Anne Wilson wrote: >> I'm running dovecot on my desktop, >> and running kmail + IMAP on my laptops, >> specifying the desktop as IMAP server >> (the idea being to keep email on the laptops in sync). >> >> This has always had problems with kmail hanging, >> and now it has become completely unusable. ... >> Does one really have to keep email in mbox format in this directory >> if running an IMAP server? >> Is IMAP incompatible with maildir format? > Timothy, ignore all that's being said about dumping KMail - it works > perfectly > with dovecot imap. I use it all the time. Thanks very much for your help (and everyone else). I now have my system running with kmail + dovecot using maildir format. The setup is rather confused at present, eg I apparently have two inbox folders, Local Folders/inbox and IMAP/inbox, whose contents differ slightly but which seem to converge after a time. Also the folders on my desktop and laptop are different. But the system seems to be working - the mail is coming through, and kmail is no longer hanging (touch wood). The changeover to the new format took a couple of hours. One of the problems might have been that I did not allow for this, and was trying to read mail during the transfer. I now have mail_location = maildir:~/Mail/inbox in /etc/dovecot.conf . It didn't seem to like maildir:~/Mail or maildir:~/Maildir even though I created a Maildir directory. The old folders in ~/mail/ , which dovecot created in its mbox phase, are still there in mbox format. Hopefully I'll be able to import them to the new setup. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland