On Sep 12, 2010 at 11:37 AM -0400, Thaddeus Morgan wrote:
1) What is the best method of converting a large number of mbox folder into Maildir folders? I've read that mutt's -f and -e options are suitable for doing this. Is there a best practice I should follow?
Mutt can do it. I think I converted a couple boxes by setting mutt's preferred format to Maildir, then open the mbox's in mutt, and copy the messages to a new location.
Alternately, if you are comfortable with something like procmail, you could pipe your mbox files through it into maildirs. That was what I did for the bulk of my email if I recall.
2) What is the best way to store local copies of all messages? I'd like to read, sort, and compose responses to my mail while offline and I'd like to have a local copy of all my mail in case something goes horribly wrong with the server and its backups. I've read that fetchmail and offlineimap can accomplish this. Can mutt do this on its own? Again, is there a best practice to follow?
I've been using offlineimap for the last year or so. Recently I toyed returning to pure IMAP by letting mutt connect to the server directly, but am back to offlineimap. I have some questions about mutt's IMAP capabilities that maybe someday I'll get around to asking. However, offlineimap lets you do what you need to do. Local copy for backup purposes and offline reading. Syncing works perfectly for me. I don't sync all of my emails - quite a bit is not stored on the IMAP servers.
Personally, I use getmail instead of fetchmail for some of my other boxes. It was very easy to set up.
For SMTP, you can use mutt's internal capabilities, or something like msmtp or putmail. I used msmtp for a long time but liked putmail a bit better.
