Copy spool mail files?

Jim Flanagan

29 May 2005 29 May '05

01:01

Is there a way to copy email from one boot /var/spool/mail to a differnt boot /var/spool/mail? One is SuSE 9.3 and the other is 8.2. I only have 3 users set up so far. TIA Jim Flanagan linuxjim at jjfiii.com

Show replies by date

Anders Johansson

29 May 29 May

01:06

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 03:01, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Is there a way to copy email from one boot /var/spool/mail to a differnt boot /var/spool/mail? One is SuSE 9.3 and the other is 8.2. I only have 3 users set up so far.

The mbox format used in spool files is very old. You should be able to just copy the files straight across. Just make sure the ownership is correct, the default user IDs changed. Your 8.2 by default numbered users from uid 500 while 9.3 starts at 1000

Jim Flanagan

01:34

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Saturday May 28 2005 8:06 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 03:01, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Is there a way to copy email from one boot /var/spool/mail to a differnt boot /var/spool/mail? One is SuSE 9.3 and the other is 8.2. I only have 3 users set up so far.

The mbox format used in spool files is very old. You should be able to just copy the files straight across. Just make sure the ownership is correct, the default user IDs changed. Your 8.2 by default numbered users from uid 500 while 9.3 starts at 1000

Thanks Anders. But I guess I did not fully state my question. I have been bouncing back and forth between both installs, trying to configure posftix on the new one. Now I have mail in both /var/spool/mail dirs, some on one, others on the other. Is there a way to merge these? Also, I have quite a few quesitons in setting up postfix. I notice Ken says configuring postfix is a bear. If its a bear to him, I don't really know what to call it myself. I've been using kmail, which I quite like. But, as I'm away from my computer for times, I use uw-imap and squirrelmail to check the list. From time to time I log in, get all mail into kmail, and go from there. Not really what I want. Having access to only some mail while I'm away. I like kmail's filters, easy to set up. I've never gotten to procmail or anyting like that. I just did today get my 9.3 install to all me to send mail to myself from outside using sasl, amazingly using yast/etc/sysconfig editor. Haven't got TLS working yet, still working on that. Haven't figured out how to send mail to the list (or others for that matter )from outside, and without being a relay for others. What I really want to accomplish (I think) is to have an imap setup where I can see all my mail, some kept from a year or so back, just like I can logged in locally with kmail. I believe courier is one way to go with that. But I'm unclear how to set up something (procmail?) to get the mail from /var/log/mail to /home/me, hopefully sorted in the right folders. Can someone point me to a step by step guide to this? I've read some of the guides at postfix.org which are very helpful. But, I only have less than 10 users here so I'd like to stay with the default suse packages if possible. Or I could use one of Anders N's recent compiles if that saves me a bunch of trouble. Many thanks, Jim Flanagan

Anders Johansson

01:57

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 03:34, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Thanks Anders. But I guess I did not fully state my question. I have been bouncing back and forth between both installs, trying to configure posftix on the new one. Now I have mail in both /var/spool/mail dirs, some on one, others on the other.

Is there a way to merge these?

Sure, it's a relatively simple mail format. Just make sure no programs are running that use the spool file, and then do cat > <new spool file> and then "mv" the new spool file to whichever place you want to actually use (or possibly both) Make sure you take backups of the original spool files before you overwrite them, just in case you make a typo or something

...

Also, I have quite a few quesitons in setting up postfix. I notice Ken says configuring postfix is a bear. If its a bear to him, I don't really know what to call it myself.

Depends on your needs. Postfix was designed with two basic design criteria: security and ease of configuration. For a "normal" mail server, it's very simple to set up. The default SUSE configuration will get you a long way towards the goal, and then with a few minor modifications, you are there, unless you have specific needs (high performance, virtual users, special authentication setups etc)

...

