Before I go on, I should say that this is now an area with which I am not overly familiar in detail. I know Thunderbird very well but I am not familiar in detail with getmail, Dovecot or maildir structures. However, I know the principles and I'll do my best to reply usefully below.
On 05/11/2019 04:44, Russell L. Harris wrote: > On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:10:17AM +0000, Mark Rousell wrote: >> Set up a local IMAP server instead? :-) > > I found a HOWTO: > https://www.linux.com/news/how-build-local-imap-server/ > but I have not read though it. I should also say that I only suggested setting up a local IMAP server as a way to let Thunderbird access your email. My smiley was because this might be overkill solely in order to see emails with HTML content! But it's not actually that unreasonable, come to think of it. I just had a quick look at this HOWTO and it seems to focus on using fetchmail to store mail in mbox format with Dovecot as the IMAP server. >From your comments, you're using getmail and maildir so you could not follow the HOWTO exactly but you can still apply the same principles to place email in a place where Dovecot can find it. I have not done it myself but I understand that you should be able to configure Dovecot to look at your getmail's maildir structure. I'm going to refer to Dovecot as your local IMAP server below on the assumption that you choose Dovecot to do the IMAP job, but other IMAP servers are available. > Is it necessary to route all my mail through the local IMAP server? No (but read on). As I understand it, at the moment you are using getmail to collect mail from your ISP (presumably using IMAP or POP3) and store it locally in a maildir structure. Mutt reads from the maildir structure. If you were to install Dovecot as an IMAP server alongside of this then (as I understand it, as I've not done it myself) Dovecot could also read from the same maildir structure. Mail clients like Thunderbird could then access your local Dovecot IMAP server, which in turn would show them the contents of your maildir structure. So the Dovecot IMAP server (and any mail clients like Thunderbird that connect to it) could see all your email (whatever is in your maildir structure) but email would not be routed through the IMAP server, as such. It's just that the IMAP server could access it as needed. > Mail with getmail and Mutt now is running nicely, and I am hesitant to > monkey with a system which I understand and with which I am comfortable. Yup, I understand. As above, you need not (as far as I can tell) alter your working system. Getmail, the maildir structure, and Mutt should continue to work. The Dovecot (or other IMAP server) would just access the maildir structure as needed. Note that there may be complications in adding Dovecot to your existing getmail, maildir, Mutt set up but in principle it should work. > I am thinking that, inasmuch as I have web hosting for my weather > station, and the web hosting agreement includes email (which I have > not bothered to set up, because I have not had need for it), the > easiest solution is to set up an email account on the URL of the > weather station web site, forward problematic messages to that > account, then configure a GUI mail client for that mail account, or > else use the webmail interface of the ISP. Yup, you could do that. But if you are happy with processing you email locally then I personally think it would be preferable to keep doing so with your own local IMAP server. -- Mark Rousell
