maildir and nmh/mh

maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

Greetings. I've just installed notmuch and notmuch-mutt, obviously
for use with mutt. Notmuch was initially setup pointing at my
home Maildir directory, and setup ran fine. My testing within mutt using
notmuch-mutt macros also worked OK. So far, nifty. Great work!

Then (this has now been purged and reverted to Maildir only!) I tried
linking into Maildir a pair of very old mh/nmh hierachies, which share
many duplicated messages (but always with the same message numbers,
I believe).

I then let notmuch churn for several hours to index. This seemed
to work.

Not really though.

Attempts to search with the same notmuch-mutt macro after the mh
hierachies are added in are totally confused. There are many
link errors during the serach ("file already exists" references mh mail
message file numbers), and the resulting messages list in mutt is
hopeless -- wrong messages, headers displayed don't match the
actual message contents, etc.

So, maildir - 1, mh - 0.

As noted above, I purged and rebuilt just for Maildir -- and
again that part is working fine.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren 
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org 
         PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[cesar mena]

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:

> Greetings. I've just installed notmuch and notmuch-mutt, obviously
> for use with mutt. Notmuch was initially setup pointing at my
> home Maildir directory, and setup ran fine. My testing within mutt using
> notmuch-mutt macros also worked OK. So far, nifty. Great work!
>
> Then (this has now been purged and reverted to Maildir only!) I tried
> linking into Maildir a pair of very old mh/nmh hierachies, which share
> many duplicated messages (but always with the same message numbers,
> I believe).
>
> I then let notmuch churn for several hours to index. This seemed
> to work.
>
> Not really though.
>
> Attempts to search with the same notmuch-mutt macro after the mh
> hierachies are added in are totally confused. There are many
> link errors during the serach ("file already exists" references mh mail
> message file numbers), and the resulting messages list in mutt is
> hopeless -- wrong messages, headers displayed don't match the
> actual message contents, etc.
>
> So, maildir - 1, mh - 0.
>
> As noted above, I purged and rebuilt just for Maildir -- and
> again that part is working fine.
>
> Any suggestions? Thanks!
>
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren 
> Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
> Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues
> Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org 
>          PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
> Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
> Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
> Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
>
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> https://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

hello,

maybe this will help convert your mh hierarchy into maildir?

      http://www.informatik-vollmer.de/software/mh2maildir.php

cheers,
-cm

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[David Bremner]

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:

>
> Attempts to search with the same notmuch-mutt macro after the mh
> hierachies are added in are totally confused. There are many
> link errors during the serach ("file already exists" references mh mail
> message file numbers), and the resulting messages list in mutt is
> hopeless -- wrong messages, headers displayed don't match the
> actual message contents, etc.
>
> So, maildir - 1, mh - 0.
>
> As noted above, I purged and rebuilt just for Maildir -- and
> again that part is working fine.
>

Is trying neomutt (with built in notmuch support) an option for you?

d

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

Hi. No, the local mutt is sufficiently customized that switching
to another version is a no-op. I also have been trying the mh2maildir
script (though I had hoped to avoid this, and don't know if I'd
still have the same problems with duplicate messages in the mh 
hierarchies causing apparent notmuch errors). However, the script
as is fails under 16.04, apparently due to changes in the find
command syntax. An error regarding the position of the -maxdepth
option was trivial to fix, but I'm not having any luck so far
avoiding the "paths must precede expression" error from find. Thanks.

L


On 07/06 11:18, David Bremner wrote:
> Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> 
> >
> > Attempts to search with the same notmuch-mutt macro after the mh
> > hierachies are added in are totally confused. There are many
> > link errors during the serach ("file already exists" references mh mail
> > message file numbers), and the resulting messages list in mutt is
> > hopeless -- wrong messages, headers displayed don't match the
> > actual message contents, etc.
> >
> > So, maildir - 1, mh - 0.
> >
> > As noted above, I purged and rebuilt just for Maildir -- and
> > again that part is working fine.
> >
> 
> Is trying neomutt (with built in notmuch support) an option for you?
> 
> d


--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren 
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org 
         PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

After fixing the find syntax I got mh2maildir working. However, it does not
appear practical in my situation, since I'm dealing with more than 25 years of archived
mh messages! The conversion would take ages with too many manual exceptions.
So unless there's some way to correctly index these natively with notmuch, I guess
this is a dead end. But thanks.

