I am running Exim 4.04 using a pretty standard configuration.
On one account, I have a .forward filter file containing lines such as this:
if $return_path contains "bugtraq" then
save $home/mail/bugtraq
endif
So that each mailing list can be automatically put into its own folder.
Nothing too complicated really, and it all worked great (everything was
happily being delivered in UNIX mailbox format). I then generally use
IMAP through different programs depending on where I am, to access my
mailbox. I use UW-IMAP2001a built from source with only a few
modifications (like making "mail" the default for mailboxes, instead of
just plain home directories). Everything was fine until one day I
decided to use mbx format mailboxes everywhere. I turned Exim off,
converted all the mailboxes and added the line
mbx_format = true
to the local_delivery and address_file transports (that way, not only
inboxes would be in mbx format, but also any folders, such as my bugtraq
folder, which presumably goes through the address_file transport?) and
turned Exim back on. Again, everything was fine, until I started using
Mozilla to read my IMAP mail.
Any messages that were delivered by Exim, using mbx format, directly to
an individual folder through a forward/filter file (as opposed to the
INBOX), mozilla didn't like. Mozilla would show the existance of the
message, but would consider the headers to be part of the body, so when
I viewed a message, it would show the body as containing all the lines
of headers, plus the body. In addition, in the list view of all my
messages, they would have no From, Subject, or Date (well, date would be
something like 1969, presumably a date of 0). Messages from before the
conversion were fine, only newly delivered messages were a problem.
Using the mbxcvt program provided in the imap-utils package from
UW-IMAP, if I converted any mailbox back to UNIX format, then back to
mbx, mozilla would like it again (...except for any new messages
delivered later, obviously).
It seems to me like there are two problems here...One with the way Exim
delivers mail via mbx, and the other with Mozilla, since pine, balsa and
Horde/IMP have no problem with the messages that mozilla has trouble with.
I have since converted to using tmail and procmail/dmail for all
deliveries, so I'm all good for now...
Any thoughts?
-Adam Batkin
