Hello Timothy !
I hope I understood you right :
-Alfred , the Desktop has the mail
- Willi , The Laptop should only access ( reed, write, delete...) them
On Alfred you will need fetchmail to get your mails from your Provider ( some server usually provided by your ISP )
These Mails are usually stored in your mail folder .
To check them from your Laptop (Willi ) you need another software that works like an pop or imap server. The one you choosed is dovecot.
So you do not need fetchmail on your laptop. On your laptop you will need a email client like Kmail, or even OE  (on Windows).
If you use imap  the mail  remains  on the desktop (Alfred ) except you copy something on your local folders.
Hope it helped..
Adrian
Timothy Murphy wrote: 
On Tuesday 07 December 2004 13:38, jean-Noël Chardron 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.
    

At present email is arriving at william (my laptop).
_I want to change this_ so that email arrives at alfred (my desktop) -
I have no difficultly setting that up -
and then dovecot running as imap server on alfred
allows me to retrieve the email when I am 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)
    

Quite.
I have dovecot working on alfred.
When I am able to retrieve email from alfred to william,
I shall change my uucp setting so that email 
comes to alfred's /var/spool/mail/ .

  
the imap server reside on the same side of the smtpd server
that's my advice.
    

I am afraid you have misunderstood my question.

I cannot presently retrieve email from alfred to william
using either fetchmail or KMail.
That is my problem.