Re: [exim] access at home and work...

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007, Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:

> I divide my time between office and home, and would like to be able to
> access my inbox, whether at home, or at work, I run exim4 and keep my
> mailbox on my office machine. I have cable at both locations.
>
> How would I set things up so that when I run mutt, I access my work mail
> box, whether at home or at work?

Exim's only concern is accepting mail and, ultimately, delivering it into
a mailbox. How you access that mailbox to read its contents is nothing to
do with Exim.

For that, you need something like a POP3 or an IMAP server to which your
chosen mail client will connect to access the mail; given your
circumstances, an IMAP server would seem to fit the bill; run it on the
system where Exim has delivered your mail, and connect to it in mutt from
both home and office: the mail stays stored on the server, so you see the
same view of it from either location.

Some will recommend dovecot for an IMAP server. There are, of course,
others (Courier, UW, ...). Of course, the IMAP server must be able to
read the same format of mailbox that Exim writes, which only really boils
down to a choice of two, and for even moderate usage on modern hardware,
it probably doesn't make much difference whether you pick mbox and
maildir, in terms of performance. There may be technical or philosophical
reasons for choosing one or the other.

You will also need to consider how outgoing mail from your mail client is
sent, which is a completely separate process with various options - via
your home connection's ISP, via your own Exim installation with
appropriate controls, or via some other third-party service. There are
issues to be aware of with all of these.

Jethro.

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Jethro R Binks
Computing Officer, IT Services
University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK