Re: converting from pine to mutt
I ended up using a perl script called mb2md to convert from whichever mbox format I had (I don't know) to Maildir format. Seemed to work OK, but I don't have a fully functional mail system yet, so I haven't been able to test. On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 4:13 PM, j...@telefonica.net j...@telefonica.net wrote: After reading your link about mbox... So, our Mutt use mboxcl format with a Content-Length: in headers. I will change to maildir format, each mail its own file, after make backups of my mboxes. I think it should be posible inside Mutt to change from mbox to maildir. -- Jose Angel Navarro Cortes email: j...@telefonica.net web: http://janc.es/ Usuario Linux: #49178 El 10.09.13 10:09:19 Kyle Wheeler dijo: On Sunday, September 12 at 07:16 PM, quoth Tim Gray: On Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37 AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? Mutt can do it. Mutt *can* do it, but depending on the type of mbox folder, perhaps *shouldn't*. Mutt makes certain assumptions about your mbox folder's format that may not be correct, and can result in permanent (subtle) corruption of the messages (if mutt is wrong). The *best* way to convert from one format to another is to use a program designed for exactly the variant of mbox you have been using. See http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html for details on the various formats of mbox. ~Kyle -- Everybody has to die... but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. -- William Saroyan
Re: converting from pine to mutt
On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 01:10:13PM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: I ended up using a perl script called mb2md to convert from whichever mbox format I had (I don't know) to Maildir format. Seemed to work OK, but I don't have a fully functional mail system yet, so I haven't been able to test. I've set up a server with an imap-maildir-structure, then copied all my locally stored mbox-mails into that maildirs with mutt. After that configured offlineimap on my local machine, which mirrored the folder-structure of my server back to new local maildirs. Worked like a charm. Regards, sigi
Re: converting from pine to mutt
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On Sunday, September 12 at 07:16 PM, quoth Tim Gray: On Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37 AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? Mutt can do it. Mutt *can* do it, but depending on the type of mbox folder, perhaps *shouldn't*. Mutt makes certain assumptions about your mbox folder's format that may not be correct, and can result in permanent (subtle) corruption of the messages (if mutt is wrong). The *best* way to convert from one format to another is to use a program designed for exactly the variant of mbox you have been using. See http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html for details on the various formats of mbox. ~Kyle - -- Everybody has to die... but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. -- William Saroyan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJMjj6fAAoJECuveozR/AWe7NIP/Ah/8s6FREDWpItI+pz3ZJtt /mT/PibVMhFd93R96W44Pj5XaDckUYCWCI8/wfFoBb3bRzb6duAvOz1fzr7k0Smp 0KQ4MNQt8CzVD+6g4kYqMLPsqpFYaFqgXeQZrQQ5fSZ8zGQiK4ud+bgjCcp3AZeb IiuTloRy6LaUFiP5eG2RXlsYk0lQ4mdTrbrOiLZ8maOHtl2lvA4iAHqFtw4HJd23 rK06zhs1H5AnPdeRWQx9yoGae1UFPq1VubIiOJbwvqlJaYU4A3PQ9+nj082xKm6t fjxTsSz6B/EtSFChwq6HR2gWAxKNEHqnKLs6V30/s3gtyaAya2nKD/mo6rcB3UhY BRMUCqdEwhyZQn5asCTBLPFvKPffGe4IQWKr5Qvct7ZgKnBO405vjHcNmWdyBu6a +jTBzLmterMPghPTP8UdVntxprVT01A9HE9WAOd+Az2YVynzbEc8HmLQJBCcqWiW ITsUgWRy82tFZ4Sp6rPqpGxH37K2scjxyxPgHbCdUahDCqArSWZ4Jxi/W5Y+KjAp UnTXu4fsQbaUT5CYi/tuQU/Rte23QSH3udAVSWLCO8v6OCQ+OmkZRLcdRIgUleyl 6vPXLpF5yMYSYQkf00qqN04ko3nKyBFeMYxRw53hvBGmnn8QlpQFf6sFQF1OXnyM yCGZkaTjqemEFjnfqWV6 =6LDt -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: converting from pine to mutt
After reading your link about mbox... So, our Mutt use mboxcl format with a Content-Length: in headers. I will change to maildir format, each mail its own file, after make backups of my mboxes. I think it should be posible inside Mutt to change from mbox to maildir. -- Jose Angel Navarro Cortes email: j...@telefonica.net web: http://janc.es/ Usuario Linux: #49178 El 10.09.13 10:09:19 Kyle Wheeler dijo: On Sunday, September 12 at 07:16 PM, quoth Tim Gray: On Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37 AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? Mutt can do it. Mutt *can* do it, but depending on the type of mbox folder, perhaps *shouldn't*. Mutt makes certain assumptions about your mbox folder's format that may not be correct, and can result in permanent (subtle) corruption of the messages (if mutt is wrong). The *best* way to convert from one format to another is to use a program designed for exactly the variant of mbox you have been using. See http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html for details on the various formats of mbox. ~Kyle -- Everybody has to die... but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. -- William Saroyan
converting from pine to mutt
