andré wrote:
hawker a écrit :
I tried asking this on the Thunderbird forum but all I got was someone
trying to convince me to use G-Mail.
I noticed that discussion. Reference to Gmail may be a useful example,
but just because somebody prefers it doesn't mean that it's a solution
for you.
What I'm looking for is how a typical Linux mail server would work with
Seamonkey or Thunderbird (I use both) in this situation.
---
It seems time for me to Rethink my personal E-mail.
Not sure where to ask this - it isn't 100% a Thunderbird question.
I don't want to IMAP my personal E-mail (1and1 mail) because I can't
store everything on the server (2G max). So I POP it to Thunderbird &
Seamonkey with a 90 day delete from server after setting. I also POP it
to my HTC Android 2.3.x phone and do not delete. I mostly read e-mails
on my phone now.
I don't try to read mail from my phone, but I have several computers
that make access to my multiple email accounts. I use POP for the
primary computer (where I keep mail permanently), and IMAP for
everything else. For the secondary computers, those are ones where I
don't regularly check mail, so among other things, I don't really
want/need copies of messages downloaded to local storage. This approach
also allows me to use Thunderbird occasionally (via IMAP), where I use
POP and Seamonkey for my primary mail.
Can I IMAP on my Phone (HTC Android) and POP on my Mozilla Mail client
without a mess?
You can with at least gmail, but I wouldn't recommend it. IMAP is
designed to store everything on the server, and only selectively
download emails to read. It is more useful for corporate environments
where several users access the same email account.
POP is easier to configure for what you need.
I think it's doable, but one procedural thing that you have to do is to
not move anything you want available for POP access later out of the inbox.
That's a key difference between POP and IMAP, is that POP only views the
inbox on the server, and will ignore any other folders that IMAP uses.
Thus, if you move something out of the Inbox, then as far as a POP
connection is concerned, it doesn't exist.
With that, one of the things that I do with my IMAP clients is to adjust
the settings for sent mail so that messages I send from the IMAP client
are saved in the Inbox, rather than the IMAP Sent Mail folder. That
way, when I make a POP exchange from my primary client, I have the copy
available for download and filing. For what it's worth, I've done the
same in the past if I have more than one POP client.
* Will the email account be able to handle this without corruption?
* If I delete it on my phone (IMAP) will it be deleted and not
downloaded to my PC-Mozilla?
Yes, since IMAP is stored on the central server. But not with POP,
stored locally.
You should be fine, relating to corruption. Most of what you have to do
is make sure you've adequately planned your mail retention settings in
POP, so that you don't risk having POP delete something from the server
that you may want to view later in IMAP. And as noted, because POP sees
only the inbox, anything that you do in IMAP that moves something out of
the inbox (whether trash, or move to another folder) will be invisible
to a POP connection.
One other thing to note -- although IMAP is server-centric, you can play
with your IMAP client configurations, where you replicate your messages
to local storage, and where you have stuff stored locally (in IMAP) that
aren't stored on the server. And where the content is visible if you
don't have an open Internet connection. This is similar to the capacity
you have with a news server, in replicating content locally. Thus, it's
possible to save far more stuff in an IMAP profile than the maximum
permitted by the server.
I've never taken the effort to do it and really become familiar with the
mechanics of local replication for either IMAP or news, but I know that
it's possible.
* If I read it on IMAP will it be marked read when POP downloaded or not
or would It also have to be IMAP downloaded to see this.
Don't know how IMAP does it, but when an email is downloaded on a
defined mozilla POP account, the email id is stored locally to indicate
that it is read.
I believe that IMAP read status is stored on the server. Thus, if you
mark a message as read in one IMAP client, it will show up as being read
in another IMAP client (including webmail clients, which are normally IMAP).
With POP seeing only the inbox, and each POP client tracking what
messages it's seen or not, the concept of read/unread is a little
different. Essentially, for a POP client, if there is a message in the
server's inbox that hasn't been seen by that client, it's downloaded,
and then considered to be read, even if it's displayed in the POP inbox
as unread. In the POP client, if you leave the message on the server,
and then delete or move the message to another folder, the POP client
won't download the message again.
