On 05/11/2019 05:57, Russell L. Harris wrote: > For some reason which I do not immediately recall, I chose POP3 over > IMAP the last time I had the option.
That would make sense. POP3 is best for when you want to download everything for local processing, as you are doing. IMAP makes more sense where you want to keep mail on the server to be accessed by local mail clients. > As to overkill, I lived for five years or more with the webmail client > of my ISP; compared to that, anything else is a pleasure. :-) > I might could live with that arrangement, but only if I do not lose > messages because Dovecot decides they have been read and have aged too > long to keep. > [...] > I still am bothered by the possibility of accidentally telling > Thunderbird or > another client to delete a message. It would be nice if Dovecot could > be run in a read-only mode. As mentioned, I'm not deeply familiar with Dovecot but I'd be surprised if it could not be configured to protect your mail store from accidental deletion in this way. Also, you could potentially get getmail to write two copies of your maildir structure: One for active use and the other as a pristine original record. Or perhaps one for Mutt and the other for Dovecot. > Whichever way I go, I thank you for recommending the IMAP approach. Glad to help. -- Mark Rousell