Re: [exim] MBX format - converting to it

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Author: Chris Edwards
Date:  
To: Marc Perkel
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] MBX format - converting to it
| OK - fighting various problems - mostly with Outlook - and I think I
| need to convery from the default dumb unix format to MBX format.

|
| I'm married to UW IMAP and can't change without extreme pain involved.
| Yes maildir is better - but not an option at the moment. As I understand
| it - MBX will give me full file sharing and that - hopefully will fix
| several problems I'm having.

|
| So - I need to convert about 1000 folders to MBX - what do I use to do that?


I hazily recall UW imap has a feature which might just help.

You create an empty [1] mbx mailbox called "INBOX" in the user's home dir.
Then when the user connects, UW imapd automatically fetches new mail from
/var/mail/user (still in regular mbox format), and places it in ~/INBOX in
mbx format. Thus /var/mail/user is emptied each time.

This means you don't have to convert existing mbox mailboxes in /var/mail,
and nor do you have to modify your MTA config - just leave it delivering
to /var/mail in mbox format, and UW imapd does the rest.

[1] an empty mbx is of course *not* an empty file - the index info is
there, and is needed for imapd to autosense an mbx.

--
Chris Edwards, Glasgow University Computing Service