I've been using kmail, which I quite like. But, as I'm away from my computer for times, I use uw-imap and squirrelmail to check the list. From time to time I log in, get all mail into kmail, and go from there. Not really what I want. Having access to only some mail while I'm away. I like kmail's filters, easy to set up. I've never gotten to procmail or anyting like that.

I use cyrus imap, and do all filtering on the imap server using a sieve script. Works very well and isn't hard to do, although as far as I know there is no good GUI way of creating the sieve script so I do it by hand in a text editor, but the syntax is simple.

...

I just did today get my 9.3 install to all me to send mail to myself from outside using sasl, amazingly using yast/etc/sysconfig editor. Haven't got TLS working yet, still working on that. Haven't figured out how to send mail to the list (or others for that matter )from outside, and without being a relay for others.

Authentiated SMTP is one way. Another is to use squirrelmail, since then you would actually be sending mail from the local machine, so you won't have to open up postfix to allow relaying from outside

...

What I really want to accomplish (I think) is to have an imap setup where I can see all my mail, some kept from a year or so back, just like I can logged in locally with kmail. I believe courier is one way to go with that. But I'm unclear how to set up something (procmail?) to get the mail from /var/log/mail to /home/me, hopefully sorted in the right folders.

That is one option, to use procmail to get the mail to your home folder. Another is to do what I do and store everything directly in cyrus imap. In suse this is very easy to do, you basically have to set POSTFIX_MDA to "cyrus" in /etc/sysconfig/postfix and run SuSEconfig --module postfix, then read /usr/share/doc/packages/cyrus-imapd/README.SuSE on how to create your users in cyrus, create the ones you need, and you're done

...

Can someone point me to a step by step guide to this? I've read some of the guides at postfix.org which are very helpful. But, I only have less than 10 users here so I'd like to stay with the default suse packages if possible. Or I could use one of Anders N's recent compiles if that saves me a bunch of trouble.

I think those builds are just to use mysql as an authentication backend

Jim Flanagan

03:19

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Saturday May 28 2005 8:57 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 03:34, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Thanks Anders. But I guess I did not fully state my question. I have been bouncing back and forth between both installs, trying to configure posftix on the new one. Now I have mail in both /var/spool/mail dirs, some on one, others on the other.

Is there a way to merge these?

Sure, it's a relatively simple mail format. Just make sure no programs are running that use the spool file, and then do

cat > <new spool file>

and then "mv" the new spool file to whichever place you want to actually use (or possibly both)

Make sure you take backups of the original spool files before you overwrite them, just in case you make a typo or something

Many thanks Anders. That sounds easy enough. I'll get to that tonight.

...

...
Also, I have quite a few quesitons in setting up postfix. I notice Ken says configuring postfix is a bear. If its a bear to him, I don't really know what to call it myself.

Depends on your needs. Postfix was designed with two basic design criteria: security and ease of configuration. For a "normal" mail server, it's very simple to set up. The default SUSE configuration will get you a long way towards the goal, and then with a few minor modifications, you are there, unless you have specific needs (high performance, virtual users, special authentication setups etc)

...
I've been using kmail, which I quite like. But, as I'm away from my computer for times, I use uw-imap and squirrelmail to check the list. From time to time I log in, get all mail into kmail, and go from there. Not really what I want. Having access to only some mail while I'm away. I like kmail's filters, easy to set up. I've never gotten to procmail or anyting like that.

I use cyrus imap, and do all filtering on the imap server using a sieve script. Works very well and isn't hard to do, although as far as I know there is no good GUI way of creating the sieve script so I do it by hand in a text editor, but the syntax is simple.

...
I just did today get my 9.3 install to all me to send mail to myself from outside using sasl, amazingly using yast/etc/sysconfig editor. Haven't got TLS working yet, still working on that. Haven't figured out how to send mail to the list (or others for that matter )from outside, and without being a relay for others.

