help needed to use yahoo2mbox script SOLVED

nepal nepal.roade at googlemail.com
Thu Dec 4 21:37:31 UTC 2008


On Wednesday 03 December 2008 05:44:37 nepal wrote:
> Can anyone offer some handholding help to use this script.
>
> I have lost the posts to my yahoo group (which I own) and the
> only software I can find that will retrieve all the messages for
> the group is Yahoo2mbox, a perl script. There is a manpage
> for it but I'm not sure about using the options and parameters.
> I've pasted the manpage below. The script itself is aprox 31kb which
> I could send offlist if necessary. I have all the dependencies installed.
> Any offers please?
>
> What I do get (maybe) is as follows
> the command structure is
>
>   yahoo2mbox [options] [-o <mbox>] <groupname>
>
> -o mbox,
>
> does this have to exist? Looking at the resume/noresume options,
> it sounds like it will create the mbox file. If not can I just create an
> empty mbox file within KMail and use that?
>
> <groupname>
> ok, even I can get that one. ;)
>
> [options]
> --user=name
> this would be the owner name I use for the group?
>
> --pass=pass
> and the list owners password that I use?
>
> --x-delay=n
> not sure what the Yahoo bytes/hour download limit is,
> I understand the meaning. so not sure about this. There
> are less than 500 messages but some have quite large
> attachments. Although my understanding is that yahoo
> doesn't archive attachments, which does not really matter,
> it is just the messages themselves that I'd like to retrieve.
>
> would just setting those options be enough to retrieve the
> messages?
>
> any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> ============================================
> NAME
>  yahoo2mbox - Retrieve and store Yahoo! Groups messages
> DESCRIPTION
> yahoo2mbox Retrieves all messages in the archive of the given group from
> Yahoo and stores them in the specified
> local MBOX file. If the file exists, the messages not already in the file
> are appended to it.
> OPTIONS
>  yahoo2mbox [options] [-o <mbox>] <groupname>
>
> --help
>  give the usage message showing the program options
> --version
>  show the program version and exit
> --verbose
>  give verbose informational messages (default)
> --quiet
>  be silent, only error messages are given
> -o mbox
>  save the message to mbox instead of file named groupname
> --start=n
>  start retrieving messages at index n instead of 1
> --end=n
>  stop retrieving messages at index n instead of the last one
> --last=n
>  retrieve last n messages from the list
> --resume
>  resumes previously interrupted downloading, needed if --start is used,
> otherwise is automatic if mailbox already
> exists
> --noresume
>  don't resume, overwrites the existing output file if any
> --user=name
>  login to eGroups using this username (default: guest login)
> --pass=pass
>  the password to use for login (default: none)
> --cookies=xxx
>  file to use to store cookies (default: none, 'netscape' uses netscape
> cookies file).
> --proxy=url
>  use the given proxy, if 'no' don't use proxy at all (even not the
> environment variable http_proxy which is used by
> default), may use http://username:password@full.host.name/ notation
> --country=xx
>  use the given country code in order to access localized yahoo groups
> (default: none; supported:
> ar,br,de,dk,es,fr,it,mx)
> --x-yahoo
>  add X-Yahoo-Message-Num header to the downloaded messages
> --x-delay=n
>  sleep for n seconds between each message request (may be used allow the
> script to run continuously without
> hitting the Yahoo bytes/hour download limit)
> ============================================
>
> nepal

heehee. it worked. took a bit of trial and error with the options which is 
what I was trying to avoid by posting this message in the first place, but it 
worked. There were a couple of messages missing, but they are not in the 
group archives anymore anyway.
the options I used were as follows
yahoo2mbox
 --verbose
 --noresume
 --user=the group owners name that I sign in with
 --pass=password for the group owner
 --no-x-yahoo
 --delay=1 just in case I needed a delay setting
 -o /path/to/where/to/create/mbox/file
 actual_group_name with nothing else

and it worked, took about 5 or 6 mins to download 471 messages and attachments 
but not many. IIRC there were a lot more that had attachments, but it was the 
messages I was after. :) 
now I'm one happy bunny!

nepal.







More information about the kubuntu-users mailing list