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A set of scripts for converting mail from various historic mail formats into RFC822-style messages.

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oldmailconvert

This is a set of scripts for converting mail from various historic mail formats into RFC822-style messages.

These were written to convert some old message archives into an format suitable for indexing and reading using modern software.

Programs

adddate

Adds a Date: line to an existing RFC822 message with the modified time of the message file. The script takes a file name as an argument and writes the modified message to stdout. If the message already has a Date: field, it is left untouched.

Usage:

adddate old.eml > new.eml

compuservecvt

Converts CompuServe messages. These consist of messages as logged in a terminal as they were displayed while using the remote message viewer. A single message is passed in to stdin and the converted messages is written to stdout. One command-line parameter is mandatory: "-t nnnnn,nnn" which specifies the CompuServe user ID that received the message. This is so a To: line can be added to the message, which otherwise would show no indication of the receiver.

Usage:

compuservecvt -t 77777,111 <old.txt > new.eml

mantescvt

Converts MANTES messages. MANTES was a file management system running on an IBM mainframe under MVS which was used from the 1970s through the 2000s. The input to this program is expected to be a terminal log of a single message as displayed in MANTES with extraneous lines removed. A single message is passed in to stdin and the converted messages is written to stdout.

Usage:

mantescvt old.txt > new.eml

uupccvt

Converts a message mailbox created by UUPC/extended. This was a uucp package for MS-DOS systems that used a custom mailbox format somewhat reminiscent of MMDF. A single message mailbox is passed in to stdin and an mbox mailbox is written to stdout. The normal "From" encoding is performed on the body of messages when required, as it required by the mbox format.

Usage:

uupccvt old.mbo > new.mbox

Installation

The latest source code can be obtained from https://github.com/dfandrich/oldmailconvert/

The scripts are written in a mix of Python and Bourne shell.

Build and install the latest release of code from Github with:

pip3 install https://glare.now.sh/dfandrich/oldmailconvert/tar

The regression test suite can be run with the command:

python3 setup.py test

Other programs

To convert Fidonet messages, try my program dumpfidomsg (https://github.com/dfandrich/dumpfidomsg/)

If you're more interested in converting between the contemporary formats mbox, MMDF, Maildir and MH mail, one simple way is to use the Mutt mailer (http://mutt.org/), by loading one style of mailbox and mass copying all the messages into the other style.

Author

Daniel Fandrich dan@coneharvesters.com

This program is Copyright (C) 2021 Daniel Fandrich. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

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A set of scripts for converting mail from various historic mail formats into RFC822-style messages.

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