[ILUG] Sync-ing kmail on desktop and laptop

[John Allen]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> On Wed 18 Apr 2007, John Madden wrote:
>
>   
>>>> With IMAP, everything stays on the server, and are copied to the client
>>>> only as/when needed. You can have 10 versions of kmail looking at the
>>>> same IMAP folder and each will see _all_ the messages.
>>>>         
>>> Just to be clear -
>>> does IMAP leave the email in /var/spool/mail/ on my desktop?
>>> Or does it store it in its own place?
>>> If so, where? and in mbox or maildir format?
>>>       
>> You really need to go and look up what IMAP actually is. It _doesn't_
>> move mail anywhere, it simply offer's a protocol to clients to read mail
>> which is stored in a certain place, in a certain format. The place and
>> format are generally configurable.
>>     
>
> Well, thanks for trying to enlighten me,
> but I am still confused.
>
> Remember, my question was: can I use kmail with IMAP
> to give more or less the same result as I get with NFS.
>
> As far as I can see, there is only one way of invoking IMAP
> within kmail - by starting a new "Account" in the Accounts=>Receving setup,
> and specifying that this account is to retrieve mail by IMAP.
>
> I suspect that this is intended to work in the same way as POP 
> (which is another option), to retrieve mail from a remote mail server.
>
>   
Tim, replace the word retrieve with access, and then you may understand 
it better.

eg. When you access a file over the network it is still in the 
fileserver, it does not
move it to your client.

Think of the IMAP server as a black box that provides access to the 
mails stored
within.
>>> You say it is copied to the client as/when needed.
>>> But if it is copied to laptop A
>>> then surely email on A will look different to email on B?
>>>       
>> It's _COPIED_, not taken, erased or anything else. So, if a mail is
>> delivered to ~/Mail on your desktop, with kmail configured to use an
>> IMAP server on your desktop, both laptop A and desktop B (using the same
>> configuration for kmail) will see the email when it arrives. When you
>> delete it on either A or B, it'll be removed from ~/Mail by the IMAP
>> server.
>>     
>
> But in my case, the mail in question is _not_ delivered to ~/Mail 
> on my desktop; it is in /var/spool/mail on the desktop,
> and is only transferred to ~/Mail if and when I run kmail _on the desktop_.
>
> If I run kmail (with IMAP) on my laptop,
> the mail is transferred to ~/Mail folders on the laptop.
>
> It seems that either I have set up the kmail IMAP account wrongly,
> or else one has to run IMAP in a different way.
>
>
>
>   


-- 
John Allen                          mailto:john.allen at codemountain.net
CodeMountain                        http://www.codemountain.net

Ubuntu 7.04, kernel 2.6.20-9-generic
up 1 day, 18:20, 13 users,  load average: 0.17, 0.36, 0.38