gmail -> offlineimap -> (local imap) -> alpine (under Ubuntu)

[Chris Barrington-Leigh]

Hi Andreas,

>Try using it, if you have questions for the setup, I can assist you 
>further, but it should be more or less obvious from the standard 
>configuration files.

It's hard to describe how frustrated I am. I have a perfectly working 
latest Ubuntu system, think I know how to google, and have spent thousands 
of dollars of my time going in circles trying to set this up, based on so 
many people's partial instructions or statements that it should be easy.

Nothing like this is "obvious" without an explicit list of actions. I 
cannot do it, and I don't have any explicit questions, because I don't 
know where to start.  From what I read, there are many things that might 
need changing in multiple config files, and everything I've tried doesn't 
work.

At the moment, dovecot -n says:

# 2.0.13: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64 Ubuntu 11.10
mail_location = 
maildir:~/Maildir/gmailCpbl:LAYOUT=fs:INBOX=~/Maildir/gmailCpbl/INBOX
passdb {
   driver = pam
}
protocols = " imap"
ssl = no
userdb {
   driver = passwd
}



and while dovecot seems to be running, alpine fails to get a 
response from localhost,993.   Also, "dovecot --exec-mail imap" fails, 
claiming the option doesn't exist.

I know this isn't a dovecot list, but you sent instructions to "try using 
it" without providing any link of instructions or documentation, and 
for anyone else taking that advice, I'm just letting you know that that 
has led me in expensive circles.

(As for mutt, I still can't get very basic things to work in it, like 
filing messages into folders, or having access to an addressbook in 
composition mode in emacs.)

Thanks,
c