L

On 07/06 09:28, cesar mena wrote:
> Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> 
> > Greetings. I've just installed notmuch and notmuch-mutt, obviously
> > for use with mutt. Notmuch was initially setup pointing at my
> > home Maildir directory, and setup ran fine. My testing within mutt using
> > notmuch-mutt macros also worked OK. So far, nifty. Great work!
> >
> > Then (this has now been purged and reverted to Maildir only!) I tried
> > linking into Maildir a pair of very old mh/nmh hierachies, which share
> > many duplicated messages (but always with the same message numbers,
> > I believe).
> >
> > I then let notmuch churn for several hours to index. This seemed
> > to work.
> >
> > Not really though.
> >
> > Attempts to search with the same notmuch-mutt macro after the mh
> > hierachies are added in are totally confused. There are many
> > link errors during the serach ("file already exists" references mh mail
> > message file numbers), and the resulting messages list in mutt is
> > hopeless -- wrong messages, headers displayed don't match the
> > actual message contents, etc.
> >
> > So, maildir - 1, mh - 0.
> >
> > As noted above, I purged and rebuilt just for Maildir -- and
> > again that part is working fine.
> >

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[David Bremner]

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:

> After fixing the find syntax I got mh2maildir working. However, it does not
> appear practical in my situation, since I'm dealing with more than 25 years of archived
> mh messages! The conversion would take ages with too many manual exceptions.
> So unless there's some way to correctly index these natively with notmuch, I guess
> this is a dead end. But thanks.

For what it's worth, I suspect the problem is not with notmuch proper
but with the notmuch-mutt script.  Unfortunatately zack (in copy) is
really the only one who knows very much about the script.  If you could
make a small tar ball of an MH directory that causes problems for
notmuch-mutt, zack could probably be tricked into looking at it.

d

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

I'll have to see what I can dig out, but it's not immediately clear
that I can separate out individual folders that will trigger the problems.

But this does suggest another possibility. Assuming notmuch is
actually accurately indexing the two massive mh hierarchies, is there
some other simple front end I could use for the (occasional) searches
I'd like to do on the mh mail archive? Mutt is working fine for the
more recent maildir messages. If I need to keep the mh messages
separate (e.g., under some other username and a separate notmuch db)
and use a different front end to search and view them, that will work.
I won't need this every day! In fact, keeping the mh messages separate
from the maildir messages is probably good for other reasons. Thanks.



On 07/06 15:47, David Bremner wrote:
> Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> 
> > After fixing the find syntax I got mh2maildir working. However, it does not
> > appear practical in my situation, since I'm dealing with more than 25 years of archived
> > mh messages! The conversion would take ages with too many manual exceptions.
> > So unless there's some way to correctly index these natively with notmuch, I guess
> > this is a dead end. But thanks.
> 
> For what it's worth, I suspect the problem is not with notmuch proper
> but with the notmuch-mutt script.  Unfortunatately zack (in copy) is
> really the only one who knows very much about the script.  If you could
> make a small tar ball of an MH directory that causes problems for
> notmuch-mutt, zack could probably be tricked into looking at it.
> 
> d

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[David Bremner]

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:

> I'll have to see what I can dig out, but it's not immediately clear
> that I can separate out individual folders that will trigger the problems.
>
> But this does suggest another possibility. Assuming notmuch is
> actually accurately indexing the two massive mh hierarchies, is there
> some other simple front end I could use for the (occasional) searches
> I'd like to do on the mh mail archive? Mutt is working fine for the
> more recent maildir messages. If I need to keep the mh messages
> separate (e.g., under some other username and a separate notmuch db)
> and use a different front end to search and view them, that will work.
> I won't need this every day! In fact, keeping the mh messages separate
> from the maildir messages is probably good for other reasons. Thanks.
>

There are a few possibilities (see [1] for a more complete list),
depending on what sort of front end you are looking for.

