mail, and should do what you want. My parents are configured similar to this and it works well for them. So far I haven't noticed any problems in the server logs if both login to the POP server at the same time.
2. I use IMAP for myself. In this case, I host my own on my server, and it does not get turned off. I have IMAP access from any IMAP client as well as a web mail client. My pda phone even uses IMAP to get messages. Any changes I make from my phone, IMAP client at work or home, or web mail all show up on the other clients thanks to the shared IMAP folder. [If you are going to store thousands and thousands of messages, make sure you use a high-performing IMAP server.]
3. Use a mail client that uses a maildir and not an mbox or other db type of storage file. Then, you can use rsync back and forth between your primary and secondary machines. Indexes (for sorting) might need to be updated after each sync however. I would say this would probably be the least efficient and most prone to problems.
4. Send all your mail to gmail, access it from them with POP (see #1), except don't delete anything using the POP clients. Periodically log into your gmail account and either archive or delete everything that is read.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The first answer that came to mind was: do like everyone else, use IMAP. You said running IMAP on your home machine isn't a solution, because you turn it off. So run it on a machine that isn't turned off, like some provider's mail server. If your current provider doesn't offer IMAP, you can always have your mail forwarded to another account. I can offer you an account through my company, if you wish.
The second answer that comes to mind is: store your messages in directories, with one file per message (e.g. MH, Maildir, or mailfiles format), then use some sync program (e.g. rsync, or some specialized tool, like isync) to sync between the two machines. I've done this for some time; it works as long as you're careful that filenames assigned to messages are unique (they aren't always for MH) and one message has only one filename (Maildir renames files when certain flags are set on the message).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
It's called "disconnected IMAP" and is like cached IMAP: KMail pulls the stuff on your box so you can view it even when you have no network connection, like with POP3. But since this is IMAP and everything is on the server, you can do that with several clients. I've got my own IMAP server and use KMail's disconnected IMAP at home and at work. It works just fine...
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