Comments on: My new favorite open-source software: mairix by Richard Curnow

By: jik

jik — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:10:41 +0000

When I want to archive old email from my IMAP server, I move the messages I want to archive from their IMAP folder into a local folder in Thunderbird, which automatically converts them into an mbox file (since Thunderbird uses mbox files as its local folder storage format). Then I use a script I wrote to sort the mbox file by date, split into 500KB mbox files, and put them all in the appropriate archive directory. Then I compress them and add them to the mairix index for later searching.

I split them into 500KB mbox files because that way search retrievals are faster. If the mbox files that mairix is indexing are too large, then when it goes to retrieve a search result from one of the compressed files, it has to uncompress the entire file up to the message it wants, which can take a long time.

By: todd

todd — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:05:43 +0000

How do you archive your mail? I’m trying to set up something similar. Right now I’m getting thousands of messages from gmail via POP3, doing some basic filtering using procmail, which delivers to maildir’s. I just discovered the `archivemail` package, which I’m thinking about using for creating compressed mbox’s of my maildir folders based on date. If I read correctly, mairix can index and search those compressed mbox files?

I’m using Evolution because it’s the only gui client I can find that will read local maildir folders without an IMAP server, but it crashes periodically. I’ll probably end up using Mutt once I get things squared away, but it’s been some time since I’ve used it so I’ll have to re-learn it. I assume Mutt can handle mixed maildir and mbox formats, so long as it knows which is which?

Thanks for the writeup!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:07:50 +0000

Great tool! Thanks for this blog entry.