imap configuration

My first objective was to make the folders in my office machine
available, so that I could check them when traveling (like I am
doing now). The best solution is given by imap software. The first
step was finding a suitable imap server for cygwin. I found out
that the University of Washington imap server is the best out
there, and simple to configure (in fact, it provides zero-configuration).
I found the cygwin package under uw-imapd (and related packages).

After installation of this package, the only thing one needs to
do is made inetd work properly. The main problem that occured to
me when running ined was that mount points must be system-wide defined
(the default is to have user defined mount points, which seems stupid
to me). One can define system-wide mount points using mount -s.
The other thing to check is the PATH variable, that must have
c:\cygwin\bin. Then, one must edit the /etc/inetd.conf to add
support for imap (see the readme for the uw-imapd package, in
/usr/share/doc/Cygwin).

This should be all! imap is wonderful, and will export your inbox
(default to /var/mail/username) and your folders in the home directory.
The client side for me uses pine. This is the clear choice, since
the pine guys are the same that wrote imapd. So, I have no doubt
that this is the best software for reading email from imap. To
read from a folder in your home directory, one just needs to add
the following folder to the folder collection:
{servername.com}foldername

Easy as pie. Now I can access the files in my machine, and save
emails to the folders that I defined there.