[Users] Storage of emails and transfer from an old config directory to new

[James Morris]

Basically, it amounts to this me wanting some guidance as to if I can
do:

cp /home/olduser/.clawsmail/imapcache/server/ac/* \
   /home/newuser/.clawsmail/imapcache/server/ac/ \
   -Rv

Is this likely to work? I don't want to just give it a go in case I end
up loosing emails by rendering them unreadable. Do you know of
foreseeable gotchas, or is there a recommended way of doing this? I
don't imagine this is a peculiar edge case.

Cheers,
James.




On Fri, 8 Aug 2014 18:12:30 +0100
James Morris <james at jwm-art.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Warning: horrible tangled mess here.
> 
> 
> I access my email a/c using IMAP, but in a somewhat dim-witted
> fashion, have configured Claws with filters to remove all the emails
> from the server into an MH account. Been doing this for quite some
> time w/o realising I could have just used POP3 instead.
> 
> At some point in the past I accidentally delete my home directory and
> then recovered (the bulk of) it using ext3delete (which I'll refer to
> as $OLD_HOME). I made a new $HOME for my user and plopped the
> recovered $OLD_HOME into it within a subfolder.
> 
> So the problem is I have an old config directory
> $OLD_HOME/.claws-mail/ in which I presume are stored all my old
> emails, which I cannot access.
> 
> I also have $HOME/.claws-mail in which presumably are stored all my
> new emails.
> 
> I have tried using the --alternate-config option to view the old
> emails but Claws complains $OLD_HOME/.claws-mail/clawsrc is missing.
> 
> But then I also found $SOME_OTHER_HOME/.claws-mail which did have a
> clawsrc file, so with Claws fired up there could be seen all the old
> folders I moved my emails into, along with counts of the emails
> believed to be there within.
> 
> However warnings were issued about a missing files named
> $HOME/Mail/$FOLDER/stat. I don't think this $HOME/Mail folder existed
> previously - but $SOME_OTHER_HOME/Mail does exist but no files name
> stat within it.
> 
> It also requested the a/c password but I declined to give it because
> I didn't want any of the processing rules in the old config to remove
> any new emails from the server.
> 
> I want to copy the emails but don't understand the conventions used
> when storing them, if I could copy them from the old config to the
> new, or even if what I'm looking at (the files with numeric names)
> are even the emails themselves.
> 
> Any helpful pointers appreciated.
> 
> regards
> James.
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> Users at lists.claws-mail.org
> http://lists.claws-mail.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/users