[Dovecot] Can you POP a specific folder in Dovecot?

William Blunn bill+dovecot at blunn.org
Thu Oct 28 18:58:07 EEST 2010


On 28/10/2010 16:04, Peter Reinhold wrote:
> Someone wrote (Probably you), and the time was 14:23 28-10-2010
>
>> Though this is of course "Paradigm error" or "Trying to ice-skate up 
>> hill".
>> If you want to access folders, then use IMAP.
>
> This might be, but I like to be able to access my mail via webmail 
> during the day, and then pop it to my local computer when I get home.

Even easier then. Just reconfigure your home computer for IMAP. Then the 
webmail and the home computer will both see the same folderised mail store.

> Being on a couple of medium to high traffic mailinglists, and you 
> quickly loose overview when in the webmail, and thats when its nice to 
> be able to file the mails into folders.

OK. File it into folders on the IMAP. IMAP supports server-side filing 
--- the message does not have to be downloaded to the client and 
re-uploaded; the client just tells the IMAP server to re-file it.

(Yes yes yes pedants, I know, IMAP doesn't support MOVE in the core, and 
by default it's copy-then-delete. The point is there is no 
download-upload cycle --- in any case under Dovecot, under Maildir, 
sdbox or mdbox, copies are all done by some form of reference-copying 
and therefore cheap.)

While you're at it, you might as well set up rules on the server to file 
it for you.

Then when you file stuff at home (or the server-side rules file it for 
you), it will all appear magically filed on the webmail.

> While you may not agree on the practice, it has worked pretty well for 
> me the past many years, and i'd like to continue doing so, even on a 
> new mailserver (and Dovecot has many nice features that my old one didn't)

Weird because you seem to have a perfectly good folderised mail store on 
the server, then go and break the paradigm by moving everything down on 
to a single client machine.

Bill


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