Hi Gene!
Let's see if I get it right this time:
incomming mail: external mailserver --> fetchmail --> local mailbox --> kmail --> kmail mailbox in ~
You have kmail running 24/7, because it should transfer "local mailbox --> kmail --> kmail mailbox in ~"
If this is correct, then imap will not be your solution, because there is no mailbox with mail in it, that a imap sever could deliver. Reason: "kmail mailbox in ~" is not compatible with any imap server.
The easy solution:
Do not run kmail 24/7, but only when you want to use email on the machine in front of you. Then you can use kmail over the ssh, no more work needed.
The more complex solution:
incomming mail: external mailserver --> fetchmail --> local mailbox --> dovecot --> local dovecot mailbox in ~ kmail has to be configured for imap only, that has to be done for all kmails on all other machines that would like access to the mails. Be aware that there was an error with kmail and imap some time ago, I don't know if it still exists.
Nik
Hi Gene!
There is a misunderstanding I think. I was assuming you use this scenario:
- you have a machine that fetches your mail. On that machine you do
nothing, you are not logged in, kmail is not running. let's call it "remote"
No, this machine does it all, and kmail runs 24/7 on this machine as it is what gets the mail that procmail usually delivers to /var/spool/mail/gene, on this machine. Because kmail is single threaded, it has huge freezes of the user gui, including the composer, while its going out on the net to check/fetch new mail from the 2 mailservers I have access to. So all that has been offloaded to a fetchmail/procmail setup. So all kmail has to do is go get it from the local /var/spool/mail/mailfile, sort it and write it to the correct folder. This its can do in a fraction of a second, reducing the frozen time from 20 or more seconds to just noticeable.
Then, while kmail remains running to do all that, I want to access what it has pulled in, from a 2nd session of kmail running from the remote machine while I am at its keyboard/monitor.
As I see it, its one of telling the remote copy where the email corpus is, and some method of file locking to keep the two copies from stepping on each others toes.
I thought maybe dovecot could serve it, but have not been able to make an imap setup connect, and with no logs being made by dovecot, no means of determining why they can't connect.
Dovecot has currently been purged, but that is of course fixable, if I knew what the heck I was doing, but I've no previous experience with dovecot.
- you sit in front of a second machine, where TDE is running, but not
kmail. let's call it "here"
I would if I was 'there' yes.
- you do "$ ssh -X gene@remote /opt/trinity/bin/kmail". kmail (running
on "remote") sends the GUI over to "here"
But as the error comes back, kmail is already running and objects.
So what I want is to serve up the kmail email corpus that exists on this machine, with a large fraction of a million mailfiles in 42 directories, using something like dovecot, to a second copy of kmail running on the remote machine I am working with/on from its own keyboard at the instant, without shutting down the copy of kmail running on this machine that is doing all the incoming mail housekeeping. Sure, I can't be two places at once, but the scripts that drive all this never sleep, even if I am. That means new mail needs to be processed anytime it arrives, regardless of which machine I am on at the instant. Shutting down this copy of kmail means no new mail will be processed until its restarted.
Shutting it down so dcop has no receiver eventually constipates dcop and that seems to take a reboot to fix.
And I don't want to have dovecot make a copy of whats here just to get it all in one directory for dovecots convenience. One folder alone, the biggest, is at 90,000 msgs now. And kmail takes about 10 seconds to find a new message in all that. I do expire the majority of the folders in a week or so, but keep several for archival purposes too.
I can reinstall dovecot, and set the source path up as it was before, but I think my 'failure to communicate' from the remote machine was in not telling dovecot who might come calling.
So, how should I proceed? Or should I continue to come to this machine to do all the email?
Nik
Cheers, Gene Heskett