However, if you touch the same server with another POP client, the same
message will be considered to be unread, because it hasn't been seen by
the second POP client.
If you download from the same email account on another profile, messages
will be re-downloaded if still on the server. If you define the same
email account twice in the same profile, you could even download an
email twice in the same profile, since each defined mozilla account has
its' own list of read emails.
A variant of this... in the days of dial-up access, one of the problems
that I used to see occasionally was when a connection would get dropped
in the middle of a POP download. If you restarted the exchange, POP
would restart the download from the beginning, because the normal
handling of POP is not to signal the server that the download is
completed (and to initiate deletion of seen messages from the inbox)
until the entire batch of messages has been completely downloaded.
(Eudora was an exception, sending the "received/purge" signal following
each message.)
Thus, the problem of "hairballs" -- a batch of messages that included a
large message (typically with an attachment), and repeated download
attempts that got repeats of the same messages at the beginning, and
failed connections on the large message. This was really painful for
connections paid for by the minute, especially if paying international
phone rates.
The way around this problem was to make an IMAP connection, to move the
problem message out of the inbox (and often, to move the already-seen
messages at the beginning of the batch, as well). With that stuff out
of the way, then go back and make another POP connection to fetch the
rest of the batch. One way to do this is via a web client, but another
way of doing it would be with setting up both POP and IMAP in the same
user profile. And before extensive spam filtering, IMAP could be used
as a way of previewing a mailbox (where only headers are downloaded) and
discarding unwanted stuff, before downloading the remainder with POP.
* Can Thunderbird or Seamonkey's filters, when IMAP downloaded, pull the
e-mail from the IMAP account and move it to an offline account so it
doesn't use up space on the server? Can I do this for messages over a
certain age only?
Probably possible but easier with POP.
It is possible, as noted above. There's actually a couple of ways of
going about this. One would be in exploring the the settings relating
to subscriptions and replication of IMAP folders, and handling for
off-line use. It's possible, but takes some effort to figure out.
The easier approach would be to make use of your Local Folders, and
that's probably the best structure for local, long-term storage. For
your rules, when you're specifying storage location, you can specify not
only a folder, but which account you want to move messages to, and Local
Folders is one of the available options.
If you're working with more than one account, then you'll also want to
do a little work in structuring your folder layout in Local Folders, to
segregate stuff, by account.
A few recommendations :
1) Do not use IMAP. It is designed for those who wish to keep messages
on a central server. Use POP.
I disagree. There's plenty of productive ways of using IMAP, but you
have to be deliberate about how you're doing it, to make sure that what
you do in IMAP doesn't interfere with your POP connections.
2) You can configure mozilla to never delete messages.
So do that on the machine where you don't intend to read or keep all
your messages.
Under email account configuration / server parameters :
[x] Leave messages on the server
... [x] Until I delete them.
That's a setting specific to a POP connection, and how you tune depends
on your preferences. Leaving messages on server for a specified number
of days is also an option, and it can be used concurrently with "until I
delete", if you want.
3) On the machine where you intend to read and keep all your messages :
Configure to delete after a maybe a week, and not right away, in case of
some glitch. The default is 3? days.
Concur. On my own setups, I leave messages for a week. Don't let the
POP connection purge downloaded messages that you might want to read
later from the IMAP connection.
BTW, I have used the "don't delete" feature several times when
travelling, and at other times when I've had problems with my usual
computer, and it works quite well.
Although the default setting for a POP account is to delete immediately
after download, there's several reasons for where it can be useful to
leave messages on the server for several days after download.
Facilitating support from several clients, and travel are both included.
Emails accessed via the web won't be deleted either.
As noted, web clients are IMAP.
Also, as noted, if you send mail from somewhere other than the POP
connection where you do your permanent storage, set all the other
clients to store sent mail in the inbox, rather than the sent mail
folder. That way, your POP client has all the mail you've originated,
so you can easily file it.
Smith
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