Authentiated SMTP is one way. Another is to use squirrelmail, since then you would actually be sending mail from the local machine, so you won't have to open up postfix to allow relaying from outside

Yeah, I have been using Squirrelmail for some time now. I like it. But, with all the mail in spool using uw-imap, the thread sort gets pretty slow after about 3 or 4,000 emails. Perhaps with Cyrus this will relieve that issue.

...

...
What I really want to accomplish (I think) is to have an imap setup where I can see all my mail, some kept from a year or so back, just like I can logged in locally with kmail. I believe courier is one way to go with that. But I'm unclear how to set up something (procmail?) to get the mail from /var/log/mail to /home/me, hopefully sorted in the right folders.

That is one option, to use procmail to get the mail to your home folder. Another is to do what I do and store everything directly in cyrus imap. In suse this is very easy to do, you basically have to set POSTFIX_MDA to "cyrus" in /etc/sysconfig/postfix and run SuSEconfig --module postfix, then read /usr/share/doc/packages/cyrus-imapd/README.SuSE on how to create your users in cyrus, create the ones you need, and you're done

I've never really looked close at Cyrus. Will do. I may ask you more about the sieve filters later.

...

...
Can someone point me to a step by step guide to this? I've read some of the guides at postfix.org which are very helpful. But, I only have less than 10 users here so I'd like to stay with the default suse packages if possible. Or I could use one of Anders N's recent compiles if that saves me a bunch of trouble.

I think those builds are just to use mysql as an authentication backend

Again, many thanks, Jim Flanagan linuxjim at jjfiii.com

Jim Flanagan

04:37

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Saturday May 28 2005 8:57 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 03:34, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Thanks Anders. But I guess I did not fully state my question. I have been bouncing back and forth between both installs, trying to configure posftix on the new one. Now I have mail in both /var/spool/mail dirs, some on one, others on the other.

Is there a way to merge these?

Sure, it's a relatively simple mail format. Just make sure no programs are running that use the spool file, and then do

cat > <new spool file>

and then "mv" the new spool file to whichever place you want to actually use (or possibly both)

Make sure you take backups of the original spool files before you overwrite them, just in case you make a typo or something

cat worked great! Had a little trouble with renaming the 2 different files, could not do that for some reason, so I put them in different directories. After that I did a >> to the old larger one. Worked great! Thanks. Jim Flanagan linuxjim at jjfiii dot com

Jim Flanagan

14:50

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Saturday May 28 2005 8:57 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

I use cyrus imap, and do all filtering on the imap server using a sieve script. Works very well and isn't hard to do, although as far as I know there is no good GUI way of creating the sieve script so I do it by hand in a text editor, but the syntax is simple.

...
I just did today get my 9.3 install to all me to send mail to myself from outside using sasl, amazingly using yast/etc/sysconfig editor. Haven't got TLS working yet, still working on that. Haven't figured out how to send mail to the list (or others for that matter )from outside, and without being a relay for others.

Authentiated SMTP is one way. Another is to use squirrelmail, since then you would actually be sending mail from the local machine, so you won't have to open up postfix to allow relaying from outside

...
What I really want to accomplish (I think) is to have an imap setup where I can see all my mail, some kept from a year or so back, just like I can logged in locally with kmail. I believe courier is one way to go with that. But I'm unclear how to set up something (procmail?) to get the mail from /var/log/mail to /home/me, hopefully sorted in the right folders.

That is one option, to use procmail to get the mail to your home folder. Another is to do what I do and store everything directly in cyrus imap. In suse this is very easy to do, you basically have to set POSTFIX_MDA to "cyrus" in /etc/sysconfig/postfix and run SuSEconfig --module postfix, then read /usr/share/doc/packages/cyrus-imapd/README.SuSE on how to create your users in cyrus, create the ones you need, and you're done

Anders, if I use cyrus-imap, will I still be able to use kmail and its filters (pulling mail down to maildir folders with kmail), or is the idea to just use cyrus-imap and configure kmail (or other client) to use imap all the time, even on the local machine? Jim F

Anders Johansson

15:06

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 16:50, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Anders, if I use cyrus-imap, will I still be able to use kmail and its filters (pulling mail down to maildir folders with kmail), or is the idea to just use cyrus-imap and configure kmail (or other client) to use imap all the time, even on the local machine?

