Re: [Evolution] How do remote folders work?

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

> I presume my local evolution makes generic requests of the server, which
> the server interprets appropriately, and that can change if the server
> changes.  Knowing more about how that works might allow me to guide our
> system manager if we get stuck again.

Yes.  The client (i.e. Evo) makes standard requests to the IMAP server
and should not need to have any knowledge of how or where mail is stored
on the server.  It is entirely up to the server IMAP software to be
configured to look for mail in the correct places.  The backend data
store on the IMAP server can be almost anything - standard ones are
things like MBOX files, Maildir folders and so on; there are also
proprietary formats like Exchange, Zimbra or Groupwise where the mail is
held in SQL databases or even something like Googlemail and who knows
what format the mail is stored in there! For me I have Evo configured to
access various IMAP servers which have both MBOX & Maildir folders as
the backend (sometimes on the same machine), also I have a Zimbra
server, an Exchange server, Googlemail and Yahoo! (which is Zimbra
underneath) all accessed via IMAP.

In your case your mail is presumably held as MBOX files on the server.
The admin should have configured the IMAP server software to look for
mail in two places: the incoming MBOX spool file (i.e. "INBOX") usually
in somewhere like /var/spool/mail/<user>; and in a users local mail
folder store, in your case ~/Mail.  What has happened is that the IMAP
server has been misconfigured and is looking in ~/mail instead of ~/Mail

There is one final thing to be aware of - some IMAP servers allow you to
change the place examined for mail from the client - the option in Evo
that controls this is "Override server-supplied folder namespace".  You
should never have to play with that, and for some servers it is
meaningless, but by changing that to '~/Mail' you might be able to force
things to behave on the server.  If it doesn't work, remove it since it
will only cause you grief in the future!

P.