Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Monday 09 Jun 2003 2:12 am, Mark wrote: On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 01:52, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 3:52 pm, Mark wrote: I will be interested to see how you go if you give it a go, particularly that if you like to try different E-mail packages. Some other niceties with this system that uses imapd, is that one ends up with the same mail folders in what every E-mail client that they try and use, with the old, and new mail still there, if one likes to move the mail out of ones inbox and into other mail folder the actual mail folders are actually stored in mbox format in ones home directory, while the inbox, is in the /var/spool/mail directory. I seem to have rather a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, so it may be a week or two before I try this. However, I have printed out both your help and Adolfo's, and will certainly get back to you when I get that far. It certainly sounds an attractive proposition. I like choice and flexibility, and it seems that this is the way to get it. Thanks Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited... and xml?
is anybody can help me? ...and about an xml converter mbox2xml maildir2xml anyproprietary2xml (mailxml2mbox mailxml2maildir mailxml2sql...) 1 I think it very useful: convert and archive mail with xml for cataloging reasons, from kmail 2 less important: make kmail (and others) able to read this xml this could be wery interesting for sorting cataloging and fist: archiving and have best access to archives I can't figure out how to archive my emails and access it like with a DB. Just make a small search seems to be impossible with kmail to me. I used outlook and even if it's hard to manage archives, i could do recursive search for mail of 2 years old... further true db management could be great! This feature could exists yet. Just tell me. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited... and xml?
Not likely -- XML would not be a good fit. XML is a great solution for getting structured data out of one system into another system, because it allows you to define the meta data attributes right there with the raw data. XML is a lousy solution for storing unstructured data that you don't intend to send to a foreign system. Email has some loose structure in the header, but the part you probably care about, body and attachments, has practically no structure at all and can only be indexed/searched with brute force. Since it'll be brute forced any way, why add the bulk of XML? Using a SQL database might make a little more sense, until you start to think about how to build the tables and realize that this is putting raw data into a system designed to hold meta data. Now building a SQL database that indexes the meta data and spits out pointers to the raw data would make more sense, if you can think of a way to extract useful meta data from body and attachments without just throwing the whole damned mess into the database. There are two solutions that make sense to me: 1) leave everything in plain text mbox or maildir on a hard disk. When you want to find something, use Unix tools. For instance, #!/bin/sh # This is a wrapper to the grepmail Perl script which searches mail. # The wrapper will take regexp from the commandline, recurse through # a mail folder, then put the results into a new box: results.$TERM. # If no parameters, show proper usage and fail. if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then echo Usage: grepmymail \singleterm\ echo Usage: grepmymail \(1term|2terms|3terms)\ exit 2 fi # Options: -R is recursive, -m adds a header line showing the mailbox # the message was found in, -M skips MIME attachments, and -b searches # bodies, not headers. for TERM in $1; do grepmail -RmMb $TERM $HOME/mail /tmp/results.$TERM mv /tmp/results.$TERM $HOME/mail/ done 2) Use Evolution and create vfolders when you want to look for something. Note that these are not mutually exclusive as Evolution keeps everything in plain text formats any way. Jack On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 16:28, Stephlub wrote: is anybody can help me? ...and about an xml converter mbox2xml maildir2xml anyproprietary2xml (mailxml2mbox mailxml2maildir mailxml2sql...) 1 I think it very useful: convert and archive mail with xml for cataloging reasons, from kmail 2 less important: make kmail (and others) able to read this xml this could be wery interesting for sorting cataloging and fist: archiving and have best access to archives I can't figure out how to archive my emails and access it like with a DB. Just make a small search seems to be impossible with kmail to me. I used outlook and even if it's hard to manage archives, i could do recursive search for mail of 2 years old... further true db management could be great! This feature could exists yet. Just tell me. __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... http://www.monkeynoodle.org/resume.html Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited... and xml?
