From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Robert Thorpe Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: using movemail directly in .emacs Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:59:39 +0100 Message-ID: <87ppiwnt4k.fsf@robertthorpeconsulting.com> References: <871tvd8iza.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1401400826 13988 80.91.229.3 (29 May 2014 22:00:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:00:26 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: lee Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri May 30 00:00:19 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Wq8Mz-0002vd-Cg for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 30 May 2014 00:00:17 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:50496 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wq8My-0002T3-UX for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 29 May 2014 18:00:16 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:46820) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wq8MW-0002JD-SG for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 May 2014 17:59:55 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wq8MQ-0007BC-Iq for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 May 2014 17:59:48 -0400 Original-Received: from outbound-smtp01.blacknight.com ([81.17.249.7]:52212) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Wq8MQ-0007Aq-Co for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 29 May 2014 17:59:42 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.blacknight.com (pemlinmail04.blacknight.ie [81.17.254.17]) by outbound-smtp01.blacknight.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8FC6098DBC for ; Thu, 29 May 2014 21:57:23 +0000 (UTC) Original-Received: (qmail 5076 invoked from network); 29 May 2014 21:59:40 -0000 Original-Received: from unknown (HELO RTLaptop) (rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com@[109.77.63.248]) by 81.17.254.9 with ESMTPSA (DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA encrypted, authenticated); 29 May 2014 21:59:40 -0000 In-Reply-To: <871tvd8iza.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de> (message from lee on Thu, 29 May 2014 03:35:37 +0200) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 81.17.249.7 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:97950 Archived-At: lee writes: > Robert Thorpe writes: >> In general though storing lots of emails in a file isn't really a >> problem. >> [...] >> Mbox files are very simple, it's hard to get writing to them >> wrong. > > That goes only as long as everything works as intended. Have a power > failure or a yet-unnoticed disk failure, have your MUA crash due to some > bug or because the system kills it because it`s out of memory, have your > computer crash or freeze, have some issue with a network file system or > other things that don`t come to mind atm --- and your whole file with > all the mails may be gone. MUAs and MTAs have been using mbox files for a long time, they take precautions against this. Rmail, for example, uses Emacs' default backup file system. For each file MBOX there's a MBOX~ that can be used for recovery. Other mailers do different things. As I understand it, MTAs only delete emails from their internal cache when the email has been written to the users spool file. I've never lost any email because of this type of problem. (I have lost it using Microsoft PST files though). > Deal with a single (relatively small) file, and chances are that only > this single file is affected. > >> You're right about flags though. Mbox files aren't very portable >> between mailers for that reason. Another, bigger, problem is coding >> systems. Thunderbird (for example) treats mbox files as ASCII [1]. If >> you get a UTF-8 email in Thunderbird then it inserts it as base64 (well >> I assume it's base64) into the mbox. On the other hand in Rmail seems to >> inserts it as UTF-8. Both work correctly but in their own way. > > Hm, so you need to somehow identify such base64 encoded files and decode > them when searching ... that`s awkward. I just use Thunderbird for those ones. It's an issue though. I may recode those one day. >> I'm not saying that it's best to use mbox files, but the problems with >> them aren't large. Large directory structures have other problems. > > Problems like? It asks a lot of the filesystem. Some filesystems can't handle long path and some can't handle certain characters in filenames. Some behave quite slowly if a lot of directories are being checked. The minimum file size is quite large on many systems, so if you have lots of small emails then it wastes a lot of space. If I keep backup files that waste more space, but I can always delete a few of them if file length is an issue. I can just copy a mbox file to a USB key, or download one from a website (such as the GNU mailing list archives). However, I don't think that Maildirs or MH are bad systems. My mail point here is that mbox files aren't bad either. The whole debate is about a few details that aren't really that important. BR, Robert Thorpe