tim's journal

Transitioning from POP3 to IMAP

After using POP3-based Pine for so many years, I've recently decided to use IMAP, mostly because Stanford gives an extra 100 MB in space which I'd like to free up to do stuff like my blog. So, I started using IMAP-configured Outlook Express to access my mail. Fine, but all my old mail and addresses were still stored in Pine folders on Leland. Now what? The first step is to force Pine to use IMAP instead of downloading mail. Stanford has a pretty good document here which explains how to do it.

1. First, disable automatic downloading using

   epic14:~> unsetenv LELAND_ENV

2. Now, edit .pinerc using the editor of your choice, changing these lines

   inbox-path=
   folder-collections=Mail/[]

   To these lines

   inbox-path={torque.pobox.stanford.edu}INBOX
   folder-collections={torque.pobox.stanford.edu}INBOX.[], Mail/[]

   (Of course, you changed torque to your own username right?)
3. Get a Kerberos 5 ticket using

   epic14:~> kinit -t
   Stanford University (Leland) (epic14.Stanford.EDU)
   Password for torque@stanford.edu:

4. Now, if you start up Pine, it will access your IMAP folders directly. The last step is to move the old Pine folders you want to IMAP... and I don't know how to do that!