1999-05-09-19:09:11 Attila Csosz:
> I'd like to change from Maildir to mbox. What should I do?
If you want to make that change, well, OK. I'm very glad to have changed in
the other direction.
> 1. Which type of mbox_type should I set?
Just comment out the mbox_type line; the default is mbox. This is only used
when mutt is creating new folders, for already-existing folders mutt will
recognize the folder type automatically and won't change it.
> 2. set folder=~/Maildir # where i keep my mailboxes
> ^^^^^^^^ what to be in this case?
"folder" is just the name of the directory where your mail folders will be
kept; the default is ~Mail/, and I continue to use that default with Maildirs.
So you can rename it to something else, or not, as you like.
> 3. set sendmail="/var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject" # how to deliver mail
> ^^^^ using exim: what to be this in this case?
No need for this to change at all; this is how mutt will _send_ messages, and
folder formats don't have anything to do with that.
> I use fetchmail, procmail.
So you'll want to change your procmail setup so it delivers into an mbox, and
change your MAIL environment variable to the name of that mbox.
And a helpful tip for converting Maildir folders for mbox: use the formail
utility that accompanies procmail. If you don't care about the order of the
messages, you can use
find Maildir -type f -print | xargs -l formail >mbox
Or, if you don't have an xargs, or yours doesn't support "-l", you can do the
same with
find Maildir -type f -print | while read f;do formail <$f; done >mbox
If you do care about the order of the messages, you can use mutt to order
them, then go ":set pipe_split", then tag the messages and pipe to
"formail>>mbox".
BTW, the reason for the formail is to ensure that every message starts with a
suitable "From " line; Maildir folder messages don't have to, and depending on
how the Maildir was populated they might not have 'em. formail is always safe
to use this way, since it won't wreck a "From " line if there already is one
(I don't think:-).
-Bennett
