Managing Mail Between a Desktop and a Laptop? 134
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?"
Disconnected IMAP... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Simple answer is in the question - IMAP. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
4 ideas to consider (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Two Answers (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Well, here are 3 tools to look at... (Score:5, Informative)
GMail...? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The answer! (Score:1, Informative)
"Boxen" is a slang term for multiple computers. It isn't proper english, but it is readily understood by most geeks. It's a joke of sorts; an individual computer is known in slang as "a box", and oxen pull a cart, while multiple computers perform processing tasks. Sound-alike jokes like this are common in anime, which many programmers tend to enjoy.
Anyway, that's what's going on. Usually the only people using this slang are Linux guys and old VMS enthusiasts.
Happy New Year!