moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Soren Dayton]

Hi,

I have about 4 years worth of mail in nnml and I would like to move it
to nnimap, keeping the flags (!, *, R, etc), if possible.  is there
a good way to do it?


If I have to, I could probably just move the mail via the imapxfer(1)
program that comes with the UW imap-utils, but this would lose the
flags.  Surely I'm not the first person to have this problem.

Thanks,
Soren

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Kai Großjohann]

Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:

> I have about 4 years worth of mail in nnml and I would like to move it
> to nnimap, keeping the flags (!, *, R, etc), if possible.  is there
> a good way to do it?

For each group nnml:foo do
    create group nnimap:foo
    enter group nnml:foo using `C-u RET', listing all messages
    mark all articles using `M P a'
    move all messages to nnimap:foo using `B m'
end for

This does NOT keep the `*' mark!  AFAIK, it is not possible to keep
the cache mark in an easy way.  Hm.  You also can't be sure the the
message numbers are the same in nnml and nnimap.  If they were the
same, it might be sufficient to just rename the cache directory.

But here's something that you could do: you could extract the list of
cached messages (by message id) from the .overview files in
~/News/cache for the nnml groups.  Then, you can do a nested loop
algorithm:

For each group foo do
    for each message id MID in .overview file for cache of nnml:foo do
        cache message MID in nnimap:foo
    end for
end for

You could write little Lisp snippets to automate these tasks.

kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Soren Dayton]

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Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:
> 
> > I have about 4 years worth of mail in nnml and I would like to move it
> > to nnimap, keeping the flags (!, *, R, etc), if possible.  is there
> > a good way to do it?
> 
> For each group nnml:foo do
>     create group nnimap:foo
>     enter group nnml:foo using `C-u RET', listing all messages
>     mark all articles using `M P a'
>     move all messages to nnimap:foo using `B m'
> end for
 
[snip]

> You could write little Lisp snippets to automate these tasks.

Yup.  Not actually that hard.  One more question:

what do people do about the change is group hierarchy seperator?
Exchange uses "foo/bar" where gnus uses "foo.bar".  I just have to do
the translation myself because Exchange is more promiscuous about
names than gnus?  Is that the solution?

I see that gnus doesn't support making groups with "/" in the names.
What have people done here?

Soren

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Simon Josefsson]

Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:

> what do people do about the change is group hierarchy seperator?
> Exchange uses "foo/bar" where gnus uses "foo.bar".  I just have to do
> the translation myself because Exchange is more promiscuous about
> names than gnus?  Is that the solution?
> 
> I see that gnus doesn't support making groups with "/" in the names.
> What have people done here?

Used group names with `/' names in them anyway. :-)

I patched my version of `gnus-read-group' to allow `/' in group names,
and haven't noticed any problems.  I guess there might be problems
with backends other than nnimap, and that's the reasons for the limit
in valid characters.

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Soren Dayton]

Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:

> Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:
> 
> > what do people do about the change is group hierarchy seperator?
> > Exchange uses "foo/bar" where gnus uses "foo.bar".  I just have to do
> > the translation myself because Exchange is more promiscuous about
> > names than gnus?  Is that the solution?
> > 
> > I see that gnus doesn't support making groups with "/" in the names.
> > What have people done here?
> 
> Used group names with `/' names in them anyway. :-)
> 
> I patched my version of `gnus-read-group' to allow `/' in group names,
> and haven't noticed any problems.  I guess there might be problems
> with backends other than nnimap, and that's the reasons for the limit
> in valid characters.

Should this be a patch to gnus?

Soren

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Toby Speight]

Simon> Simon Josefsson <URL:mailto:simon@josefsson.org>

0> In article <m23dm9sg21.fsf@angelica.rsasecurity.com>,
0> Simon wrote:

Simon> Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:

>> what do people do about the change is group hierarchy seperator?
>> Exchange uses "foo/bar" where gnus uses "foo.bar".  I just have to
>> do the translation myself because Exchange is more promiscuous
>> about names than gnus?  Is that the solution?
>> 
>> I see that gnus doesn't support making groups with "/" in the
>> names.  What have people done here?

Simon> Used group names with `/' names in them anyway. :-)
Simon>
Simon> I patched my version of `gnus-read-group' to allow `/' in group
Simon> names, and haven't noticed any problems.  I guess there might
Simon> be problems with backends other than nnimap, and that's the
Simon> reasons for the limit in valid characters.

I just subscribed my groups from browsing the server - I wasn't even
aware that Gnus didn't like the '/' (I've had no problems with spaces,
either).  My new groups were all created by splitting, so I've had no
problems there, either.

Re: moving mail from nnml -> nnimap

[Kai Großjohann]

Soren Dayton <dayton@overx.com> writes:

> what do people do about the change is group hierarchy seperator?
> Exchange uses "foo/bar" where gnus uses "foo.bar".  I just have to do
> the translation myself because Exchange is more promiscuous about
> names than gnus?  Is that the solution?

Hm.  I have never used Exchange.  I'm lucky enough to be using Cyrus
which also uses `foo.bar'.

What happens if you type `G m RET foo/bar RET nnimap RET'?  Or `G m
RET foo.bar RET nnimap RET'?  (I omitted any special prefix that
personal group names might need to have -- on Cyrus, personal groups
are `nnimap:INBOX.foo.bar', groups without the `INBOX' prefix are
resevered as shared groups.)

kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.