I have taken the plunge and stored my mail archive on a nslu2 (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2) running an imap server (dovecot) on Debian (5.0) after the kind suggestions by people here...
I have even managed to get the imap server to hand smtp mail to procmail which then uses my isp as a relay so I even get sent mail stored on imap (rather handy!)
All is good

(after lots of cursing! there are just *so* many ways to set these things up!)
However the one thing I'm stuck on implementing filtering
I have this kind of structure (mbox files)
Code:
mail
|-- Drafts
|-- HelenOS
|-- Sent
|-- Trash
|-- archive
| |-- 2004
| |-- 2005
| |-- 2006
| |-- 2007
| `-- 2008
|-- archive-sent
| |-- 2004
| |-- 2005
| |-- 2006
| |-- 2007
| `-- 2008
|-- gce
|-- growveg
|-- inbox
|-- scottishpower
|-- sf.net
|-- ubuntu
|-- virgin
`-- wii
where mail is in home/username
so for example if something is coming from bugs.launchpad.net it wants to go in ~/mail/ubuntu
(I'll be good for filter syntax just once I have somewhere to put it and a working config round it!)
my problem is that I have seen so many different tutorials for filtering I just dont know which way to turn! some say sendmail some fetchmail some are using sql (i'm not) some suggest procmail etc etc!
the list in inexhaustible seemingly...
here's some config excerpts that might clue you into how I lashed things together!
.fetchmailrc
Code:
set no bouncemail
set logfile fetchmail.log
set idfile fetchmail_uidls.log
poll pop.myisp.com with proto pop3 service 110 uidl username
"the bit before the @" with password "yeah like I'm telling" is "chris" here fetchall
added to postfix main.cf
Code:
home_mailbox = mail/inbox
relayhost = smtp.myisp.com
I don't remember adding anything to dovecot's config
I do realise that this is probably the simplest case and the simplest set up but with the 1001 different ways to go, finding info from tutorials can be uphill!
oh nearly forgot theres a /etc/init.d/fetchmail yet I have to run a user cron job for fetchmail is this normal?
Oh and if you got all the way down here thanks for reading!
