switching to mbx problems

switching to mbx problems

[urgrue]

im wanting to switch my mailboxes over from generic crappy unix format 
to mbx.
ive compiled a newer imap and pop daemon, and converted some test boxes 
over to mbx. i can successfully read from them.

but then they break. i figure that when new mail gets delivered, my 
procmail is just writing to the mailbox as if it was the same old unix 
format, which creates a hybrid starts-out-as-mbx-ends-as-unix mailbox. 
which nobody can read.

procmail doesnt seem to be mbx aware, yet ive seen claims that mbx is 
the current preferred mailbox format. 
can i get procmail to handle mbx? if not, any suggestions?

Re: switching to mbx problems

[urgrue]

and continuing on this topic, am i correct in understanding that 
maildir format works in procmail, but is only supported by courier imap?

(can't they all just get together and agree on a good, efficient 
mailbox format?? its almost embarassing that MICROSOFT EXCHANGE seems 
to have the best mailbox format. oh, the HUMILIATION!)




On 2003.06.04 16:16, urgrue wrote:
> im wanting to switch my mailboxes over from generic crappy unix format
> 
> to mbx.
> ive compiled a newer imap and pop daemon, and converted some test
> boxes
> over to mbx. i can successfully read from them.
> 
> but then they break. i figure that when new mail gets delivered, my
> procmail is just writing to the mailbox as if it was the same old unix
> 
> format, which creates a hybrid starts-out-as-mbx-ends-as-unix mailbox.
> 
> which nobody can read.
> 
> procmail doesnt seem to be mbx aware, yet ive seen claims that mbx is
> the current preferred mailbox format.
> can i get procmail to handle mbx? if not, any suggestions?
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-
> admin"
> in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

Re: switching to mbx problems

[Chuck Campbell]

Well,
I did a quick look and found nothing in the procmail docs about mbx.  I did
a google search on "procmail mbx" and found that the short answer is 
no native procmail support for mbx format because:
  1)It is not a documented format.
  2)Someone would have to reverse engineer it to write code to support it.


I do not claim to speak for the developers.  Check with the procmail mailing 
list to be sure.

-chuck


On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 04:16:23PM +0300, urgrue wrote:
> im wanting to switch my mailboxes over from generic crappy unix format 
> to mbx.
> ive compiled a newer imap and pop daemon, and converted some test boxes 
> over to mbx. i can successfully read from them.
> 
> but then they break. i figure that when new mail gets delivered, my 
> procmail is just writing to the mailbox as if it was the same old unix 
> format, which creates a hybrid starts-out-as-mbx-ends-as-unix mailbox. 
> which nobody can read.
> 
> procmail doesnt seem to be mbx aware, yet ive seen claims that mbx is 
> the current preferred mailbox format. 
> can i get procmail to handle mbx? if not, any suggestions?
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

-- 
ACCEL Services, Inc.| Specialists in Gravity, Magnetics |  1(713)993-0671 ph.
 2401 Fountain View |   and Integrated Interpretation   |  1(713)993-0608 fax
     Suite 900      |                                   |
 Houston, TX, 77057 |          Chuck Campbell           | campbell@accelinc.com
                    |  President & Senior Geoscientist  |

     "Integration means more than having all the maps at the same scale!"

Re: switching to mbx problems

[Chuck Campbell]

 further looking shows the page I paraphrased is a couple of years old.

I think you can find some better help here:

http://ii.best.vwh.net/internet/robots/procmail/qs/


-chuck


-- 
ACCEL Services, Inc.| Specialists in Gravity, Magnetics |  1(713)993-0671 ph.
 2401 Fountain View |   and Integrated Interpretation   |  1(713)993-0608 fax
     Suite 900      |                                   |
 Houston, TX, 77057 |          Chuck Campbell           | campbell@accelinc.com
                    |  President & Senior Geoscientist  |

     "Integration means more than having all the maps at the same scale!"

