[clue-tech] thunderbird imap and gmail

[Nate Duehr]

Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> Nate Duehr wrote:
>> Maybe someone here knows how to "check a big mbox file for consistency 
>> and remove 'bad' sections" some way other than manually... which would 
>> suck big time, if it's really big.  IF that's the problem.
> 
> 
> I ran the mbox through formail, and was able to get about half of the 
> messages back out.  Maybe that's all of them, like you say, and the rest 
> although formed correctly now without dates, are really just junk.  But 
> this is better than nothing, so I'll take it.  ;)  Thanks

Cool.  I would highly recommend seeing if there's a good HOW-TO doc on 
converting your server to Maildir.

Your MTA has to be able to do it, and of course your IMAP/POP daemon, 
and both have to be told where to find the Maildir directories.

After switching a few years ago and putting up with the pain of doing it 
twice (I didn't like where I'd put the Maildir root dir, and decided to 
do it again), I wouldn't go back.

It has some advantages over mbox format, like not losing so much data 
when one section of an mbox file is corrupted, much lower memory use 
(but can be higher disk I/O, of course) since one giant file doesn't 
have to be loaded or locked between an MTA trying to deliver and the 
IMAP daemon trying to check your mail, etc.

I found a perl script that converted mbox to Maildir, but I've seen 
other people get even lazier, and just build up a new mail server set up 
for Maildir, and then copy their mail from one server to the other with 
Thunderbird.  :-)  Plus it gives you a reason to buy new hardware.  Heh 
heh... and test things out with another mail address and domain first... 
then you just move the domain over, copy the mail, move the DNS, set up 
the old box to forward any stragglers over, and done...

Nate