Yes, that is the idea. If you use cyrus you put everything in there. You can of course store mail in multiple places and configure kmail to work with them, but it seems unnecessary kmail's filters unfortunately won't work yet with imap. It is a long promised, and long awaited feature. But sieve isn't so bad, even though it's not point and click. And it has the advantage of giving you the same results in any mail client, so you'll be able to switch mail clients with no ill effects. As long as it supports imap it will show you the same mail in the same folders every time. So you'll be able to test more clients in more configurations than before (this was the original reason why I set it up like this)

Jim Flanagan

15:21

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday May 29 2005 10:06 am, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 16:50, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Anders, if I use cyrus-imap, will I still be able to use kmail and its filters (pulling mail down to maildir folders with kmail), or is the idea to just use cyrus-imap and configure kmail (or other client) to use imap all the time, even on the local machine?

Yes, that is the idea. If you use cyrus you put everything in there. You can of course store mail in multiple places and configure kmail to work with them, but it seems unnecessary

kmail's filters unfortunately won't work yet with imap. It is a long promised, and long awaited feature.

But sieve isn't so bad, even though it's not point and click. And it has the advantage of giving you the same results in any mail client, so you'll be able to switch mail clients with no ill effects. As long as it supports imap it will show you the same mail in the same folders every time. So you'll be able to test more clients in more configurations than before (this was the original reason why I set it up like this)

That sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. Will work on that. Where do I find info on writing the seive? Jim F

Anders Johansson

15:30

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 17:21, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

That sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. Will work on that. Where do I find info on writing the seive?

http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/ is a good place to check out. There you can find a few examples to get you started. For most purposes, it doesn't have to be more complicated than http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/scripts/simple-anti-spam.txt For example, I have an IMAP folder called SLE under my inbox, and to file all mail from this list into that folder I have a rule that says if header :contains "X-Mailinglist" "suse-linux-e" { fileinto "INBOX.SLE"; } and so on. I have one rule like that for every list I'm in

Jim Flanagan

16:39

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday May 29 2005 10:30 am, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 17:21, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
That sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. Will work on that. Where do I find info on writing the seive?

http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/

is a good place to check out. There you can find a few examples to get you started.

For most purposes, it doesn't have to be more complicated than

http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/scripts/simple-anti-spam.txt

For example, I have an IMAP folder called SLE under my inbox, and to file all mail from this list into that folder I have a rule that says

if header :contains "X-Mailinglist" "suse-linux-e" { fileinto "INBOX.SLE"; }

and so on. I have one rule like that for every list I'm in

Many thanks Anders. Jim F

Patrick Shanahan

16:44

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

* Anders Johansson [05-29-05 10:31]:

...

http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/

is a good place to check out. There you can find a few examples to get you started.

For most purposes, it doesn't have to be more complicated than

http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/scripts/simple-anti-spam.txt

For example, I have an IMAP folder called SLE under my inbox, and to file all mail from this list into that folder I have a rule that says

if header :contains "X-Mailinglist" "suse-linux-e" { fileinto "INBOX.SLE"; }

and so on. I have one rule like that for every list I'm in

Please explain your preference for sieve vs procmail. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery

Anders Johansson

16:49

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 18:44, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

Please explain your preference for sieve vs procmail.

Please explain how procmail can be made to filter mail into cyrus imap folders

Patrick Shanahan

17:03

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

* Anders Johansson [05-29-05 11:50]:

...

