Gary Roach posted on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:10:09 -0700 as excerpted:
> I am trying to consoidate 2 email accounts onto the same machine but
> still keep them separated. I wish to use kmail. I am running kde 4.4.5
> on a Debian Linux operating system. My problem is this:
> I have two email accounts xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx and
> yyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxx Both send mail to outgoing.verizon.net and receive
> from incoming.verizon.net. They now reside on a Win2k box and a Debian
> linux box respecively. I wish to keep the two accounts completely
> separate but wish to put both on the linux box. In addition, I need to
> transfer my mail archives from thunderbird and iceweasel. I have read a
> lot of stuff on the net but have found most out of date and confusing.
> Can anyone lay out a road map that will allow me to set up these 2
> accounts so they will co-exist with out being intermingled.
>
> My present file structure is:
> home/xxxx/.kde/share/apps/kmail/Mail
First, let me commend you for both including critical version information
and technical detail, AND proper sanitation of irrelevant personal
information such as the exact email addresses and the precise name of
your user's home dir. Few enough get the first part right; even fewer
BOTH get that right and properly sanitize the data they do post. Your
post thus stands as a shining example of how to ask a question on the
lists the /right/ way! =:^)
Beyond that... something you are likely already aware of, but the first
thing that occurs to me is that 4.4.5 is somewhat dated. I've been
recommending 4.5.4 or 4.5.5 as very stable upgrades with a better overall
kde experience than 4.4 and earlier provided. In fact, my repeated
position is that (the later monthly updates of) 4.5 was the first kde4
version I felt comfortable recommending to pretty much everyone -- what
SHOULD have been 4.0. 4.4 meanwhile was close, I've compared it to
release candidate quality, but not yet quite there. So overall, you're
slighting your own experience of the best kde has to offer, by remaining
with 4.4. (4.6, OTOH, I'd NOT recommend yet, except for those on
distributions which have already gotten rid of hal, and then I'd
definitely recommend sticking with 4.6.0 or 4.6.1, as 4.6.2 and 4.6.3
were buggy for many. 4.6.4 is just out and may be better, but I've not
had a chance to build (as I'm on Gentoo) and test it yet, so 4.5.5 for
those not yet migrated off of hal and 4.6.0 for those already migrated,
remain my recommendations, probably for another week or so anyway until I
can build and get at least a few days on 4.6.4.)
That's in the context of kde4 in general. As you may know, kmail/kdepim,
however, need treated separately, because they only had micro updates
during 4.5 and early 4.6, remaining at the 4.4 minor version level, with
4.4.11.1 beias you may know,ng the latest in that series. The reason
behind this is that the planned upgrade to the akonadi backend was not
judged to be ready for general public usage yet, so in the meantime they
simply micro-updated in ordered to maintain compatibility with the rest
of the kde 4 platform as it moved to 4.5 and then 4.6. (In this the
kdepim folks seem to have learned from the far too early christening of
kde 4.0 and the general declaration of 4.2 and 4.3 as ready for the
masses when that clearly wasn't the case, costing kde dearly in lost
reputation, and the kdepim folks chose not to repeat the same mistake,
erring if anything on the side of caution.)
So until just this week, kdepim and with it kmail and kontact remained at
a bug-fixed 4.4 level. Just this week, however, the long awaited general
release of the akonadified kmail/kontact2 occurred. However again, I've
not done the upgrade myself yet, so will withhold evaluation thereof,
except to commend the kdepim folks for all their caution, with the
comment that I'm very optimistic, expecting a much smoother experience as
a result. =:^)
The reason that bit, particularly the last about the upgrade to kmail2
(to go with kde 4.6.4 and later), comes up, is to point out that the 4.4
series kmail you're running now is a stopgap. 4.4 had already migrated
the address book to akonadi, and the integration between it and the not
yet migrated kmail wasn't as good as it might have been. Further, active
development on that branch hasn't occurred for some time, as it was
considered to be almost wasted effort, since the new version was so close.
As such, while what you have should be quite stable, keep in mind its
status and that yet another major upgrade and database conversion is in
the cards for whenever you upgrade to later kde 4.6 or 4.7 or whatever.
Depending on your situation and on the Debian upgrade timetable which I
don't know, being on Gentoo, it may be that you wish to hold off on that
migration until you can do it to the new akonadified version, thereby
avoiding having to do yet another conversion presumably soonish
thereafter. I'm not saying DON'T do the migration now. I'm simply
pointing out some factors you will likely wish to keep in mind. You may
know about them already or not, and it may affect your current decision
or not, but it's good information to have in any case. And you mentioned
out of date and confusing information... this is a heads-up that it just
got MORE so. =:^(
To the question, then... assuming you're continuing the conversion with
kdepim 4.4.
I'm rather unclear on what you mean when you say you wish to keep the
accounts "completely separate", but with the implication and tone of the
question being that you intend to access them in the same kmail instance
in the same Linux user account. To me, that doesn't seem to be
"completely separate" at all. To me, "completely separate" would be
accessed from two "completely separate" Linux user accounts, two
different home dirs (/home/xxxx/ and /home/yyyy/ to use your sanitized
terminology), etc. To me, accessing them both from the same kmail
instance isn't what I'd call completely separate, but rather, simply two
different email accounts accessed from the same kmail, with the same
local storage, yet that seems to be what you're implying.
It's definitely possible to have two "completely separate" accounts, but
then I don't see the problem. You'd have two separate users, each with
their own login and each with their own separate local kmail config and
storage, so what's the problem? Thus, I can only assume you do NOT mean
the "completely separate" you so clearly stated, but instead, want a
combined local config, but maintaining the separate email addresses and
possibly separate inboxes, etc.
This too is quite possible, with the degree to which the mail from the
separate accounts is kept separate, locally, entirely up to you. In
fact, it's much the way I run here, with several separate public mail
accounts, most on one domain, one on a former provider's domain, and one
entirely local-machine account handling mail from local machine cronjobs
and the like. Incoming from the multiple addresses on the main domain is
all from the one server (corresponding to your incoming.verizon.net),
with the other domain's server polled for that address separately (and
the local machine mail appearing in a special maildir folder I have setup
for the purpose). Outgoing for both the main domain and the old one goes
thru the same main domain outgoing server, with only the from address set
to the old domain, for mail I wish to send with that address.
Incoming mail is sorted using the same common set of filters. One filter
for each address adds a header to the mail indicating which address it
came in on, just in case the mail itself doesn't list that. Rather than
a single inbox, however, or even one per mail address, I use filters to
sort all incoming mail by sender (family, friends, work, etc), subject,
etc. However, it's entirely possible to sort into inbox based on address
the mail was sent to, if desired.
The key to it all, however, at least from my perspective, is filters.
Get your filters properly setup for what you want to do, and you
shouldn't have problems. Screw that up and you'll never get the
separation you want. But how/what you filter on and what you do with
those filters (adding additional headers, sorting into separate folders,
forwarding, etc) is of course up to you.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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