Comments on: A practical example of mboxmerge

By: JoanCodina

JoanCodina — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:35:15 +0000

There is an error in your script,
the way you cut the mail file into mails is correct as the format indicates that a mail starts by “Form ”
but inside a mail there can be many lines starting by
“From:” “To:” or “Date:” in particular, when there is a forward, the header of the forwarded message has this data.
so, i changed it a bit (i never programmed in ruby before so… what i do so to check only the first from, to or date…

def MboxMessage.parse(lines)
ret = MboxMessage.new
ret.message_with_headers = lines.join(“”)
in_message = false
md5 = Digest::MD5.new
@uniq ||= 0
@uniq = @uniq + 1
from = to = subject = nil
lines.each do |s|
in_message |= (s.length == 0)
if in_message
md5 << s
next
end
# Pick up some of the header data
if from == nil
from = $1 if s =~ /^From: (.*)$/
end
if to == nil
to = $1 if s =~ /^To: (.*)$/
end
if subject == nil
subject = $1 if s =~ /^Subject: (.*)$/
end
begin
if !ret.message_time and s =~ /^Date: (.*)$/
ret.message_time = parsedate_to_time(ParseDate.parsedate($1))
end
rescue Exception
STDERR << ‘error with date ‘ + $1 + ‘ in mail from ‘+ from + ‘to:’+ to + ‘subject:’+ subject+”\n”
raise
end
end

By: Karl-Heinz

Karl-Heinz — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:25:27 +0000

Paul. Thanks a lot for sharing this nice program with all of us. I try to sync my laptop with my desktop just like Guilf. Did not start so far, but read all comments carefully.
Just a hint. At the moment I used the Thunderbird Add-on “Attachment extractor” to remove the attachments. This makes my Inbox much smaller.

Next step will be to use the windows version of your program.

Thanks again

Karl-Heinz

By: guilf

guilf — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Paul, sorry, thanks. I’ve looked through all spam messages but can’t find it. Would you mind re-mailing with the white list filter word tetra somewhere in the subject line?

Thank you very much for your help in this.

By: Paul Betts

Paul Betts — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:03:14 +0000

@guilf: Yes, I sent you a fixed version already – check your spam box!

By: guilf

guilf — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:50:50 +0000

Any progress, Paul?

By: guilf

guilf — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:40:56 +0000

in case it helps, here’s the output of another attempt at a merge:

Inbox 100% 49MB 2.1MB/s 00:23
‘ has no date!
” has no date!
” has no date!
/home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:49:in `mktime’: argument out of range (ArgumentError)
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:49:in `parsedate_to_time’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:77:in `parse’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:65:in `each’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:65:in `parse’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:119
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:117:in `each’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:117
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:115:in `each’
from /home/steve/.mboxmerge/mboxmerge.rb:115
1658 messages on steve-desktop
15 messages on local
0 messages in merged mailbox

By: guilf

guilf — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:23:39 +0000

Thanks! That would be great, Paul!

By: Paul Betts

Paul Betts — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:38:47 +0000

@guilf: I’ll try to hack in a fix to the dates problem – I’ll let you know about it.

By: guilf

guilf — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:35:28 +0000

Well it worked for a few folders but not for others — I had one with a limited number of messages, all seemed to have proper dates and times, but the folder wouldn’t merge with similar argument out of range errors.

I also found that though the backslash worked for the remote folder names, it didn’t work for the local folder names. Odd—

I reverted the local “Local\ Folders” to “Local_Folders” and the locations were then accepted.

I left the remote one as “Local\ Folders”

So, as it stands now, unless there’s a way of determining what is wrong or “out of range,” the code doesn’t work reliably enough in Firefox at least to be usable.

If I knew what was wrong with the mail folder I’d try to correct it.

By: guilf

guilf — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:45:11 +0000

Okay, continuing to experiment:

1.) The large mail file was split up into smaller folders. Exactly the same error messages appeared in attempting to merge the original folder (Inbox) no matter what the contents or size

2.) The original folder had subfolders. These were moved out of the Inbox folder into their own folders. Running MBoxMerge was successful! There were a few running notes of files without dates, but a merge folder was generated (iunlike before)

3.) Conclusion: in Thunderbird, there are probably pointers to subfolders in any mail folder. These confuse MBoxMerge. A current workaround may be to eliminate subfolders, and if a folder organization is required, simply make all folders equivalent in position. That would mean, in a default Thunderbird installation, all folders are subfolders of “Local Folders”.

I’m not sure how Evolution handles subfolders so this may not apply there.