[ILUG] Sync-ing kmail on desktop and laptop

[Timothy Murphy]

On Wed 18 Apr 2007, Nick Murtagh wrote:
> Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > Am I really misunderstanding how IMAP works, or what it does?
>
> I think so. You're configuration should be like this:
 .-------------.  .-----------.
 |   Desktop   |  |  Laptop   |
 |-------------|  |-----------|
 | .---------. |  |           |
 | | dovecot | <-------.      |
 | '---------' |  |    |      |
 |     ^       |  |    | IMAP |
 |     | IMAP  |  |    |      |
 | .-------.   |  | .-------. |
 | | kmail |   |  | | kmail | |
 | '-------'   |  | '-------' |
 '-------------'  '-----------'

Sorry your pretty picture got distorted.
Someone along the way seems to eat tabs.

> kmail should NOT be touching anything in /var/spool/mail directly.
> It should communicate with dovecot using IMAP on both machines.

Thanks for your response, but I am still somewhat confused.

1. If I ran IMAP properly, would the upshot be the same
as if I connected to my desktop from my laptop with ssh,
ran kmail on my desktop and viewed it on my laptop
(which is what I am doing now)?

2. What actually happens with my setup
when I run kmail on my laptop
is that new email in /var/spool/mail on my desktop
finishes up in a new kmail folder IMAP/inbox
(I call the account "IMAP") on my laptop.

Your picture shows dovecot on the desktop
communicating with kmail on the desktop.
But how does dovecot know anything about kmail?
I haven't told it anything about kmail in /etc/dovecot.conf -
the only change I have made there is to say I am using IPv4,
	#listen = [::]
	listen = *
as the default IPv6 setting did not seem to work.

3. I assume - I haven't tried this -
I could export /var/spool/mail from my desktop to my laptop,
and then I assume running kmail on the laptop
would be exactly the same as running it on the desktop.
My question is: can I get the same result with IMAP?

4. Alternatively, if I could tell kmail on my laptop
to look for new mail in 192.168.2.1:/var/spool/mail
rather than in /var/spool/mail
that should give the same result.
But can I do that within kmail?
Is there a general mechanism in Linux, or in KDE,
which allows me to use a remote address
anywhere a local address is requested?

5. As a matter of interest, how exactly does IMAP
differ from POP in this context?



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland