dovecot - Dec 2011 - How to serve a subset of IMAP folders for hand held devices.

Hello

I am currently running dovecot 1.2.15 on my home server. I have over 200
folders in personal email account, and I have found that my smart-phone
does not work well trying to display that many folders.

I solved the problem by creating a second instance of dovecot running on
a non standard port, and configured it to serve only a subset my email
folders, so that way the email client on my smartphone works well and I
can read the emails I am interested in on the move.

The process of configuring two instances of dovecot on the same machine
serving different views of the same mailbox was faily complex, so I
think it would be worth documenting the process in an FAQ or suchlike
for other users.

I thought a good place to write up my method would be in the HowTo
section of the Dovecot Wiki. Is that a good idea? Can I request an
account to edit the Wiki, or should I send a draft text to an editor?
Are there any Dovecot experts here who can review my methods and suggest
improvements?

-- David Pottage

:2011-12-28T10:26:David Pottage:
> I am currently running dovecot 1.2.15 on my home server. I have over 200
> folders in personal email account, and I have found that my smart-phone
> does not work well trying to display that many folders.
> 
> I solved the problem by creating a second instance of dovecot running on
> a non standard port, and configured it to serve only a subset my email
> folders, so that way the email client on my smartphone works well and I
> can read the emails I am interested in on the move.
Here's a simple improvement.
Create a new email user and symlink just those folders you want to see
into it.

That way you don't need 2 instances just two different users and you use
one on mobile the other elsewhere ;)

Using virtual folders could be helpful as well. I have a New mails one
which shows me all new emails in all folders which helps in a lot of
places.

-- 
Andra? 'ruskie' Levstik
Source Mage GNU/Linux Games/Xorg grimoire guru
Re-Alpine Coordinator http://sourceforge.net/projects/re-alpine/
Geek/Hacker/Tinker

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