Sharing a mail folder between Linux and FreeBSD

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:26:18 +0100, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:16:42 -0600, Joshua Isom wrote:
>> On 1/21/2013 5:33 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>> > Hi :)
>> >
>> > I'm sharing the same directory for Evolution emails, by several Linux
>> > installs. For e.g. Ubuntu Precise it's Evolution 3.2.3 and for e.g.
>> > Ubuntu Quantal it's Evolution 3.6.0.
>> >
>> > I'm doing it by a link:
>> >
>>
>> It looks like to me you're asking for long term trouble.  You're using
>> multiple versions, so in the future there could be changes that could
>> corrupt your mail.  Why not just use an IMAP server instead?  It's what
>> I do, so my mail's shared between FreeBSD, Windows, and Android.
>
> That might be overhead, but still the approach contains
> potential for future trouble, as you correctly pointed
> out.
>
> The reason is simple: While you may not have trouble if
> all programs use the same mechanism for _storing_ mail
> (e. g. in mbox, MH or Maildir format), they might store
> other aspects of communication (read / unread, address
> books, configuration settings) differently. This should
> happen _independently_ of the mail storage. As long as
> all involved programs are the same version, it will
> probably work without any trouble. But if one program
> of a newer version decides to rewrite the configuration
> data in a new (and backwards-incompatible) format, the
> older versions will definitely run into trouble.
>
> I've been using a similar approach in the past, having
> several GUI and TUI mail clients use the same mail
> _storage_. Still as you suggest, running a (local) IMAP
> server may prevent trouble, at least on the long run,
> and it enables you easier testing for mail clients that
> do not use the same storage format as your "old" ones do.
> Still you can have any "storage backend" you like, so
> even "plain text work" (easily done with MH and Maildir)
> can be done if required (like grepping through messages
> or processing them automatically in whatever manner).

I don't share configurations, filters etc. only the mails and it never did  
cause an issue. Read and unread always worked.

First I let Evolution restore all data from an Evolution backup, Evolution  
has gut an option to do it, so it will convert all configurations, filters  
etc., then I delete mail and only link "mail".

Doing this with e.g. Mozilla MUAs does cause issues, when they are from  
different versions, but it works flawlessly for Evolution. For older  
versions of Evolution it wasn't possible to backup and restore everything  
by an Evolution option, then we had to do a lot of manually work, even  
when not sharing a folder. Since this is fixed, sharing the mail folder  
always will work.

Regards,
Ralf