[Dovecot] Problem with dovecot on home LAN

[jean-Noël Chardron]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

>At present I get email directly on my laptop
>in /var/spool/mail/* through uucp.
>I'd like to get the email in the same directory
>on my desktop (alfred), and then run a mail server on the destop
>and collect the email on my laptop (william)
>(or on other computers on my two little home LANs, ethernet and WiFi).
>
>I was advised that dovecot was a good imap server for this purpose
>(I tried cyrus-imapd, but decided it was too complicated),
>so I'm running dovecot on alfred (my desktop),
>
>  
>

If I understand, the mail arrives on Laptop (William) (through uucp) so 
the mail boxes are on William so You must install dovecot on William.

Netherless If you want  dovecot running on Desktop (Alfred),  you need 
setup up the arrival of mail on Alfred.

You cannot have mailboxes on alfred and dovecot on William (and vice versa)

except if you use NFS or some network sharing.

the imap server reside on the same side of the smtpd server

that's my advice.