Please explain how procmail can be made to filter mail into cyrus imap folders

Knowing next to nil about imap, this is as close as I can come: http://www.syntheticzero.com/howto/vmail.php partial quote: Overview Basic defintions. Postfix is a mail transfer agent which handles SMTP (for sending and receiving email). Courier-IMAP is the IMAP and POP3 component (for retrieving email) of the Courier mail system, which can be configured to work with other mail transfer agents (like Postfix). Procmail is used to actually deliver the email, and passes the email through SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin is a spam email filter. Mailman is a mailing list system with a web interface for configuring the mailing lists (but basic configuration must be done by hand), and vmail is a simple PHP-based web interface for setting up virtual domains and virtual domain-based email accounts. MySQL is used to store authentication information and virtual domain account information. To get all this software to work together, we have to configure them to use a compatible format for storing/delivering mail (when Postfix receives mail it needs to store it in a form that Courier-IMAP understands, so users can retrieve their email via POP3 or IMAP, and it should send it to Procmail for the actual delivery), authentication (Courier-IMAP needs to know how to check user passwords when users retrieve their email), administration (vmail needs to be configured to store user and virtual domain information in a way that Postfix and Courier-IMAP can understand), spam filtering (Procmail needs to filter email through SpamAssassin) and since Mailman also creates email aliases, we also need to configure Postfix and Mailman so they are using a compatible format for these aliases (Mailman creates its own aliases, and Postfix needs to know how to read these aliases). -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery

Andreas Philipp

17:17

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

Patrick, El Dom 29 May 2005 12:03, Patrick Shanahan escribió:

...

* Anders Johansson [05-29-05 11:50]:

...
Please explain how procmail can be made to filter mail into cyrus imap folders

...

http://www.syntheticzero.com/howto/vmail.php

partial quote:

...

Basic defintions. Postfix is a mail transfer agent which handles SMTP (for sending and receiving email). Courier-IMAP is the IMAP and POP3 ^^^^^^^^^ Anders was talking about cyrus-imap which is not the same as Courier-Imap, nor is its way of storing mails on disk. Sieve is the natural way to process messages on a cyrus imap server and it works very well.

-- Andreas Philipp Noema Ltda. Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia http://www.noemasol.com

Anders Johansson

17:19

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 19:03, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Anders Johansson [05-29-05 11:50]:

...
Please explain how procmail can be made to filter mail into cyrus imap folders

Knowing next to nil about imap, this is as close as I can come:

http://www.syntheticzero.com/howto/vmail.php

Er, that's courier, not cyrus. Courier works on local mail boxes, cyrus has its own storage. Last time I checked, procmail cannot be forced to deposit mail into arbitrary places in the file system. And I prefer cyrus to courier for a number of reasons, not the least of which is ease of configuration. It also has very cool enterprise features, such as clustering and virtual users built-in, which may not be useful to me at home right now but which may come in handy some day. Most of those features seem to be kludgy addons to courier

Jim Flanagan

19:52

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday May 29 2005 12:19 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 19:03, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...
* Anders Johansson [05-29-05 11:50]:

...
Please explain how procmail can be made to filter mail into cyrus imap folders

Knowing next to nil about imap, this is as close as I can come:

http://www.syntheticzero.com/howto/vmail.php

Er, that's courier, not cyrus. Courier works on local mail boxes, cyrus has its own storage. Last time I checked, procmail cannot be forced to deposit mail into arbitrary places in the file system.

And I prefer cyrus to courier for a number of reasons, not the least of which is ease of configuration. It also has very cool enterprise features, such as clustering and virtual users built-in, which may not be useful to me at home right now but which may come in handy some day. Most of those features seem to be kludgy addons to courier

How do you handle spam? Does spamassissin work with it, or do you have to write your own sieve stuff for that?

Andreas Philipp

20:00

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

Jim: El Dom 29 May 2005 14:52, Jim Flanagan escribió:

...

How do you handle spam? Does spamassissin work with it, or do you have to write your own sieve stuff for that?

