Peep Posted January 3, 2004 Report Share Posted January 3, 2004 I've been using evolution for a long time now, and i download all the mail from the pop3 server to my desktop machine. then to access old emails from the laptop, i use SSH to open evolution from the desktop to the laptop. Is there a more elegant way to either sync the two machines, or maybe run evolution locally on the laptop but access the mail folders on the desktop? I'm not deadset on sticking with evolution and am open to any and all potential solutions. Thanks in advance--you guys (and gals) are always so helpful B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted January 3, 2004 Report Share Posted January 3, 2004 The easiest solution is to change your email from pop3 to imap. This would allow you to use any computer anywhere in the world to access your email. I am not sure of any other solutions to this problem though apart from setting up an imap server on your linux box and maybe using fetchmail to get the email off the pop3 account and place it into the imap account. However, it seems like a rather extreme solution to such a simple problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted January 3, 2004 Report Share Posted January 3, 2004 any real distro ho uses yahoo...asked cybrejackle. That's the easiest, and the way I've been leaning toward. Then you don't even need to install the silly email apps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted January 3, 2004 Report Share Posted January 3, 2004 You could also use fetchmail and download the mail into a Unix mbox. Every linux mail client I know reads these mboxes. You could download the mbox to the current computer by SSH or even setup a cronjob to get the mail of this computer every 30 minutes or however long. Very easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted January 4, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 ok, thanks for the replies. i may try the iphitus/fuzzylizard method one of these days but i'm not sure how the desktop will handle yet another server. i think it'd have to be imap because i'd want to sync the sent items just as much as the incoming mail. a question i should've asked in the first post: does anyone know if you can run multiple instances of a program like evolution? the main problem i'm having is that you cannot tunnel evolution through SSH if the desktop already has it open. most of the time when i want to use the mail, both computers are on my lan, so bandwidth really isn't an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted January 4, 2004 Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 Depends what you want... If you only want to read mail remotely, you can use a text-based email client such as mutt on the remote desktop to read your mail. But if you want to save attachments onto the laptop while reading the mail, then you will have to ftp/sftp them separately. Is there a more elegant way to either sync the two machines If that's what you want, then your best bet will be unison. Fast, reliable, you have a possibility to select files/directories which you want to syncronize or skip, backup, works over ssh tunnel, text based and graphic UI, cross-platform... I tried drakesync a while ago, never worked for me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michel Posted January 4, 2004 Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 I've not used evolution yet, but I'm using firebird and think mozilla has it also now. Maybe evolution has it also? There is a setting for my email-account(pop3) where I can specify how long after I have downloaded the message, the message should be deleted. I thought this was an imap-only-thin,g, but it seems pop3 has it also .... I use it for my school-account, so when I download it at home, I can still read it through webmail at school the next days, when I need it. Don't know a way of preventing the deletion and if if the check for deletion si done on the server or client-side .... If pop3 doesn't support it, I suppose the client-side, server would be better, but ot's good enough for me. Ofcourse you'll have to download them again and again, while you may have the mails already on your lan ... then a little server is better I suppose like mentionned above. I've never done it, but think it should be possible that you mount your partition .. suppose home ... remotely, and then you'll haev all yourcustomosiations also on you laptop...and also your mail. Ofcourse this will cost you bandwidth....better is that you rsync or so your home/mail-directory with the computers. For example when you start your laptop .. you could rsync you home-directory (if you want) ..if not you could use your old configuration. and is it maybe possible to use rsync in evolution or so? I think considering rsync is also an intersting option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted January 5, 2004 Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 I've been using tightvnc to read my email on my home desktop. Kinda simple because its just one box with an email client and I'm just viewing it. If you play around with it, tightvnc has an option called 8-bit that will dramatically speed up transmission. You can run it at work with startup parameters so you don't have to set the settings each time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schussat Posted January 5, 2004 Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 I'm a big fan of using unison to sync all sorts of things. I sync data and documents between three machines, and it works great. Although I haven't used it to sync my Evolution data, this thread seems to suggest that it works just fine. Might be worth a look; once you get the hang of unison, it's a slick process, and you can set up an automatic syncing via a cron job. Also, it requires just one executable, and since it's run from remote via ssh, it doesn't involve setting up another server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted January 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 i hadn't come across unison before, thanks for the tip schussat! B) i'll definitely play with that because it sounds like exactly what i was looking for. the fact that it's smarter than rsync is really cool. i should try vnc too. it always seems like it would take more bandwidth to do vnc than just running one app over ssh, but i know that isn't true. if i didn't spend so much time fixing problems i never knew i had, i'd have a lot more spare time :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted January 7, 2004 Report Share Posted January 7, 2004 Regarding vnc, just remember to set the 8-bit mode and then speed is not so much an issue.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 7, 2004 Report Share Posted January 7, 2004 I'm using the horde webmail on my server and download from it to kmail as an extra security. However my .mail directory is actually just a symlink to a nfs drive on the server so its accessible anywhere in my house. Outside I just use the webmail (from work for example). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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