maildirs, dovecot, mail client help

[wade at wadesmart.com]

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: maildirs, dovecot, mail client help
> From: "Todd Slater" <dontodd at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, November 02, 2006 8:36 am
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions"
> <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>
> On 11/2/06, wade at wadesmart.com <wade at wadesmart.com> wrote:
> > 11022006 0809 GMT-6
> >
> > Im in a massive crunch here.
> >
> > I have changed all my existing email from mbox to maildirs. I have
> > installed fetchmail, postfix, dovecot on my system. I finally got
> > dovecot to see the right folder where my mail is stored, which is in
> > /home/wadesmart/Maildir. I am downloading email from gmail and my
> > hosted email accts. I have only played with my gmail as there is little
> > there to download so its good for testing. When I start evolution it
> > sees those 9 gmails I have but, it doesnt see any of the converted
> > emails.
> >
> > When I was on mbox I would download my emails and then filter them into
> > folders and subfolders for storage. When I ran mb2md I ended up with
> > all my folders and subfolders but it looks a mess to me.
> >
> > For example, under the folder .Business I have /new /cur /tmp and then I
> > have .Business_sbd.Beryl I have my 127 emails there.
> >
> >
> > total 456
> > drwx------ 104 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-11-01 18:57 .
> > drwxr-xr-x  35 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-11-01 19:57 ..
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:37 .Business
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:37 .Business_sbd
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:38
> > .Business_sbd.Awarenes s Life
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:38
> > .Business_sbd.Beryl
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:38
> > .Business_sbd.Currency
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:38
> > .Business_sbd.Drafts
> > drwx------   5 wadesmart wadesmart  4096 2006-10-31 13:38
> > .Business_sbd.Early To  Rise
> >
> >
> >
> > Im thinking about taking all my email out of their folders and putting
> > them all under one folder. With my old mbox format, as mail would come
> > in I had it filtered to its own folder, which may or may not be a
> > sub-folder of a parent folder. I like doing that. But this imap thing
> > is not throwing me for a loop.
> >
> > If I pulled all my mail from these folders and put it all in say the
> > /new folder, I would have to create filters from that point forward,
> > but do you think that would be a good thing to do? Obviously a lot of
> > work creating new filters for that for me though.
> >
> > I have 6000 emails backed up on my server now - and thats after deleting
> > things that I can delete daily. Im in a rush now to get this email I
> > have in its right location and that email off the server.
>
> You're using Dovecot because you want to access your mail from other machines?
>
> First thing I'd worry about is getting Evolution to see the converted
> mails. You added a new account, chose local maildirs as the type, and
> pointed it to the top level of your maildirs? On my system I used
> /home/todd/Mail, on others I've use /home/me/Maildir, you can use
> whatever you want, but you need to point Evolution to that top-level
> directory.
>
> Once that "account" is set up, go ahead and do a Send/Receive in
> Evolution so it can "find" those existing mails.
>
> Let's see if that works first.
>
> Todd
>
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11022006 1902 GMT-6

Its taken all day to get back online. My account was locked this morning
for having too much mail on my account.

I have just read all the replies to my questions.

I can take a single email message that was created by mb2md conversion
and put it in the directory that dovecot sees and it will read that
message.

Since this morning I have:
 Restarted my computer
 Read dovecot and changed the default_mail_env = maildir:%h/Maildir.

The only thing that I think is questionable is, some of the messages are
type email message and some are type plain text.  Its odd.

Now, looking at these files:
.Inbox
.Inbox_lock
.Inbox_sbd
.Inbox_sbd.Later
.Inbox_sbd.Waiting
.Inbox_sbd.Waiting_sbd

under each one there are these files:
 dovecot.index
 dovecot.index.cache
 dovecot.index.log
 dovecot-uidlist

Actually, under almost every folder these four files are present now.

In my .Inbox there are 31031 messages in the /cur folder. Some are plain
text document, some are email message, and some are unknown.

I restarted Evolution abour 1500 and It now sees all my folers. Its odd
what it sees.
It sees each folder but some are subfolders of parent folders and some
now are not subfolders, though they were.

Wade