Thank you for your answer and explainations. It think the problem harder than it looked like to me. I told XML, cause it is universal, but anything easy to manipulate and transform could be fine. My problem is how to manage hundred and hundred email I need to archive and access quickly, and how to convert old outlook archives to the best format I can do (fast and compact). Mbox or Mail and tar/gzip could be what I'm looking for ;-) The Kmail converter crashes when I want to convert these old archives. I 'll try grepmail (time for me to learn a bit of perl). Not likely -- XML would not be a good fit. XML is a great solution for getting structured data out of one system into another system, because it allows you to define the meta data attributes right there with the raw data. XML is a lousy solution for storing unstructured data that you don't intend to send to a foreign system. Email has some loose structure in the header, but the part you probably care about, body and attachments, has practically no structure at all and can only be indexed/searched with brute force. Since it'll be brute forced any way, why add the bulk of XML? Using a SQL database might make a little more sense, until you start to think about how to build the tables and realize that this is putting raw data into a system designed to hold meta data. Now building a SQL database that indexes the meta data and spits out pointers to the raw data would make more sense, if you can think of a way to extract useful meta data from body and attachments without just throwing the whole damned mess into the database. There are two solutions that make sense to me: 1) leave everything in plain text mbox or maildir on a hard disk. When you want to find something, use Unix tools. For instance, #!/bin/sh # This is a wrapper to the grepmail Perl script which searches mail. # The wrapper will take regexp from the commandline, recurse through # a mail folder, then put the results into a new box: results.$TERM. # If no parameters, show proper usage and fail. if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then echo Usage: grepmymail \singleterm\ echo Usage: grepmymail \(1term|2terms|3terms)\ exit 2 fi # Options: -R is recursive, -m adds a header line showing the mailbox # the message was found in, -M skips MIME attachments, and -b searches # bodies, not headers. for TERM in $1; do grepmail -RmMb $TERM $HOME/mail /tmp/results.$TERM mv /tmp/results.$TERM $HOME/mail/ done 2) Use Evolution and create vfolders when you want to look for something. Note that these are not mutually exclusive as Evolution keeps everything in plain text formats any way. Jack On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 16:28, Stephlub wrote: is anybody can help me? ...and about an xml converter mbox2xml maildir2xml anyproprietary2xml (mailxml2mbox mailxml2maildir mailxml2sql...) 1 I think it very useful: convert and archive mail with xml for cataloging reasons, from kmail 2 less important: make kmail (and others) able to read this xml this could be wery interesting for sorting cataloging and fist: archiving and have best access to archives I can't figure out how to archive my emails and access it like with a DB. Just make a small search seems to be impossible with kmail to me. I used outlook and even if it's hard to manage archives, i could do recursive search for mail of 2 years old... further true db management could be great! This feature could exists yet. Just tell me. __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... http://www.monkeynoodle.org/resume.html Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
Hi All, Haven't been watching this thread too closely, actually I have deleted most of it.. O.K. It looks like someone swapping between different E-mailers.. I have a really easy suggestion here, and that is to set yourself up a local Imap server, and just get your mailer to connect to the localhost Imap server, then you can switch E-mailers at any time without worrying about how they store their mail. Just grab any Imap compatible E-mail client either, Evo, Kmail Mozilla etc and connect to the localhost Imap server.. switch at any time, and the mail will appear in them all.. Cheers Mark On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 00:42, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: On Sat, 2003-06-07 at 05:03, Anne Wilson wrote: Thanks for that explanation, Lyvim. It's given me a lot to think about. The thing that put me off maildir was that when I tried to import from KMail into Evo it wouldn't read the mail. I tried both reading methods in the import, but it wouldn't read a single file. This made me feel that it was almost as bad as the proprietary formats found elsewhere. Have you any thoughts on that? Anne I have done it, but there are several qualifications for doing this. First, if you are transporting from Kmail to Evo like you are, Kmail should be made to put ALL subfolders back into the inbox; this way you can snag or convert everything at once since categorized or filtered email will not be seen(because it is in other folders). Evo filters can be applied later to the whole imported load. Second, you tell Kmail to convert to Maildir format. This will cause Kmail to create the new, cur, and tmp dirs and then move each message seperately to an appropriate filename within the ~/Mail/inbox/cur directory. Third, you copy the files in the newly