I have what I imagine to be complex, atypical email needs, and I think the solution may include bincimap. Let me start by describing the situation:
I access my email from (at least) four different computers: - chainsaw: Desktop computer located at my house. - monorail: Another desktop at my house. - blender : Laptop computer I take to school. - ducks : The mail server (sometimes I ssh in from strange computers). My home network's uplink to the Internet through a dial-on-demand modem connection, managed by a computer named toaster. My school is connected through, ah, superior means. On all of the computers listed above, I need to be able to read, write, and send email. Additionally, I need to access my mail archives, and I'd like a shared address book if it's not too much trouble. At my house, I should be able to read old mails, draft new messages, and organize the archive and address book without needing to bring up the modem link. When I send mail, it should be queued until the link comes up (which takes a variable amount of time and every once in a while requires manual intervention [a phone call to the ISP]) and then sent. I would like to be able to do all this through mutt, Thunderbird, KMail, and perhaps webmail, where the MUA of choice is a function of my mood. But if I must standardize on one MUA, that's fine too. Incoming email is delivered to ducks, which in turn makes said mail available to me via ssh login or a MUA on blender (when blender is at school and has good bandwidth). ducks runs sendmail (I'm not root and cannot change this), but mail can be re-delivered through procmail or similar if necessary. I'd like to support both users "andy" and "dick" if I can, but if, due to not having root, I can only handle one mailbox, that's fine (dick is satisfied with pop3 from ducks and smtp to the isp). Alright, this is my plan so far: I run bincimap on ducks (listening on a nonstandard port) and on toaster. [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ducks imap to ducks's bincimap. chainsaw, monorail, and [EMAIL PROTECTED] imap to toaster's bincimap. When the modem link is up, toaster maildirsync's with ducks. ducks runs sendmail. [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ducks smtp to ducks, possibly through a ssl'ed tunnel to evade firewalls. Some authentication system is used to prevent open relays. toaster runs qmail. chainsaw, monorail, and blender (at home) smtp to toaster's qmail, which is configured to keep trying to deliver for up to ten minutes (its first attempt may initiate the dial-on-demand). toaster's qmail only accepts smtp from the lo or eth0 interfaces. Obviously, I don't understand everything involved, and I'm surely missing some important stuff. But is this setup workable? Is this problem solvable? Or even worth solving? Perhaps there's another way around. I know I'm tired of doing everything through webmail or ssh, and yet pop3'ing doesn't work either because I can't always get to my mail archive. It's time for a change. Ideas? I'm Cc:'ing a professor with whom I have discussed this problem before. -- Andy Goth + [EMAIL PROTECTED] + http://ioioio.net/
