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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.
...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.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
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