converted Kmail inbox (Which for some wierd reason seems to be ~/Mail instead of ~/Maildir for maildir mail) over to the Evo Maildir/new dir. With Evo already in Maildir format, Evo should have a configuration for receiving mail that says /home/you/Maildir for it's folder configuration. With Evo in that mode, when you look at the folder tree (within Evo), you will see a tree that starts with your email name, and a dot (.) tree underneath it. That dot is actually the ~/Maildir/cur directory. Now all you do at this point is to go to the Kmail main inbox dir ( ~/Mail/inbox/cur ) and then copy everything over to the Evo Maildir directory for incoming mail. Which is ~/Maildir/new. So cp -v ~/Mail/inbox/cur/* ~/Maildir/new After that, go back to Evo and click on another folder in the tree somewhere, and Evo will see the ~/Maildir/new directory and then create an index of sorts for all the new mail, then it will be moved over to the ~/Maildir/cur directory, where you can then apply the Evo filters you have set up. How's that? ;) HTH.. --LX P.S. One more thing. Any mail that's filed under your Evo dot directory will be in Maildir format. Any mail that's filed in the Evo main tree above that will be in mbox format, *no matter what method* you've chosen under the Mail Accounts settings. So in order to keep all your mail in Maildir format, your custom categorization folders need to be created *under the dot directory* in the Evo tree. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 1:45 pm, Mark wrote: Hi All, Haven't been watching this thread too closely, actually I have deleted most of it.. O.K. It looks like someone swapping between different E-mailers.. I have a really easy suggestion here, and that is to set yourself up a local Imap server, and just get your mailer to connect to the localhost Imap server, then you can switch E-mailers at any time without worrying about how they store their mail. Just grab any Imap compatible E-mail client either, Evo, Kmail Mozilla etc and connect to the localhost Imap server.. switch at any time, and the mail will appear in them all.. Cheers Mark Mark, it may be easy, but it's a whole new ball game for me. I'm interested, though. So, can you give me a quick outline of a) what I'd need to install b) what I'd need to read up c) which order to do things Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] Mail formats revisited... and xml?
...and about an xml converter mbox2xml maildir2xml anyproprietary2xml (mailxml2mbox mailxml2maildir mailxml2sql...) 1 I think it very useful: convert and archive mail with xml for cataloging reasons, from kmail 2 less important: make kmail (and others) able to read this xml this could be wery interesting for sorting cataloging and fist: archiving and have best access to archives I can't figure out how to archive my emails and access it like with a DB. Just make a small search seems to be impossible with kmail to me. I used outlook and even if it's hard to manage archives, i could do recursive search for mail of 2 years old... further true db management could be great! This feature could exists yet. Just tell me. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 09:07, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 1:45 pm, Mark wrote: Mark, it may be easy, but it's a whole new ball game for me. I'm interested, though. So, can you give me a quick outline of a) what I'd need to install b) what I'd need to read up c) which order to do things Anne Hi Anne: The way I did it was with: IMAP: cyrus (lot of people also use courier) Fetchmail: to pick your mail from your mail server (i have read that it can also be used for filtering). Postfix: to send your mail (I read that it was easier to setup and safer than sendmail) Procmail: for filtering. I created a test mail account and until I didn't feel every thing was working fine I didn't migrate from my original setup. I installed every thing from Mandrake CD's. The HOWTO on cyrus was very helpful. Googling for postfix procmail cyrus will give you lot of information. In www.procmail.org you will find some very interesting and useful links. Having your mails available anywhere is perhaps the most valuable aspect of IMAP. It is worth the effort. -- __ / \\ @ __ __@ Adolfo Bello / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / // // /\ / \\ // \ // Bello Ingenieria S.A, ICQ: 65910258 / \\ // / \\ / // // / //mobile: +58 416 609-6213 /___// // / _/ \__\\ //__/ // fax : +58 212 952-6797 www.bisapi.com //pager : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 2:47 pm, Adolfo Bello wrote: On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 09:07, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 1:45 pm, Mark wrote: Mark, it may be easy, but it's a whole new ball game for me. I'm interested, though. So, can you give me a quick outline of a) what I'd need to install b) what I'd need to read up c) which order to do things Anne Hi Anne: The way I did it was with: IMAP: cyrus (lot of people also use courier) Fetchmail: to pick your mail from your mail server (i have read that it can also be used for filtering). Postfix: to send your mail (I read that it was easier to setup and safer than sendmail) Procmail: for filtering. I created a test mail account and until I didn't feel every thing was working fine I didn't migrate from my original setup. I installed every thing from Mandrake CD's. The HOWTO on cyrus was very helpful. Googling for postfix procmail cyrus will give you lot of information. In www.procmail.org you will find some very interesting and useful links. Having your mails available anywhere is perhaps the most valuable aspect of IMAP. It is worth the effort. Thanks, Adolfo. There just aren't enough hours in a day, are there g This one definitely sounds worth doing, though, so I may be back with questions. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
