Re: [Evolution] Evolution and roaming

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2011-01-28 at 19:04 -0600, Jim Sabatke wrote:
[...]
> Let me try to clarify.
>
>      - If I run evolution, it would be a total switch from Thunderbird.

OK

>      - I would have the mail files located on the Linux box.

OK

>      - I would like to have the Windows laptop run Evolution, but access 
> the mail files on the Linux box.  I am doing that currently
>         with Thunderbird.

Is this via e.g. Samba or are you manually copying files around?

>      -  When I take the Windows laptop away from my home network, where 
> it can't access the Evolution mail files,
>         I would like it to store the new messages on the laptop until I 
> return home.  Then I would like to merge the newer
>         Windows mail messages with the Linux mail.
>
> Can this be done?

The short answer is that I have no experience whatever with Evo under
Windows, so I don't know what you would have to do to synchronize local
copies of mail directly. However, see below.

As I said earlier, using IMAP for your mail makes it easier. I can think
of at least two ways:

1) Use a public or ISP-hosted IMAP server, and just connect to it from
both machines. (You can configure either or both instances of Evo to
keep local copies of mail if you like, but in this scenario it's not
really necessary unless you also want disconnected access to your mail.)
The server acts as a master copy so there's no need to explicitly synch
between your two machines. Even if your current mail accounts are
POP-based, you can use a free Gmail account to import mail from them
periodically, then access Gmail via IMAP. I do something like this for
one of my accounts.

2) Set up an IMAP server on your Linux machine. Use fetchmail to
download mail from your mail server (using POP or IMAP) and feed it to
the local IMAP server, where you access it from Evo on either machine.
When using the Windows machine on your local network, connect to the
local IMAP server and manually synch by dragging mail into one of the
server's folders.

If you don't use IMAP, I guess you could copy the mail file(s) from
Windows to Linux and then import it into Evo. I expect that will get old
really quickly.

poc