[LUGSB] Re: Email management

[Ilya Sukhanov (dotCOMmie)]

Jonathan Brandvein wrote:
> [...]  Through either imap
> or pop, I can't download messages that aren't in my inbox, but of course I
> can't move messages to my inbox with my quota capped unless I delete some
> messages.

You have to subscribe to folders in imap else they wont appear. In 
thunderbird/iceweasel right click onto the account name (blah at ic.sunysb.edu) and 
select subscribe then you can select which folders you subscribe to.

Do not use POP3, it sucks and if you use all 500 methods to access your mail at 
once something is bound to screw up. You mentioned that you lost all your email 
in your inbox while using POP3. This is because by default POP3 clients are 
usually configured to not retain email on the server and just download it all 
and store it locally. You can usually configure POP3 to retain email on the 
server. But don't bother just use IMAP and skip POP3.

You can probably place this mail back on your server. Create a new account to 
the same mail server but use imap. Disable the configured POP account from 
checking mail. Then just drag and drop the mail from account to account.

> I suppose I could log into sparky and scp my entire ~/Mail
> directory away. I don't know what kind of format it's in or what program I
> would use to conveniently read it, but the contents would all be there in
> plain text.

Its most likely in mbox format. Its a popular format for storing email so there 
have to be hundreds of apps that can read it. I've never had to deal with it but 
you can use a client like mutt (there are plenty of clients which support mbox 
format) to read it. A quick search of debian apt repos I found this:

archmbox - a simple email archiver written in perl
mail-expire - Utility to extract outdated messages from mbox files
chewmail - mail archiver for various mailbox formats
mboxcheck - MBOX scan utility
mboxcheck-applet - A GNOME2 applet to check your mboxes
mboxgrep - Grep through mailboxes

> Well, except for the attachments, and as I've got homeworks to
> grade in there, it would be unacceptable if I were unable to recover those.

In email attachments are usually encoded in base64. There is an application 
called base64 which decodes that format. But you shouldn't need it if you just 
view your mbox file with some mail client -- like mutt.

> I'm gonna contact client support or the student helpdesk tomorrow.

Just ask them for larger quota. Although you should probably contact sparky 
admins for that directly help desk is probably going to be futile. If I recall 
correctly their email is root at ic sunysb education. But it might not be, thats 
probably one thing help desk can help you with.

Don't give up too quickly d:

--Ilya S.