Hi Anne, On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 23:07, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 1:45 pm, Mark wrote: Hi All, Haven't been watching this thread too closely, actually I have deleted most of it.. O.K. It looks like someone swapping between different E-mailers.. I have a really easy suggestion here, and that is to set yourself up a local Imap server, and just get your mailer to connect to the localhost Imap server, then you can switch E-mailers at any time without worrying about how they store their mail. Just grab any Imap compatible E-mail client either, Evo, Kmail Mozilla etc and connect to the localhost Imap server.. switch at any time, and the mail will appear in them all.. Cheers Mark Mark, it may be easy, but it's a whole new ball game for me. I'm interested, though. So, can you give me a quick outline of O.K. it's probably not that easy but in your case it may be worth the effort. First up, check to see if your ISP has a Imap server, that would be the easiest way, just to get a feel about what a Imap server is all about etc... Usually not too many ISPs run them but you could be lucky. a) what I'd need to install Usually Mandrake has Postfix installed by default.. If you discover your ISP does not run a Imap server, install a package called drakwizard if it's not already installed that is.. using rpmdrake or the command urpmi drakwizard Once that is installed, run the Mandrake Control Center within the Mandrake Control Center you will see a New Sub menu called Server Configuration select The Postfix Wizard and configure your Mail server. Once this has been done, you will still need to copy your /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf files to /var/spool/postfix/etc over writing the one there. Run the command service postfix restart Once that has restarted check your log files in /var/log/mail dir.. your mail server should be up and running. Now you will need to install fetchmail urpmi fetchmail and urpmi fetchmail-daemon should do the trick I am not going to through the setup with fetchmail but the doc at http://www.linuxnetmag.com/en/issue2/m2fetchmail1.html may help you setup fetchmail. (May be someone could drop a easier URL for this) Then install the Imap server urpmi imap and then chkconfig imap on, then service xinetd restart If all has gone well, it's a matter of configuring your E-mail client to pick it's E-mail up from the Imap server at localhost b) what I'd need to read up There is a number of Websites that talk about Fetchmail. The fetchmail homepage is at http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/ Study up on security a little as if you follow this setup, you will be running some extra servers. May be setup the personal firewall from Mandrake.. or maybe something like Firestarter http://firestarter.sourceforge.net/ c) which order to do things Probably the order laid out in this E-mail,, Setting up like this give you quite a number of advantages, such as offline mail etc.. Being able to swap E-mail clients anytime you like,. I hope this is a help.. Cheers Mark Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 3:52 pm, Mark wrote: Hi Anne, Setting up like this give you quite a number of advantages, such as offline mail etc.. Being able to swap E-mail clients anytime you like,. Thanks, Mark. Between what you have told me and what Adolfo said it sounds quite manageable. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 01:52, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 08 Jun 2003 3:52 pm, Mark wrote: Hi Anne, Setting up like this give you quite a number of advantages, such as offline mail etc.. Being able to swap E-mail clients anytime you like,. Thanks, Mark. Between what you have told me and what Adolfo said it sounds quite manageable. Anne I will be interested to see how you go if you give it a go, particularly that if you like to try different E-mail packages. Some other niceties with this system that uses imapd, is that one ends up with the same mail folders in what every E-mail client that they try and use, with the old, and new mail still there, if one likes to move the mail out of ones inbox and into other mail folder the actual mail folders are actually stored in mbox format in ones home directory, while the inbox, is in the /var/spool/mail directory. Cheers Mark Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Saturday 07 Jun 2003 2:15 am, Michael Noble wrote: Anne, I personally prefer mbox format for the same reason that you mentioned. If needed, I can easily use mutt,pine or even mail to read mail. You do not always have the option of reading mail with a graphical inter- face. It is true that maildir (at least for the most part) keeps mail in standard mail folders. If you use mbox format you do not have the ability to have sub folders. I come from the old UNIX days where you have a directory in you home called Mail and mail folders