Although your question was not meant for me, I'll tell you how I do that: I let Postfix and amavisd handle spam and virus checking. All checking is done BEFORE the messages are ever handled over to cyrus-imap. Sieve I use to check certain headers to decide in which imap folder to file any incoming messages - after amavisd has run its spam and virus tests. -- Andreas Philipp Noema Ltda. Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia http://www.noemasol.com

Anders Johansson

20:00

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday 29 May 2005 21:52, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

How do you handle spam? Does spamassissin work with it, or do you have to write your own sieve stuff for that?

I use spamassassin, with a sieve rule to put all mail marked as spam into a spam folder (just in case there are any false positives I don't want to just delete them) Spamassassin is one step earlier in the chain, it is run by postfix before it hands over the mail to cyrus

Jim Flanagan

30 May 30 May

04:46

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Sunday May 29 2005 3:00 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 29 May 2005 21:52, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
How do you handle spam? Does spamassissin work with it, or do you have to write your own sieve stuff for that?

I use spamassassin, with a sieve rule to put all mail marked as spam into a spam folder (just in case there are any false positives I don't want to just delete them)

Spamassassin is one step earlier in the chain, it is run by postfix before it hands over the mail to cyrus

Anders, does Cyrus imap store sent messages in imap or in local folders? Also, can users make or add folders in addition to the Inbox? Thanks, Jim F

Anders Johansson

05:06

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Monday 30 May 2005 06:46, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Anders, does Cyrus imap store sent messages in imap or in local folders?

Sent messages meaning messages you send? Cyrus doesn't know about that, IMAP is only for storing messages, not sending them. That is a setting in your mail client. You can set kmail to store sent messages on the imap server in Identities->Modify->Advanced. I'm sure other clients have a way to do it as well

...

Also, can users make or add folders in addition to the Inbox?

Yes, of course. If you read and followed the instructions on setting up users in cyrus, each user only has permissions on the INBOX. You can then create other folders as subfolders to the inbox. For example in kmail you would right-click on the inbox and select "new sub-folder" By default users don't have permission to create folders outside their inbox, and it's probably a good idea to keep it that way. If you want to share things between users, the best plan is probably to set up a new top level folder for that purpose, and give users permissions on it.

Jim Flanagan

31 May 31 May

11:49

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Monday May 30 2005 12:06 am, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Monday 30 May 2005 06:46, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Anders, does Cyrus imap store sent messages in imap or in local folders?

Sent messages meaning messages you send? Cyrus doesn't know about that, IMAP is only for storing messages, not sending them. That is a setting in your mail client. You can set kmail to store sent messages on the imap server in Identities->Modify->Advanced. I'm sure other clients have a way to do it as well

...
Also, can users make or add folders in addition to the Inbox?

Yes, of course. If you read and followed the instructions on setting up users in cyrus, each user only has permissions on the INBOX. You can then create other folders as subfolders to the inbox. For example in kmail you would right-click on the inbox and select "new sub-folder"

By default users don't have permission to create folders outside their inbox, and it's probably a good idea to keep it that way. If you want to share things between users, the best plan is probably to set up a new top level folder for that purpose, and give users permissions on it.

OK. Pretty intersting, storing all mail in a separate folder, no local folders at all. I had not really looked at Cyrus before as most of the "reviews" say it is more suited for large email systems. But, Suse does make it pretty easy to set up. Not bad at all. And, you administer all mailboxes in one place, pretty convenient that way. I'm not used to having other folders (drafts, trash, etc) as sub-folders of Inbox, but I guess it really dosen't matter, as long as the are there. Easy enough to add any and all you wish. I still have to work on setting up imaps, and the sieve filters, and spamassassin. Now for the hard question. How do I import all my old existing email into the cyrus inbox? Is there any easy way to do this? I don't think "cat" will work on this, unless I'm mistaken. One suggestion I read talked about emailing all old mail to the new server/cyrus inbox, kind of a clumsy way to do that. And, I'll loose date references that way. Also, how is performance with Squirrelmail? As I said before, using my old setup with uw-imap and squirrelmail, sorting/threading 4,000 or more messages gets pretty slow, and that is not many messages at all compared to what this list puts out over a year or more. (In the past I kept mail in /var/spool/mail until I couldn't stand the slowdown, then pulled them into kmail/local folders and "started over", losing access to those emails when away from my local machine. Not the idea of imap). Anyway, I sure appreciate the help in setting this up. -- Jim Flanagan linuxjim at jjfiii dot com

