dovecot - Feb 2005 - Trigger getmail via mail-client action?

Hello,

I want to use dovecot on my private debian/unstable-system to have the 
advantages of an IMAP-Server (Access to mails from different computers, 
Simply changing the mail client). I decided to use dovecot, because I 
very often have read (in the web) that it should be more simple to 
configure than other servers.

Now I have the following question:

I want to use getmail to retrieve mails from my provider's pop3-server. 
I do have a dial-up-connection that is not online permanently (I do not 
have a flat rate). I could start a script on ppp's ip-up that 
periodically invokes getmail and on ip-down to kill it again. But I 
would prefer to invoke getmail only when I really want it to be run. The 
ideal solution for me was to invoke getmail when the "Get Mail"-Button
of the mail client is pressed. Is this possible? Perhaps there is 
something like a connection- or refresh-trigger in dovecot?

Thank you,

Gert

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005, Gert Brinkmann wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I want to use dovecot on my private debian/unstable-system to have the 
> advantages of an IMAP-Server (Access to mails from different computers, 
> Simply changing the mail client). I decided to use dovecot, because I very 
> often have read (in the web) that it should be more simple to configure
than
> other servers.
>
> Now I have the following question:
>
> I want to use getmail to retrieve mails from my provider's pop3-server.
I do
> have a dial-up-connection that is not online permanently (I do not have a 
> flat rate). I could start a script on ppp's ip-up that periodically
invokes
> getmail and on ip-down to kill it again. But I would prefer to invoke
getmail
> only when I really want it to be run. The ideal solution for me was to
invoke
> getmail when the "Get Mail"-Button of the mail client is pressed.
Is this
> possible? Perhaps there is something like a connection- or refresh-trigger
in
> dovecot?
>
I'm not sure if I understand your question. If you run dovecot on an 
internal machine, you can just let it run in the background, while 
'getmail' does or doesn't get new emails. As long as
'getmail' knows how
to put the emails in the correct place, i.e. a mailbox monitored by 
dovecot, there should be no problem as this is exactly what happens on any 
other machine with the MTA/MDA delivering and IMAP daemon serving email.

You might want to check your locking settings, though. Getmail's webpage 
seems to indicate that fcntl is used for locking. Check your dovecot.conf, 
it should be default.

Also read the wiki for more information:

   http://wiki.dovecot.org/BasicInstall

It tells you about locking.