Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[Dnc]

Hi, I'm hoping to get some help related to nnimap.  My IT department
is in the process of switching servers, and I have only until saturday
to get this resolved.

Historically (until today), I've been using Oort Gnus 0.03, and the
IMAP server I've connected to is from the University of Washington,
version 4.5.

Today, our IT department moved my mail to the new mail server, which
is running Courier IMAP server, version 1.3.12.

The first thing I noticed is a change to the directory structure.
Where in my old imap I had mailboxes with names like "mail/in/dnc",
they are now "INBOX.in.dnc".  No big deal there, some string
substitution in my .gnus should resolve the issues.

But, I took a look at whats in "INBOX.in.dnc", and I see that all my
mail is there, but all marks are gone.  Every mail looks unread.  Now,
I have quite a few mailboxes, and quite a few old emails in them.  I'm
wondering if there's some way I can preserve the marks which still
exist on the old imap server.  Also, I'm wondering if my IT department
did something wrong to drop the marks, or is there nothing they can do
about it?

Any help is appreciated.  Thanks.

Oh, and by the way, I do plan to upgrade to ognus 0.05 as soon as I'm
sure this switchover has gone OK.

-Dave

Re: Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[Simon Josefsson]

Dnc <dnc@bigfoot.com> writes:

> Hi, I'm hoping to get some help related to nnimap.  My IT department
> is in the process of switching servers, and I have only until saturday
> to get this resolved.
>
> Historically (until today), I've been using Oort Gnus 0.03, and the
> IMAP server I've connected to is from the University of Washington,
> version 4.5.
>
> Today, our IT department moved my mail to the new mail server, which
> is running Courier IMAP server, version 1.3.12.
>
> The first thing I noticed is a change to the directory structure.
> Where in my old imap I had mailboxes with names like "mail/in/dnc",
> they are now "INBOX.in.dnc".  No big deal there, some string
> substitution in my .gnus should resolve the issues.
>
> But, I took a look at whats in "INBOX.in.dnc", and I see that all my
> mail is there, but all marks are gone.  Every mail looks unread.  Now,
> I have quite a few mailboxes, and quite a few old emails in them.  I'm
> wondering if there's some way I can preserve the marks which still
> exist on the old imap server.  Also, I'm wondering if my IT department
> did something wrong to drop the marks, or is there nothing they can do
> about it?

Nnimap uses marks from the server, so unless you confused Gnus somehow
(e.g., by chosing the same Gnus server name for both of your servers)
I think this is a server problem.

If both your servers are online, maybe you can copy your mailboxes
using Gnus which should preserve marks.

Re: Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[dcohen]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Nnimap uses marks from the server, so unless you confused Gnus somehow
> (e.g., by chosing the same Gnus server name for both of your servers)
> I think this is a server problem.

Hmmm... All I did was change my nnimap-address in my .gnus.  So, I
simply started connecting to the new server in place of the old
one.  I didn't try to connect to both servers at once.  Is it a
problem that I left the server name the same?

My gnus-select-method once got mail from "nexus", and now from
"escapo", like so:

(setq gnus-select-method
      '(nnimap "dcohen@webmethods.com"
;                (nnimap-address "nexus")
               (nnimap-address "escapo")
                (nnimap-expunge-on-close ask)
                (nnimap-list-pattern ("INBOX" "mail/*" "*") )
                ))


> 
> If both your servers are online, maybe you can copy your mailboxes
> using Gnus which should preserve marks.

This may be a good option for me.  Sorry for the dumb question, but
can you tell me how to accomplish this?

Thanks.

-Dave

Re: Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[Simon Josefsson]

dcohen@webmethods.com writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> Nnimap uses marks from the server, so unless you confused Gnus somehow
>> (e.g., by chosing the same Gnus server name for both of your servers)
>> I think this is a server problem.
>
> Hmmm... All I did was change my nnimap-address in my .gnus.  So, I
> simply started connecting to the new server in place of the old
> one.  I didn't try to connect to both servers at once.  Is it a
> problem that I left the server name the same?

It shouldn't be.  But you could try adding a new server with a
different name to see if the marks are preserved on it.  If so, we
could try to debug it further.

>> If both your servers are online, maybe you can copy your mailboxes
>> using Gnus which should preserve marks.
>
> This may be a good option for me.  Sorry for the dumb question, but
> can you tell me how to accomplish this?

Process mark articles in a group using # and copy them using B c.

Re: Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>:

>> This may be a good option for me.  Sorry for the dumb question, but
>> can you tell me how to accomplish this?

> Process mark articles in a group using # and copy them using B c.

TIP: To process mark a lot of articles, press `C-u' and a number
before pressing `#', eg. to process mark 50 articles, do
	C-u 50 #

Re: Switched IMAP servers, lost marks

[Martin Thornquist]

[ Steinar Bang ]

> TIP: To process mark a lot of articles, press `C-u' and a number
> before pressing `#', eg. to process mark 50 articles, do
> 	C-u 50 #

Or, as would probably be the thing in this case, `M P a' marks all
articles in a *Summary* buffer.


Martin
-- 
"An ideal world is left as an exercise to the reader."
                                                 -Paul Graham, On Lisp