Re: switching to mbx problems

[urgrue]

ok i got it. procmail doesnt/cant support mbx, but a simple workaround is 
to use dmail, which can, and call it from procmail. like so:
:0
balh blah rules rules rules
|/bin/dmail +mailfolder

this works fine.
the only problem now is that dmail delivers new mail to the old 
/var/spool/mail/user spool file, in the old unix format, instead of into 
~/INBOX in the mbx format, as it should (according to the documentation).
but otherwise its working now.

thanks,
fred


At 09:40 4.6.2003 -0500, Chuck Campbell wrote:
>  further looking shows the page I paraphrased is a couple of years old.
>
>I think you can find some better help here:
>
>http://ii.best.vwh.net/internet/robots/procmail/qs/
>
>
>-chuck
>
>
>--
>ACCEL Services, Inc.| Specialists in Gravity, Magnetics |  1(713)993-0671 ph.
>  2401 Fountain View |   and Integrated Interpretation   |  1(713)993-0608 fax
>      Suite 900      |                                   |
>  Houston, TX, 77057 |          Chuck Campbell           | 
> campbell@accelinc.com
>                     |  President & Senior Geoscientist  |
>
>      "Integration means more than having all the maps at the same scale!"

RH 9 and Toshiba Satellite 2545XCDT

[Stephen Satchell]

I have received a few letters from time to time about how I got Red Hat 7.3 
up and running on my Toshiba Satellite 2545XCDT laptop computer.  This is 
an older box with a 233-MHz AMD chip, and available quite inexpensively on 
eBay from time to time.

This week, I decided to dump RH 7.3 in favor of loading RH 9.  The work I 
do on my laptop in Linux is not very serious right now, and I thought that 
given the current situation the laptop would be a good playpen to get used 
to RH 9's little foibles.

After a tedious install, though, the laptop would freeze up when a PCMCIA 
card (Xircom modem/ethernet combo card) was inserted.  I also didn't have 
any sound.

So here is a very small HOWTO which may apply to other Toshiba laptops.

1)  Get into the BIOS setup program.  With the laptop turned off, hold down 
the ESC key and press the power button.  Follow the prompts (input password 
if you have one set up, then press F1 when it tells you to).  Collect as 
much information about your current motherboard configuration as you can 
from the two setup pages.  I went ahead and disabled the internal modem, as 
the Xircom mode works far better anyway.  Press END, and let the thing come up.

2)  Install RH 9 (or whatever).

3)  Run sndconfig.  Select the proper chip ("OPL3-SA2/3/x sound chip") and 
configure the options as prompted on-screen.  The default mixer settings 
make it difficult to hear the sample audio file, so turn up the gain to 
ensure you have it.

4)  Edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.  My file contains the following at the 
beginning of the file:

include port 0x300-0x32F
exclude port 0x380-0x3FF
include port 0xA00-0xAFF

include memory 0x000E0000-0x000EFFFF
include memory 0x60000000-0x60FFFFFF
include memory 0xA0000000-0xA0FFFFFF

exclude irq 0
exclude irq 1
exclude irq 4
exclude irq 5
exclude irq 7
exclude irq 8
exclude irq 11
exclude irq 12
exclude irq 14
exclude irq 15

You may need to fiddle with these statements to make your Satellite work 
with your specific cards.  Here, /proc/ioports is your friend -- define 
"include" statements only for ranges that "cat /proc/ioports" shows as 
open.  This works for my set of PCMCIA cards -- you may need to make 
adjustments to fit your particular cards.

All is not rosy with my RH 9 installation.  I'm trying to find out why 
there is a routing table entry for 169.254.0.0/16 on eth0.  (I suspect a 
script blew up, but I have to trace it.)  There is also an issue with slow 
IDE, and a need to compile a kernel specifically for the processor, as the 
i386 generic kernel seems to be considerably slower than the 7.3 kernel I 
ran before.

This discussion will also apply to other distributions, but I thought I'd 
give you the blow-by-blow about how I got it all to work without freezing.

Stephen Satchell

Re: RH 9 and Toshiba Satellite 2545XCDT

[Aaron Baer]

On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 13:25, Stephen Satchell wrote:
>   I'm trying to find out why 
> there is a routing table entry for 169.254.0.0/16 on eth0.  (I suspect a 
> script blew up, but I have to trace it.)  

This is a new to RH9 and it has to do with Zeroconf
http://www.zeroconf.org/ , zero configuration ip addressing like
connection two laptops together with a cross over cable. "without
needing a man in a white lab coat to set it all up for you" as they say
on their site. 


It can be turned off by adding 

NOZEROCONF=yes

to any of your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files.. 

ifcfg-eth0 for instance.