Hi all, [Just received an error about not sending in plain text, so trying again. Apologies if this is a repeated message.] After 16 years of using pine, I've decided to make the switch to mutt. I have tens of thousands of messages stored across hundreds of mbox files on my main account. I'm using mutt's built-in IMAP support to retrieve mail through a ssh tunnel. Although I have many questions, the two most pressing at the moment are: 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? 2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its own? Again, is there a best practice to follow? Thanks and I look forward to joining the mutt community! TM
Re: converting from pine to mutt
Hi Thaddeus, On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37:43AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: After 16 years of using pine, I've decided to make the switch to mutt. Welcome! 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? While Mutt can do this conversion, if you have a large number of mailboxes to convert, you'd be well advised to look into one of the various scripts that can do this function (use your favorite search engine and look for convert mbox to maildir). FWIW, mbox makes a fine archive folder format. If some of these mailboxes are not in active use, it may not make sense to convert them all to maildir. Maildir is much better for active mailboxes due to less concern about locking, and you can use the header_cache support to speed up opening the mailbox. If you want to do the conversion inside Mutt, you just need to make sure you default mailbox format for new folders is set: set mbox_type=maildir You can either put this in your ~/.muttrc, or via the command line: mutt -e 'set mbox_type=maildir' -f ... Next step is to tag all the messages and copy them to a non-existant folder: press control-T type ~A followed by RETURN press ; followed by C enter the name of the destination folder and press RETURN Mutt will create the new mailbox use the value of $mbox_type to determine which format to use. 2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its own? Again, is there a best practice to follow? I believe offlineimap is what most people tend to use for offline IMAP browsing. For message sending, you have your choice of either postponing messages inside of Mutt, and then recalling them later when you have Internet connectivity, or you can run a full-fledged MTA on your local machine that will send the messages. me
Re: converting from pine to mutt
On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 10:06:22AM -0700, Michael Elkins wrote: 2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its own? Again, is there a best practice to follow? I believe offlineimap is what most people tend to use for offline IMAP browsing. For message sending, you have your choice of either postponing messages inside of Mutt, and then recalling them later when you have Internet connectivity, or you can run a full-fledged MTA on your local machine that will send the messages. You don't need a full-fledged MTA for this (though that's certainly an option). You can also use a cut-down smtp client such as msmtp or esmtp. The msmtp source tarball includes the msmtpq shell script (in the scripts/ directory), which implements an offline message queue which caches messages that can't be sent because you're offline. The comments at the top of the msmtpq script explain how to configure mutt to use it. The esmtp source also includes a very similar script, but according to its author esmtp is no longer being maintained. Also, I find msmtp to be slightly more configurable (which comes in useful if you ever need to do unusual things like tunnelling your smtp connection over ssh). I've very recently switched over myself from esmtp to msmtp. You can either flush the queue when you're back online from the command line (try msmtpq -h for more information). Or, better still, set up a cron job that periodically tries to flush the queue, so that the mail will be sent as soon as you're back online. HTH, Toby -- Dr T. S. Cubitt Quantum Information Theory group Department of Mathematics University of Bristol United Kingdom email: ts...@cantab.net web: www.dr-qubit.org
Re: converting from pine to mutt
On Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37 AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote: 1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow? Mutt can do it. I think I converted a couple boxes by setting mutt's preferred format to Maildir, then open the mbox's in mutt, and copy the messages to a new location. Alternately, if you are comfortable with something like procmail, you could pipe your mbox files through it into maildirs. That was what I did for the bulk of my email if I recall. 2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its own? Again, is there a best practice to follow? I've been using offlineimap for the last year or so. Recently I toyed returning to pure IMAP by letting mutt connect to the server directly, but am back to offlineimap. I have some questions about mutt's IMAP capabilities that maybe someday I'll get around to asking. However, offlineimap lets you do what you need to do. Local copy for backup purposes and offline reading. Syncing works perfectly for me. I don't sync all of my emails - quite a bit is not stored on the IMAP servers. Personally, I use getmail instead of fetchmail for some of my other boxes. It was very easy to set up. For SMTP, you can use mutt's internal capabilities, or something like msmtp or putmail. I used msmtp for a long time but liked putmail a bit better.
