OT: Gmail and reading this list

[Claude Jones]

On Friday 16 December 2005 12:20 pm, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Claude Jones wrote:
> > I'm afraid you're over my head - I'll have to research all this. I've
> > never used mutt or postfix, so I don't know anything about them. Thanks
> > for the ideas - I'll do some homework.
>
> Sorry: they were supposed to be examples, based on what I'm running.
>
> You should be able to use any e-mail client, not just mutt.
>
> Postfix isn't really relevant at all: I use the traditional "local MTA"
> for various reasons. If your ISP has a reasonable smarthost (= "SMTP
> server"), you could just send your list e-mail out through that.
>
> The main point is that the way you send e-mails to the list (or
> elsewhere) need not have anything much to do with the way you receive
> them.
>

Well, this is the thread that fights for life. Maybe this will be useful to 
others, so I'll respond. This exercise began as a way to create a way to 
offload email traffic from my business email account when I needed to. The 
problem is simple: my business account provides antiquated, ridiculously 
small, mailbox capacities. I've gotten them to increase those from 10mb to 50 
as a result of recent problems, but, with a 50 mb mailbox, given the volume 
of traffic I receive from various lists, that can overwhelm my box in about 
2.75 days (I'm currently downloading over 18.5 mb of mail, the accumulation 
from about 35 hours). When I read of gmail's features that allow you to use 
your account to forward, and also the smtp/pop features, I thought this could 
be the way. By setting up an account, and using that to subscribe to say, 
Fedora-list, I could continue to receive my mail in my mailbox, but, for 
those times when I couldn't check the mail for a couple of days, I could 
always turn off the gmail forwarding, and let my list mail accumulate there. 
In the business world, lost email can mean lost income - this has happened to 
me, because for one reason or another, I couldn't check my mail, the box 
filled up, and the ISP started dropping my messages into the deep. Why do I 
want my mail to come to my local box, because that's the way I prefer to get 
my mail. I could give a long explanation going into the way I archive on 
multiple machines, etc., but, it's not necessary...

So, if that's all clearer, I'm still not sure how I could do what I want to 
do, using the technique you suggest. My bottom line criteria are: I'd like to 
get my list mail delivered to my various PC's via my ISP mail account (no web 
mail); I'd like to be able to selectively turn off the mail from time to time 
from high volume lists, without losing it; I'd like to receive my own posts 
back to me, when I send messages to mail-lists. Gmail meets the first two 
criteria just fine, it's the third that's the problem. 
-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA