Store mail local and view with several mail clients...

elluva · 05-05-2004, 07:28 AM

Owkay, in the past, I had some problems with email, so I'd like to store my mail in one directory and be able to view it with several mail clients from that local dir.

How should I do this? Fetchmail?

any advise is appreciated,
elluva

hw-tph · 05-05-2004, 07:31 AM

Fetchmail is probably the best solution as it does just what you ask for and it is a rock solid program that is widely used, so getting support (if needed) is usually just a quick Google search away.

Håkan

elluva · 05-05-2004, 09:56 AM

yes, well I googled my way through and it seems that fetchmail stores the emails in /var/spool/mail/<user>, isn't it possible to change this directory to somewhere in my homedir?
Another thing, how do you set up your mail client to read the mails from this local dir (lets say kmail)?

tnx for the fast reply

elluva · 05-05-2004, 10:34 AM

Now I managed to configure fetchmail so it get's my email from the server, the first thing I'd like is to be able to get it into kmail, how?

elluva · 05-06-2004, 12:16 PM

anybody any idea's? plz help

hw-tph · 05-06-2004, 03:18 PM

I have never used Kmail, but isn't there some sort of account "local" account type (as opposed to IMAP or POP3)? There are several possibly types, like UNIX mbox format, Maildir, local delivery and so on.

Håkan

elluva · 05-07-2004, 05:28 PM

yes, but I can't seem to figure out what this fields stand for:
locking method (choice between procmail, Mutt dotlock, Mutt dotlock privileged, FCNTL, None

Matt Collier · 05-07-2004, 05:36 PM

it's how you want to lock the mbox while you use it, most clients have their own way, kmail just lets you choose, depending upon what permissions you have and preference.
i prefer fcntl myself, since virtually everything supports this as a standard, so if a time comes where you write your own scripts to play with your mail, it's supported nicely

elluva · 05-08-2004, 03:30 AM

k, tnx

I will try it and if I still have problems, I'll ask them here

elluva · 05-08-2004, 09:41 AM

ok, so I filled in the fields, I mailed myself and managed to get it using fetchmail. Then I tried to read it using kmail, but kmail doesn't notice the new mail. Not even when I explicitly ask him to look (File -> Check Mail).

When I copy an mail I had previously to /var/mail/<username> , then it does receive... how do I resolve this?

hw-tph · 05-08-2004, 12:55 PM

How is your fetchmail setup? I have two different setups - on my laptop I have fetchmail setup to deliver mail using procmail (actually copying the files to ~/mail/mbox). On my desktop it uses standard local delivery as I have an MTA for local use installed. This means fetchmail connects to my own machine and delivers the mails to username@localhost, so they end up in my /var/spool/mail/$USER directory.

All this is pretty easy to set up using fetchmailconf, which comes with fetchmail.

Håkan

elluva · 05-08-2004, 07:05 PM

the only thing i've set up is fetchmail, nothing else (with fetchmailconf). Can you maybe post your procmail config file? This way, I could be able to put my mail in my home dir and maybe kmail is able to read that mbox file...

I noticed another option in kmail, 'local maildir'. Does anybody know what this means?

tnx,
elluva

hw-tph · 05-09-2004, 06:42 AM

This is my $HOME/.procmailrc config file. This is setup to filter all mails through SpamAssassin, so it's quite a bit larger than you would need:

Code:

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
LOGABSTRACT=all
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
LOGFILE=$PMDIR/proclog
VERBOSE=off
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/mbox

# SpamAssassin start
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
| /usr/bin/spamc

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\
spam10

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
spamassassin-spam
# SpamAssassin end

...and here is my .fetchmailrc (edited of course):

Code:

# Configuration created Thu May  6 00:59:47 2004 by fetchmailconf
set postmaster "recipent@mycomputername.com"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set properties ""
poll pop.mymailprovider.com with proto POP3
       user 'remoteusername' there with password 'yeahasifidpostthat' is 'localusername' here options fetchall
	   mda "/usr/bin/procmail -p -f %F"

Maildir is an excellent option and depending on your MTA setup that is possibly how your mail is delivered by fetchmail.

Håkan

elluva · 05-09-2004, 09:59 AM

tnx, this worked... ok, now I can read my mail with KMail. Procmail wasn't set up properly.

The thing I wanted in the first place was having some central mailbox, which I can read my mail from with different mail clients (eg. KMail & Evolution & Sylpheed & Pine& ...). (see my first post)

How could I set this up, since Kmail now still moves my mail to its own dir.

Thanks for all help,
elluva

elluva · 05-10-2004, 10:12 AM

plz, can't be that nobody knows this...