Cox cable and IMAP?

My parents are on Cox's Northern Virginia cable service. I looked through their online support and was unable to find information on setting up IMAP servers in OE6. Do any of you have any experience with this?

I should also ask about IMAP. I gather that it is basically a way to download email while leaving a copy on the server. This is what I'm wanting since I set up a second computer in my parent's home for my mom to check and send email on. They don't want to get a second email address. Am I correct in trying to set up their computers to use IMAP instead?

You mean you want to set up OE6 to access mail via an IMAP server? It should be pretty straightforward. Just set up an email account and select IMAP as the server type.

IMAP is a mail retrieval protocol with the intention of leaving the mail on the server. In fact, there's no need to ``download'' the mail at all. Most, if not all, operations can be performed directly on the server from searching to moving messages between folders, etc. Most IMAP clients these days will cache downloaded messages, but there's no requirement that they do so; they can access the server every time. I believe OE will cache pretty heavily, though. ISTR it caching too heavily in prior versions and making IMAP not work quite right.

If you want to read the same mailboxes from multiple computers, it's the standard to go with, until something better comes along.

> unable to find information on setting up IMAP

Bear in mind that if there isn't any info, then they probably don't support IMAP. Since all mail is stored on the server, the ISP would have to provide a lot of storage space, which they're unlikely to do as part of a residential package.

Cox doesn't support IMAP (at least in my area). Its all POP3.

Thanks guys. That's what I was worried about.

Do you have any other solution? Currently I have my mom set up using the Cox webmail account, but that's inconvenient and she can't check the mail if my dad's already downloaded it into OE. Is there any other way of sharing a single email account among two computers? They're on a simple wireless network, with my dad wired to the WAP and my mom with a Linksys WUSB11. He's running XP, she's running 98 (SE I think).

Is there any other way of sharing a single email account among two computers?

Yeah, don't most POP3 clients give you the option for "leave mail on server"?

And why don't you just get two email accounts, one for your mom and one for your dad? Most internet service providers include more than one email account as part of the subscription fee. Or, you can do like my wife does, and your mom can just sign up for a Yahoo mail account.

don't most POP3 clients give you the option for "leave mail on server"?

You're right! I hadn't seen that option before. OE6 has a few options for that. Thanks!

My mom doesn't want a second account because she never likes changing addresses. Because of some complications with Cox's service, they had to change their address a few times, and she wants to avoid that. It'll be easier to do the "leave mail on the server" thing. Thanks again.

If you do this, it can be a pain with COX. Keep in mind, if you leave mail on the server, it will build up there, causing your limited mailbox space to fill up.

Perhaps you could ask them to set up an alias for you. My GF was irritated by not always getting her email at home, so I set her up 2 addresses. When mail comes to danna@blahblah.com it is forked to danna & danna1. She checks danna at work, and danna1 at home. Both computers get everything. And as long as the reply to address is the same (or the smtp username the same) they both appear to come from exactly the same place. Which they in fact do. This can be done easiest by editing the /etc/aliases file (cox would have to handle that). You COULD add a simple .forward file, but that requires 3 addresses. One to split the mail, the other two to actually check, elsewise it keeps forking everytime the main address sends itself a copy of the mail. Trust me, this is a BAD thing.

I would like to set up a similar thing as you did for your GF, but I don't really know how to do this. Your post is really confusing me, could you elaborate a bit ?

The reason I want to do this is because I have a home PC and a laptop, and I would like to receive my mail on both of them.

First I thought to enable the "leave the mail on the server" option, with the added switch to delete that mail after 24hrs to prevent the flooding of my mailbox.
But your option seems better to me since my provider does allow me to use up to 3 email adresses. Could you please explain this a little bit better to me?

Thanks!

OK... all you do is create 2 dummy accounts in addition to your existing account. We'll call them email (real account) email1 and email2. All you do is log into a shell on cox and a a file called .forward. Inside this text file, you write:

email1@cox.net
email2@cox.net

That's it. anything that gets sent to email will automatically get rerouted to the 2 dummy accounts. Now you have 2 accounts that get EVERYTHING. The reall account will get no mail because it is being forwarded. With me so far? Good. Now you just set each computer to check a different account. Have them remove mail from server. The only weirdness is that you set the reply-to address in your email program to be the real address, as opposed to the dummy ones. This way, no matter what you send, when people reply, it will go to the real address and be split, as opposed to going directly to your dummy account (bypassing the split).

Make sense? The only thing you really need is access to a login shell on cox's server. If you still need help send me a PM with your phone number and I'll call you.

Wait, nevermind. I can't call Belgium for free.... Sheesh, the net makes the world so small.

Hey, thanks a lot for the info Lectric.

Yes, it does make sense to me. The only thing that had me puzzled was why I would need 3 email accounts instead of two, but I didn't think that once the mail would get forwarded it would be erased from the original account.

I'll look into in getting this done with my provider. Shouldn't be too hard a problem though.

Thanks for the offer of the telephone support, but as you said yourself, this would turn out to be very expensive for you.
The offer is appreciated though.

Maybe MSN would work? I don't use it that often, but I installed it once when pgrzelak asked me to (back then it was for some different kind of troubleshooting) and it's still on my system.

Anyway, I'll look into tackeling this problem myself first. I'll let you know how it went.

Thanks!

The only thing that had me puzzled was why I would need 3 email accounts instead of two, but I didn't think that once the mail would get forwarded it would be erased from the original account.

If the mail server is [setup] sane (can't speak for Cox tho'), it should work nicely to have both the original address and one extra in the .forward file thus only needing one extra account. The server will remember that the message was forwarded and not apply the .forward file the second time. Works just fine at my university account...

/Michael

That is true IF it is configured correctly. I once had a server totally freak out when I forwarded it to itself. Aliases are never a problem though.