The New Hotness

Oddly, Kmail seems to not have a configuration option for its main email directory, using ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail if it has its way.

If you already have a ~/Mail directory, it’ll use that instead.

I stash my mail on the file server in the basement and NFS-mount the directory locally, so I set up a symlink:

ln -s /path/to/nfs/mount/Mail ~/Mail

That works fine, somewhat to my surprise, if you do it before starting Kmail for the first time.

Other files that must tag along to preserve the Kmail setup:

• ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc — main config file with accounts & filters
• ~/.kde/share/config/emaildefaults — my name & address
• ~/.kde/share/config/emailidentities — account info
• ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf — contact list

The std.vcf thing has your entire contact list. Which, I’m sure, doesn’t integrate well into whatever Xubuntu uses for a contact list, but that’s a second-order problem.

Admittedly, this violates my meta-rule to not migrate the configurations, but the prospect of regenerating all those email filter rules and re-typing all the contacts is, um, daunting, even if most of them are cruft. I could hand-edit the new kmailrc file and insert the old filters, but …

Memo to Self: do this before starting Kmail the first time!