You should really look into imap and isync. Isync is a good concept but practically has problems. I thought maybe we need an rsync that understands mbox/Maildir format. However, evolution is looking good in this respect, I don't know if other IMAP emailers keep local copies of the folders but the concept seems to have merit in that deleted/updated messages could be handled well when working in an offline situation. I'll try it today by unplugging the ethernet.
On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 23:38, Ben Buxton wrote: > > Speaking of all this mail stuff, I have just had an evil plan, > and am curious if it's been implemented before.. > > Has anyone actually implemented a distributed email system based > on NNTP? Not like the simple email to nntp gateways, but something > far more featureful. This would work as follows: > > Every system that you would like to have full email access from has > a local NNTP server. All these systems are hooked up using > mostly standard NNTP configurations and protocols. Only relatively > minor modifications would be need to support authentication and > the other features. > Your domain(s) are configured to use all of these (net-reachable) > systems as MX hosts. And each mailbox/mailspool is setup as a > separate 'newsgroup', allowing for hierarchial mailboxes. Presumably > your top level hierarchies are local usernames, and the server > only allows authenticated users access to their 'mailbox'(hierarchy). > Group mailboxes would be easy to implement though. > Something like this: > > bb.inbox > bb.inbox.lists.slug > bb.sent-mail > bb.sent-mail.lists.slug > [..] > public.somegroup.inbox > > > etc > > Whenever a mail comes into one of the MX hosts, it is filtered > out, using procmail or something, and dropped into the appropriate > newsgroup. Alternatively have only the primary MX handle this, > but then you cannot get any new mail if this box is unreachable. > > The magic of NNTP then comes into play, distributing that > email across all of the hosts in the NNTP group. > > You then read your email using any nntp capable client. To delete > messages, your client sends a usenet 'cancel' type message to the > local server, and this gets distributed around the network. > Sending an email sends via normal SMTP protocols, and optionally > puts a message out via NNTP to update the sent-messages groups. > > This is incredibly useful especially with intermittently connected > hosts like laptops. You can read/send/delete messages there, and > when it gets put on line again, it will send the cancel messages, > sent-messages and other things via the NNTP net to all other > hosts, ensuring a consistent system across all hosts. > > What would be the limitations/weaknesses/etc that would make > this a bad idea? > > I can see a new Free Software project about to spawn :) > > -- > Ben Buxton - Random Network Person > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ > More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- ---<GRiP>--- Web: www.arcadia.au.com/gripz Answering Machine/fax: 02 4950 1194 (wait 5 mins if no answer) Mobile: 0408 686 201 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