- There's a command line interface accessible via "notmuch"

- There's an emacs interface (which is probably the most used by the
  notmuch developers)

- There's alot, which is a curses based front end

- There's astroid which is a gtk based front end.

- There's the already mentioned neomutt (which might work somehow in a
  secondary account, or something).


[1]: https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

OK, it looks like using neomutt on a different machine would solve
the problem. It isn't immediately clear to me (after digging around
the docs for a bit) where the repo is that will install neomutt as
opposed to standard mutt, or how the neomutt .muttrc should be configured
to simply search and view messages from the notmuch db. Thanks.

L


On 07/06 16:03, David Bremner wrote:
> Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> 
> > I'll have to see what I can dig out, but it's not immediately clear
> > that I can separate out individual folders that will trigger the problems.
> >
> > But this does suggest another possibility. Assuming notmuch is
> > actually accurately indexing the two massive mh hierarchies, is there
> > some other simple front end I could use for the (occasional) searches
> > I'd like to do on the mh mail archive? Mutt is working fine for the
> > more recent maildir messages. If I need to keep the mh messages
> > separate (e.g., under some other username and a separate notmuch db)
> > and use a different front end to search and view them, that will work.
> > I won't need this every day! In fact, keeping the mh messages separate
> > from the maildir messages is probably good for other reasons. Thanks.
> >
> 
> There are a few possibilities (see [1] for a more complete list),
> depending on what sort of front end you are looking for.
> 
> - There's a command line interface accessible via "notmuch"
> 
> - There's an emacs interface (which is probably the most used by the
>   notmuch developers)
> 
> - There's alot, which is a curses based front end
> 
> - There's astroid which is a gtk based front end.
> 
> - There's the already mentioned neomutt (which might work somehow in a
>   secondary account, or something).
> 
> 
> [1]: https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[David Bremner]

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:

> OK, it looks like using neomutt on a different machine would solve
> the problem. It isn't immediately clear to me (after digging around
> the docs for a bit) where the repo is that will install neomutt as
> opposed to standard mutt, or how the neomutt .muttrc should be configured
> to simply search and view messages from the notmuch db. Thanks.
>
> L

I'm not really a neomutt expert, but for packages, see

https://www.neomutt.org/distro.html

and for configuration

https://www.neomutt.org/feature/notmuch

I know there's a pretty active/friendly IRC channel #neomutt on
irc.freenode.net

d

Re: maildir and nmh/mh

[Lauren Weinstein]

I've got "alot" working well enough for my purposes now ("good enough
for jazz!"). Thanks all!

L



On 07/06 11:54, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> 
> I'll have to see what I can dig out, but it's not immediately clear
> that I can separate out individual folders that will trigger the problems.
> 
> But this does suggest another possibility. Assuming notmuch is
> actually accurately indexing the two massive mh hierarchies, is there
> some other simple front end I could use for the (occasional) searches
> I'd like to do on the mh mail archive? Mutt is working fine for the
> more recent maildir messages. If I need to keep the mh messages
> separate (e.g., under some other username and a separate notmuch db)
> and use a different front end to search and view them, that will work.
> I won't need this every day! In fact, keeping the mh messages separate
> from the maildir messages is probably good for other reasons. Thanks.
> 
> 
> 
> On 07/06 15:47, David Bremner wrote:
> > Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> > 
> > > After fixing the find syntax I got mh2maildir working. However, it does not
> > > appear practical in my situation, since I'm dealing with more than 25 years of archived
> > > mh messages! The conversion would take ages with too many manual exceptions.
> > > So unless there's some way to correctly index these natively with notmuch, I guess
> > > this is a dead end. But thanks.
> > 
> > For what it's worth, I suspect the problem is not with notmuch proper
> > but with the notmuch-mutt script.  Unfortunatately zack (in copy) is
> > really the only one who knows very much about the script.  If you could
> > make a small tar ball of an MH directory that causes problems for
> > notmuch-mutt, zack could probably be tricked into looking at it.
> > 
> > d
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> https://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch
>