On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 12:10:31PM -0700, Jason Helfman wrote:
> don't you find the file structure of this just horrid though?
To be perfectly honest, I don't ever see the structure during normal
use. The *only* time I have to think about it is when I write a script
that manipulates the files in those directories (./cur, primarily).
My (shortened) 'subscribe' and 'mailboxes' lines are as follows. Note
that there are no references to ./cur or ./new or ./tmp.
subscribe qmail mutt-users freebsd-stable
mailboxes +Inbox +Bedtime +Qmail +Mutt-Users +FreeBSD-STABLE
When I hit <c><Tab>, Mutt shows me the top-level Maildiers, 'Inbox',
'Bedtime', etc.
The only time I can imagine you'd notice the directory structure is if
you read your mail with /usr/bin/more!
On the other hand, what you don't see is what gives the advantages so
ably detailed by Charles and Mikko in other responses (thanks guys!).
It's just a choice; it's not the end of the world either way. For me, I
live in an apartment where the landlord turns the power off at random
intervals to "fix" things. I'd rather not lose the mail and Maildirs
can guarantee that.
> To have new/ tmp/ cur/ for every mailing list? I would like to and would
> perfer to use maildir for the mailing lists, I don't know why...
What shows up in Mutt is the normal index, with mail that is in the
./new directory threaded appropriately and marked with a 'N'. You don't
see ./new, ./cur or ./tmp. So, ultimately, who cares?
> What are the advantages to this... I have all my mailing lists still
The advantages have been explained in other messages (Charles and
Mikko). I won't make this long message even longer repeating them.
> going to mbox, whereas anything that doesn't pass through the filters
> goes to Maildir format. I would like to see the scripts that you have in
> both procmail and your backing procedure.
Sure. My $HOME/.qmail file reads:
| preline /usr/local/bin/procmail
A snippet from the message list recipes:
:0
* ^TO_qmail
Qmail/
:0
* ^TO.*stable
FreeBSD-STABLE/
:0
* ^TO_mutt-users
Mutt-Users/
Notice that, again, there is no reference to ./new, ./cur or ./tmp. This
is because procmail, as of version 3.14, delivers to Maildirs - it
understands how to move messages into ./new. It identifies destination
Maildirs by the trailing '/' on the folder name.
Finally, here's a very simple script I run from cron (around 3am Monday
mornings, IIRC) that just copies messages older than 3 weeks into a
gzipped tar with the same name as the Maildir. You may have noticed I
always capitalize my Maildirs - the script uses that assumption to
generate the list of Maildirs to archive ([A-Z]*). For any use other
than personal, this could be cleaned up/enhanced a lot. Anyhow, for what
it's worth...
#!/bin/sh
# mailarc.sh
tmpdir=$HOME/tmp/temp$$
mkdir $tmpdir
cd $HOME/Mail
for mdir in [A-Z]* ; do
/usr/bin/find $mdir/cur -mtime +21 -exec /bin/mv {} $tmpdir/ \;
archive=$HOME/Mail/archive/$mdir.tar
if [ -f $archive.gz ] ; then
createorappend=r ;
/usr/bin/gunzip $archive.gz ;
else
createorappend=c ;
fi
/usr/bin/tar -$createorappend -f $archive --directory $tmpdir .
/usr/bin/gzip $archive
rm -f $tmpdir/*
done
rmdir $tmpdir
I find this system quite workable. As always, YMMV :-)
Tim
--
Tim Legant
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
