Good way to do procmail on server, read mail from client?

[Ansel Sermersheim <ansel@babylon.dyndns.org>]

Hi all, new Debian user here.  Started with Slackware four years ago,
put up with redhat for a while, but now I've found a distribution to
call home.

Anyway, I have a question about how folks do their email.  I recently
bought a new box to put Debian on, but I'm still tied to my old system 
'till I can figure out a good way to get email on it.  I'd also like
to wipe the old systems and get them on Debian as well.

The old setup:
I have a big ~/.procmailrc, which sorts mail into 15 or so different
files in '~/incoming/'.  My home directory here is nfs-mounted onto my 
desktop box, and I have Gnus set up to pull from '~/incoming/'. (This
setup evolved for historical reasons - my server is rather historical, 
and XEmacs on a 486/12 with 16MB is Not Fun.)  This is a really ugly
hack, and I'd like to get rid of it.

The new setup:
I have come up with a couple of options.  The only givens are that 
1) I read mail with Gnus, and
2) I filter mail with procmail.

1) is invariant (I cannot re-train my fingers.) 2) is malleable.


Possibilities include:
1) NFS mount ~/incoming off the new server, keep procmail as-is.
   Pros: little change from present status.
   Cons: Ugly. NFS sucks.

2) Set Gnus to pull from 'ftp:server:~/incoming', keep procmail as-is.
   Pros: same as above.
   Cons: More error-prone, probably locking issues.

3) Have my mail account on server forward to account on desktop, run
   .procmailrc locally.
   Pros: Better performance.
   Cons: my desktop isn't up 24/7, with this I have to make sure to
   bring it up every day or so or I start losing mail.

What kind of solution do you folks like to use?  Maybe fetchmail can
do this? How, though? (I use sendmail's local-part feature to split
out lists - how well will this play with exim/fetchmail?  Isn't the
envelope To: lost when it gets delivered?)

Many thanks,
-Ansel
-- 
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