KMail + IMAP - help urgently sought

Anne Wilson cannewilson at googlemail.com
Tue May 22 16:11:24 UTC 2007


On Tuesday 22 May 2007, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Matej Cepl wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 May 2007 13:26:36 +0100, Timothy Murphy scripst:
> >> I think the problem is that /var/spool/mail/* on the desktop has become
> >> too large.
> >>
> >> Does one really have to keep email in mbox format in this directory if
> >> running an IMAP server?
> >
> > Certainly not -- but that depends on the configuration of dovecot. Also
> > purging of the account would help.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "purging the account".
> The wastebin is automatically emptied when I leave kmail.
>
> Do you mean that there is a limit to the number of items
> one can keep in one's inbox if using kmail + dovecot?
>
> >> Is IMAP incompatible with maildir format?
> >
> > No.
>
> Well, is dovecot IMAP compatible with kmail maildir format?

Absolutely not.

>
> May I ask if you are actually running a dovecot server with kmail?
> If so, where exactly does dovecot store email?
>
Where you tell it to, in the config file.

> >> I used to share ~/Mail under NFS,
> >> and that seemed to work reasonably well, but I was told by my betters
> >> that I should use IMAP.
> >
> > They are right. The only change might be that kmail tends to have more
> > mature dIMAP support than IMAP. And you want dIMAP anyway, in order to be
> > able to work on your laptop even when disconnected from the network.
> > Otherwise, dIMAP support in kmail (albeit on Debian) used to be very
> > stable for me for many years with thousands of messages per account.
>
> As far as I can see, dovecot does not offer dIMAP.
>
> May I repeat my query:
>
> 1. Is anyone actually running kmail + dovecot (on a machine they control)
> successfully?
>
Yes

> 2. If so, does the dovecot server keep email in a maildir format
> that kmail will work with?
>
Yes

>
> I realize there are other mail-readers apart from kmail,
> and other IMAP servers apart from dovecot.
>
> My question relates solely to kmail + dovecot.
> Are they actually compatible?
>
Not in the least.

If your mail is currently in mbox format you may have to pull in all those 
mails that you currently hold in order to convert it to maildir, and that 
could be a pain if you have too many.  We'll go into options for handling 
that when you're ready for it.

Meanwhile, how is your mail being collected?  I use fetchmail, filter with 
procmail, and read in kmail, where, incidentally, you can easily create and 
delete folders on the imap server.

Dimap is a different question.  It's used if you want all your mail to be 
copied onto your local disk.  If you only want certain mail to be on the 
local drive, consider a kmail filter to copy the directory in question, or 
manually copy if you only want a few individual ones.

Anne
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