Jon Clausen

1 Jun 1 Jun

04:50

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Tue, 31 May, 2005 at 06:49:24 -0500, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Now for the hard question. How do I import all my old existing email into the cyrus inbox? Is there any easy way to do this?

Sure; use your mail client... Once you get Cyrus set up, use Kmail to copy the messages from their current location to the imap folders... HTH /Jon -- YMMV

Jim Flanagan

13:25

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Tuesday May 31 2005 11:50 pm, Jon Clausen wrote:

...

On Tue, 31 May, 2005 at 06:49:24 -0500, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...
Now for the hard question. How do I import all my old existing email into the cyrus inbox? Is there any easy way to do this?

Sure; use your mail client...

Once you get Cyrus set up, use Kmail to copy the messages from their current location to the imap folders...

HTH /Jon

Great idea! Why didn't I think of that? Many thanks, -- Jim Flanagan linuxjim at jjfiii dot com

Carlos E. R.

30 May 30 May

01:15

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

The Sunday 2005-05-29 at 19:19 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

Last time I checked, procmail cannot be forced to deposit mail into arbitrary places in the file system.

Sure? :-? I think it can store in any folder, provided the user for which the email is destined owns the folder, because thats the user procmails runs under. The /etc/procmailrc is processed as root (except when using postfix), so it can access any place. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Anders Johansson

02:15

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

On Monday 30 May 2005 03:15, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

The Sunday 2005-05-29 at 19:19 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

...
Last time I checked, procmail cannot be forced to deposit mail into arbitrary places in the file system.

Sure? :-?

No. I don't use it myself, I see little point in it. I only remember the last time someone wanted procmail to do something out of the ordinary, and it wasn't easy. Even very experienced procmail users failed to come up with an answer

...

I think it can store in any folder, provided the user for which the email is destined owns the folder, because thats the user procmails runs under. The /etc/procmailrc is processed as root (except when using postfix), so it can access any place.

All mailboxes are owned by user cyrus, only root and cyrus can work with the mailboxes, everything is stored in /var/spool/imap and there are caches and other things that I really doubt procmail would be able to do the right thing with. The naming scheme is also non-standard. Altogether too many hoops to jump through for no benefit at all. sieve works, for almost all purposes

Carlos E. R.

09:40

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

The Monday 2005-05-30 at 04:15 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

All mailboxes are owned by user cyrus, only root and cyrus can work with the mailboxes, everything is stored in /var/spool/imap and there are caches and other things that I really doubt procmail would be able to do the right thing with. The naming scheme is also non-standard. Altogether too many hoops to jump through for no benefit at all. sieve works, for almost all purposes

I wasn't thinking of using procmail for cyrus - I'll take your word for it, and it makes sense to me :-) No, I don't think it would work unless the imap server is designed with procmail in mind; same as with postfix: it can handle local delivery, or give it to procmail, kind of improved local delivery agent. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Carlos E. R.

29 May 29 May

02:26

New subject: [SLE] Copy spool mail files?

The Saturday 2005-05-28 at 20:01 -0500, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

Is there a way to copy email from one boot /var/spool/mail to a differnt boot /var/spool/mail? One is SuSE 9.3 and the other is 8.2. I only have 3 users set up so far.

It should work, simply copy them. Be sure to keep the proper permissions and ownerships. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

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participants (6)

Anders Johansson
Andreas Philipp
Carlos E. R.
Jim Flanagan
Jon Clausen
Patrick Shanahan