A-

-- 
----
Aaron Baer
judah@opusnet.com
http://www.cat.pdx.edu/~baera/

Re: switching to mbx problems

[paul niemandt]

two words of advice ...

1. maildir 
2. qmail


On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 14:35, urgrue wrote:
> and continuing on this topic, am i correct in understanding that 
> maildir format works in procmail, but is only supported by courier imap?
> 
> (can't they all just get together and agree on a good, efficient 
> mailbox format?? its almost embarassing that MICROSOFT EXCHANGE seems 
> to have the best mailbox format. oh, the HUMILIATION!)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2003.06.04 16:16, urgrue wrote:
> > im wanting to switch my mailboxes over from generic crappy unix format
> > 
> > to mbx.
> > ive compiled a newer imap and pop daemon, and converted some test
> > boxes
> > over to mbx. i can successfully read from them.
> > 
> > but then they break. i figure that when new mail gets delivered, my
> > procmail is just writing to the mailbox as if it was the same old unix
> > 
> > format, which creates a hybrid starts-out-as-mbx-ends-as-unix mailbox.
> > 
> > which nobody can read.
> > 
> > procmail doesnt seem to be mbx aware, yet ive seen claims that mbx is
> > the current preferred mailbox format.
> > can i get procmail to handle mbx? if not, any suggestions?
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-
> > admin"
> > in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
-- 
paul niemandt <maudib@acesurfer.co.za>

Re: switching to mbx problems

[James Turnbull]

paul niemandt wrote:
> two words of advice ...
> 
> 1. maildir
> 2. qmail

Or...

1. Maildir
2. Postfix

Regards

James Turnbull
   

Re: switching to mbx problems

[urgrue]

sounds like the beginning of a mailer war ;)

i think its very much a subjective thing. personally i cant get a grip 
on the dj bernstein school of configuration logic. haven't tried 
postfix though. but anyway i got mbx working fine now and it seems very 
nice so far.
anyway as far as i understand maildir isnt significantly faster or 
better than mbx. at least there seem to be opinions both ways, whereas 
i dont see anyone defending traditional unix format ;)
anyway id rather stick with what i know and am mostly happy with 
(sendmail, wu-imap).


On 2003.06.05 08:25, James Turnbull wrote:
> paul niemandt wrote:
> > two words of advice ...
> >
> > 1. maildir
> > 2. qmail
> 
> Or...
> 
> 1. Maildir
> 2. Postfix
> 
> Regards
> 
> James Turnbull
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-
> admin"
> in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 
> 

Re: switching to mbx problems

[Glynn Clements]

urgrue wrote:

> anyway as far as i understand maildir isnt significantly faster or 
> better than mbx. at least there seem to be opinions both ways, whereas 
> i dont see anyone defending traditional unix format ;)

Traditional Unix mbox format is fine for mail *spools*, where all
access boils down to either:

a) append new message(s) to the end of the spool, or
b) copy the entire contents of the spool elsewhere then remove/empty
it.

It also trivially satisfies the single most important property for any
mail storage format: the ability to turn it back into Unix mbox format
in case you want to switch to a different mail program.

If you have requirements that mbox format doesn't satisfy (i.e. you
need random access), use mbox plus a binary catalogue (i.e. the
Netscape solution).

BTW, if you intend to use Maildir on a dedicated mail server, make
sure that the partition has an adequate inode-to-disk-space ratio;
using one inode per 4Kb is a recipe for running out of inodes when the
disk is only half full.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@virgin.net>

Re: switching to mbx problems

[James Turnbull]

urgrue wrote:
> sounds like the beginning of a mailer war ;)
>
> i think its very much a subjective thing. personally i cant get a grip
> on the dj bernstein school of configuration logic. haven't tried
> postfix though. but anyway i got mbx working fine now and it seems
> very nice so far.

:)  No desire to start a mailer war.  My entirely subjective and personal
opionion about Postfix is based on ease of install and security.  I mucked
around some with sendmail, exim, qmail and courier but found the mailer that
suited me best was Postfix.

As regards Maildir - again stating personal and subjective opinion.  I
operate a large IMAP environment and my experience of mbx versus Maildir is
that the Maildir format was faster.  But the other factors - hardware,
network, volume of mail - make choosing a mail format probably best done
after some personal benchmarking to find the best solution for you
personally.

Regards

James Turnbull