inside the Mail directory. Almost every text (mutt,pine,elm..) uses the Mail directory to search for folders by default. But as somebody pointed out this is a personal choice and either one is a good way to go it really depend on what really works best for the individual. I have been using Evolution at home and it uses maildir, it is not as straight forward as the Mail directory approach, but I did find that each sub folder does actually contain an mbox file which is standard mbox format. At work I use mbox with standard (Mail directory) because it is much easier for me to use IMAP, and if I need to ssh into my machine from home I can use mutt to read my mail and it is much easier to change and move between mail folders. Mike Thanks for your thoughts, Mike. You have raised an interesting point, though. I have been using subfolders under Archives, and it has no problem storing them, but they do not seem to be accessible outside KMail, so it defeats the object. Time to think again. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Saturday 07 Jun 2003 4:04 am, Robert W. wrote: On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 20:15, Michael Noble wrote: I have been using Evolution at home and it uses maildir, it is not as straight forward as the Mail directory approach, but I did find that each sub folder does actually contain an mbox file which is standard mbox format. mbox stores all messages in one giant file. maildir stores each message in its own file. Evolution is using mbox format. But it manages multiple mbox files by placing them in different directories. This is not the same as maildir. A maildir has three subdirectories: new, cur, and tmp. 'tmp' is what it sounds like: a place for temporary files. 'new' contains unread messages. And 'cur' contains messages you have read. Evolution supports the maildir format also. Your messages go into 'new' (or 'cur' after reading), one file per message. All this started from the fact that I could find no way of getting KMail maildirs into Evo . Any ideas on that one? Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 15:23, Anne Wilson wrote: On Friday 06 Jun 2003 8:14 pm, Steffen Barszus wrote: Am Freitag, 6. Juni 2003 21:04 schrieb Anne Wilson: My dally with evo made me aware that I had a mixture of maildir and mbox for my mail - obviously not ideal - so I set out to convert to one. I chose mbox, because it is transparent. I know that if I could not use kmail I can open one of my archive folders in a text editor and do a search to find anything I need. I like the comfort factor that gives me. I have heard it said, though, that mbox if bad, and maildir is good. Why? Are there any overriding reasons for going that way? Anne Hmm at least your argument for mbox isn't really valid. Maildir is too plain text and directories. But searching 10,000 archived messages individually for a particular phrase is not a good idea. One large file with the messages concatenated is much easier, if slow. Don't know which one is better. Maybe this is interesting for you (not really;)) http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/#theend Having read that, I think it's a matter of 'you pays your money and you takes your choice' - which is fine by me. There doesn't seem to be any strong reason to override personal preference. Thanks, Steffen Anne Mbox is considered an inferior format because in the past it has resulted in the loss of much mail. Potentially if the file borks you lose the whole load. Maildir, on the other hand (as others have already stated) stores the text in files which all have naming conventions that are determined by standardized procedures stored in an RFC somewhere. The advantage to this is that if there is damage to any of the files, you might lose a few emails but you won't nuke the whole storehouse. The reasons the different directories exist (cur, tmp, and new) is a further refinement of the safety process built into the maildir procedures, in that when mail is being received, it is granted a temporary position in the tmp spot and then moved to the new directory after it is safely written. This lowers the possibility that inodes in any other vital directories (such as where the main email storage is) won't get borked during the file creation process if something goes wrong. Only after the email has been totally written and created (i.e. stabilized) is it moved to it's final position in new. The new directory loses it's email as soon as a MUA program (such as Evolution) reads the mail. Evo knows to look in new for new email, and as soon as it does the mail is planted in cur for categorization or retrieval. One thing that kind of bothers me is that Dan Bernstein, the author of Qmail, happens to be the guy that came up with the entire Maildir scheme, and although his concept has been widely used, few people know who's genius it was that originated it. In other words it was originally a qmail function and has since been ripped for use in other MTA programs (because of it's popularity), offtimes without the recognition that Dan Bernstein (DJB) designed it. What you have to realize is that with mbox, every time you get email, every single message is basically an append to one single large file, the file that contains your email. That's a lot of chances for something to go wrong. Sooner or later the law of averages is going to catch up with somebody. (and it