[Dovecot] Two newbie problems

[Timothy Murphy]

On Fri 07 Sep 2007, Tim Bates wrote:

> > 1.  I see my email fine on my laptop in an IMAPS account,
> > but it doesn't get updated - I mean I don't get any new email -
> > until I run kmail on my server.
>
> Is that because kmail is downloading it from your ISP/email host using
> POP3? What I assume you are trying to do is host your emails but not run
> your own SMTP server, correct? For the purposes of having access to the
> same email collection from multiple PCs (without needing to keep them on
> the ISP server).

On my server, I collect email from various places by fetchmail and uucp.
In both cases, I think, the email's final destination is determined
by my .procmailrc, which sends all email to ~/Mail/inbox .
As far as I can see, dovecot only "indexes" this email on the server
when I run kmail on the server.
Running kmail on my laptop does not seem to "wake up" dovecot.

I assume the problem lies on the server.
Should I run some cron job to ensure that dovecot 
keeps its indexes up-to-date?
Or is there some setting in /etc/dovecot.conf which I have overlooked?

As always, any suggestions or advice gratefully received.