On Saturday 21 December 2002 08:19 pm, Tom Emerson wrote:
Two thoughts come to mind:
1) size -- though generally small, they add up pretty quickly -- a quick check of my own .../cur directory yields fewer than 200 files [183] but taking more space than available on a floppy [1512 kbytes; a floppy holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400...]
2) locking -- do you have your e-mail client "running" at the same time as when you try to copy the files? though I would consider it "unusual", it is not outside the realm of possibility that a client would "lock" all the files; this could affect your ability to copy them
3) permissions -- sometimes it is the little things that trip you up; I'm sure you have the permissions to read the files [they are in YOUR home directory, right? not someone elses? >doh<] but perhaps you don't have the "right" to write to the floppy
I'd suggest copying [exporting] them from the client itself -- kmail for instance has a "save as..." feature that saves the message [w/headers] onto a file; this should be able to save to floppy if mounted properly (with write access); but this is a one-at-a-time solution [though to be honest I haven't tried "selecting" multiple messages and doing a "save as..." operation] I gather you're trying to save/archive/backup the files so you can re-install or do some other potentially home-directory-devestating activity.
If the problem was lack of space, consider compressing the files into a tar/gz archive with the command
tar -czf mymessages /home/.../inbox/cur/
then "mymessages" can be copied to a floppy [or it could have been /media/floppy/mymessages in the first place] or transported via any other convenient means...
Hi Thomas, We may be talking 25 messages here, well within the floppy's capacity. And as I'd mentioned to zentara, the file permission aspect never gets mentioned and, typically, you get messages with something like that. The client locking the files is something I'd not thought of, I'll look more closely at that. Many thanks for your reply. John Lowell