already has) One example I can think of is if you are receiving email while the power goes out. An mbox being written to is in an indeterminate state. --LX -- Kernel 2.4.21-0.13mdk Linux Mandrake 9.1 Enlightenment-0.16.5-12mdk Evolution 1.2.4-1.1mdk Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sat, 2003-06-07 at 05:03, Anne Wilson wrote: Thanks for that explanation, Lyvim. It's given me a lot to think about. The thing that put me off maildir was that when I tried to import from KMail into Evo it wouldn't read the mail. I tried both reading methods in the import, but it wouldn't read a single file. This made me feel that it was almost as bad as the proprietary formats found elsewhere. Have you any thoughts on that? Anne I have done it, but there are several qualifications for doing this. First, if you are transporting from Kmail to Evo like you are, Kmail should be made to put ALL subfolders back into the inbox; this way you can snag or convert everything at once since categorized or filtered email will not be seen(because it is in other folders). Evo filters can be applied later to the whole imported load. Second, you tell Kmail to convert to Maildir format. This will cause Kmail to create the new, cur, and tmp dirs and then move each message seperately to an appropriate filename within the ~/Mail/inbox/cur directory. Third, you copy the files in the newly converted Kmail inbox (Which for some wierd reason seems to be ~/Mail instead of ~/Maildir for maildir mail) over to the Evo Maildir/new dir. With Evo already in Maildir format, Evo should have a configuration for receiving mail that says /home/you/Maildir for it's folder configuration. With Evo in that mode, when you look at the folder tree (within Evo), you will see a tree that starts with your email name, and a dot (.) tree underneath it. That dot is actually the ~/Maildir/cur directory. Now all you do at this point is to go to the Kmail main inbox dir ( ~/Mail/inbox/cur ) and then copy everything over to the Evo Maildir directory for incoming mail. Which is ~/Maildir/new. So cp -v ~/Mail/inbox/cur/* ~/Maildir/new After that, go back to Evo and click on another folder in the tree somewhere, and Evo will see the ~/Maildir/new directory and then create an index of sorts for all the new mail, then it will be moved over to the ~/Maildir/cur directory, where you can then apply the Evo filters you have set up. How's that? ;) HTH.. --LX P.S. One more thing. Any mail that's filed under your Evo dot directory will be in Maildir format. Any mail that's filed in the Evo main tree above that will be in mbox format, *no matter what method* you've chosen under the Mail Accounts settings. So in order to keep all your mail in Maildir format, your custom categorization folders need to be created *under the dot directory* in the Evo tree. -- Kernel 2.4.21-0.13mdk Linux Mandrake 9.1 Enlightenment-0.16.5-12mdk Evolution 1.2.4-1.1mdk Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Sat, 2003-06-07 at 01:49, Anne Wilson wrote: All this started from the fact that I could find no way of getting KMail maildirs into Evo . Any ideas on that one? Let me preface this by stating I do not use KMail. So I do not know the proper directory name for its maildirs. If you're permanently switching from KMail to Evolution: 1) Go into Evolution and make your Inbox maildir format 2) rm -r ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox 3) cp (KMail maildir) ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox/ If you want to switch between KMail and Evolution: 1) Go into Evolution and make your Inbox maildir format 2) rm -r ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox 3) ln -s (KMail maildir) ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox -- Robert W. [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. -- Revelations 21:6 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Saturday 07 Jun 2003 3:55 pm, Robert W. wrote: On Sat, 2003-06-07 at 01:49, Anne Wilson wrote: All this started from the fact that I could find no way of getting KMail maildirs into Evo . Any ideas on that one? Let me preface this by stating I do not use KMail. So I do not know the proper directory name for its maildirs. If you're permanently switching from KMail to Evolution: 1) Go into Evolution and make your Inbox maildir format 2) rm -r ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox 3) cp (KMail maildir) ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox/ If you want to switch between KMail and Evolution: 1) Go into Evolution and make your Inbox maildir format 2) rm -r ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox 3) ln -s (KMail maildir) ~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox Thank you, Robert. I will probably go for the switching option - at least for the moment. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] Mail formats revisited
My dally with evo made me aware that I had a mixture of maildir and mbox for my mail - obviously not ideal - so I set out to convert to one. I chose mbox, because it is transparent. I know that if I could not use kmail I can open one of my archive folders in a text editor and do a search to find anything I need. I like the comfort factor that gives me. I have heard it said, though, that mbox if bad, and maildir is good. Why? Are there any overriding reasons for going that way? Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
