Offlineimap

You can get offlineimap to work in a Shell account on your DreamHost account.

OfflineImap is very handy for syncing multiple email accounts with each other between servers (you can set up an email "mirror" between two IMAP servers, for instance). It also works very well as a tool on Linux laptops to sync a local mail store with the remote IMAP server, particularly over slow connections, or where your email client doesn't handle offline IMAP use well (or IMAP at all).

There is much helpful documentation available, including the manual and an annotated .conf file which will explain advanced options. The minimum .conf is enough to get you started.

To get it to work on your dreamhost shell account, place your .offlineimaprc file in the "root" directory of your user account (i.e. /users/yourname/). Follow the directions in the manual for single-account installation. Note that you will need to slightly edit the offlineimap.py file to match DreamHost's Python settings.

Using a editor, change the first line off offlineimap.py to read:

#!/usr/bin/env python2.4

(NB this may change over time as the available Python versions and OfflineImap requirements change)

Run offlineimap as specified in the manual for single-account installation.

It may take some tweaking of the .offlineimaprc file to get it working, but the manual and annotated .conf file will give you enough information to get it working.

Don't forget the ssl option for secure email transfer.