fetchmail and mbox migration

[Jason Clinton]

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 13:42, Brian Densmore wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: darkweb4
> > 
> > I might be inheriting an older compaq from my mother when I
> > get her new computer built.  I was thinking that I could use
> > it as a mail server.  I have dial up.  Will I be able to
> > have a mail server without a persistent IP address?  ...
> Short answer, yes.
> 
> > ... stored in mbox format on another computer.  How would I go
> > about migrating the existing email into whatever format the
> > mail server/fetchmail will use?  Also, what are some
> > recommendations for different mail servers?
> I recommend exim+procmail+courier-imap as a mail server. I'd also
> recommend using maildir format. There is a program called 

The maildir format is an improvement over mbox but not really as good as
it gets. Courier-IMAP uses maildir by default but Cyrus uses its own DB
format which is accerated for mail storage and retreival. The whole
'store the messages in the users home directory' philosophy comes from
the old days when the mailer daemon would drop the messages in the
/var/mail/spool and PINE would then copy them over to the mbox in the
home directory when you started it over your 2400 baud connection. :)

Postfix (or any SMTP mailer) can be configured to pass the message to
/var/spool/mail, mbox, maildir or even to another server over a unix
domain socket. In the last case, this is what allows Cyrus to store all
mail on the server in one place, it's DB.

Anyways, YMMV.