Am Freitag, 6. Juni 2003 21:04 schrieb Anne Wilson: My dally with evo made me aware that I had a mixture of maildir and mbox for my mail - obviously not ideal - so I set out to convert to one. I chose mbox, because it is transparent. I know that if I could not use kmail I can open one of my archive folders in a text editor and do a search to find anything I need. I like the comfort factor that gives me. I have heard it said, though, that mbox if bad, and maildir is good. Why? Are there any overriding reasons for going that way? Anne Hmm at least your argument for mbox isn't really valid. Maildir is too plain text and directories. Don't know which one is better. Maybe this is interesting for you (not really;)) http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/#theend Steffen Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
** Anne Wilson (Freitag, 6. Juni 2003 21:23) But searching 10,000 archived messages individually for a particular phrase is not a good idea. One large file with the messages concatenated is much easier, if slow. (e)grep is your friend - in both cases. wobo -- Public GnuPG key available at http://www.wolf-b.de/misc Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 12:04, Anne Wilson wrote: My dally with evo made me aware that I had a mixture of maildir and mbox for my mail - obviously not ideal - so I set out to convert to one. I chose mbox, because it is transparent. I know that if I could not use kmail I can open one of my archive folders in a text editor and do a search to find anything I need. I like the comfort factor that gives me. I have heard it said, though, that mbox if bad, and maildir is good. Why? Are there any overriding reasons for going that way? Anne Six of one, half-dozen of the other on a desktop. Now if you're operating a mailstore for thousands of users and running out of inodes... -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... http://www.monkeynoodle.org/resume.html Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Friday 06 Jun 2003 9:07 pm, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: ** Anne Wilson (Freitag, 6. Juni 2003 21:23) But searching 10,000 archived messages individually for a particular phrase is not a good idea. One large file with the messages concatenated is much easier, if slow. (e)grep is your friend - in both cases. wobo I suppose so - so then there's no real advantage either way. 'Linux is about choice' g Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
Anne, I personally prefer mbox format for the same reason that you mentioned. If needed, I can easily use mutt,pine or even mail to read mail. You do not always have the option of reading mail with a graphical inter- face. It is true that maildir (at least for the most part) keeps mail in standard mail folders. If you use mbox format you do not have the ability to have sub folders. I come from the old UNIX days where you have a directory in you home called Mail and mail folders inside the Mail directory. Almost every text (mutt,pine,elm..) uses the Mail directory to search for folders by default. But as somebody pointed out this is a personal choice and either one is a good way to go it really depend on what really works best for the individual. I have been using Evolution at home and it uses maildir, it is not as straight forward as the Mail directory approach, but I did find that each sub folder does actually contain an mbox file which is standard mbox format. At work I use mbox with standard (Mail directory) because it is much easier for me to use IMAP, and if I need to ssh into my machine from home I can use mutt to read my mail and it is much easier to change and move between mail folders. Mike On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 12:04, Anne Wilson wrote: My dally with evo made me aware that I had a mixture of maildir and mbox for my mail - obviously not ideal - so I set out to convert to one. I chose mbox, because it is transparent. I know that if I could not use kmail I can open one of my archive folders in a text editor and do a search to find anything I need. I like the comfort factor that gives me. I have heard it said, though, that mbox if bad, and maildir is good. Why? Are there any overriding reasons for going that way? Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Michael Noble mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mail formats revisited
On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 20:15, Michael Noble wrote: I have been using Evolution at home and it uses maildir, it is not as straight forward as the Mail directory approach, but I did find that each sub folder does actually contain an mbox file which is standard mbox format. mbox stores all messages in one giant file. maildir stores each message in its own file. Evolution is using mbox format. But it manages multiple mbox files by placing them in different directories. This is not the same as maildir. A maildir has three subdirectories: new, cur, and tmp. 'tmp' is what it sounds like: a place for temporary files. 'new' contains unread messages. And 'cur' contains messages you have read. Evolution supports the maildir format also. Your messages go into 'new' (or 'cur' after reading), one file per message. -- Robert W. [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. -- Revelations 21:6 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
