gecko-dev/mailnews/movemail

From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!newsfeed.netscape.com!news.sgi.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newscon02!prodigy.com!darkstar.prodigy.com!davidsen
From: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen)
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: 16 Jun 1999 22:06:55 GMT
Organization: TMR Associates, Schenectady NY
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <7k975v$iao$1@newssvr03-int.news.prodigy.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
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X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

In article <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>,
Roland Mainz  <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> wrote:

| I don't know whether this is implemented or not...
| 
| Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?

I saw this subject and thought someone was asking for the same thing I
want, a way to get the system alias file used under UNIX. All I need is
a way to disable the incorrect address "completion" feature completely,
if that's possible.

When I send a mail about a machine problem, I want to send to admins and
get the alias which is the primary and secondary admin people for this
particular system. What I get is completion to admins@tmr.com, which is
every system administrator in the whole company. Okay, it's a small
company, but still...

I shouldn't have to remember to type admins@localhost (generates a DNS
lookup, too) to prevent this, on a UNIX system aliases are a part of
every other mailer, and I suggest that the default should be to check
aliases before adding the domain.

Just my pet peeve at the moment. I normally run a text only reader,
since I don't want my mail to animate, follow links, sing or install a
virus. I'm just not a trusting person, I guess.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
  The Internet is not the fountain of youth, but some days it feels like
the fountain of immaturity.

From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 20:32:49 +0200
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: castor.informatik.med.uni-giessen.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4u)
X-Accept-Language: en
X-Mozilla-Status: 8000
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000


Hi !

----

I don't know whether this is implemented or not...

Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?

----

Bye,
Roland

--
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o)  Roland Mainz                               C programmer
  \__\/\/__/   Roland.Mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de MPEG specialist
  /O /==\ O\   gisburn@w-specht.rhein-ruhr.de             Sun&&Amiga programmer
 (;O/ \/ \O;)  TEL +49 (0) 2426901568  FAX +49 (0) 2426901569



From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Alec Flett <alecf@netscape.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 16:12:50 -0700
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: h-208-12-40-101.netscape.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.3 i686)
X-Accept-Language: English, en
To: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

Roland Mainz wrote:

> Hi !
>
> ----
>
> I don't know whether this is implemented or not...
>
> Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?
>

Hmm... my gut is telling me that nobody from Netscape will be working on this....but I'm
quite sure that if someone does feel like adding this functionality, many unix mail people
would be very pleased...

                                    Alec

From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 01:29:29 +0200
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: castor.informatik.med.uni-giessen.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4u)
X-Accept-Language: en
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000


Hi !

----

Alec Flett wrote:

> > I don't know whether this is implemented or not...
> >
> > Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?
> >
>
> Hmm... my gut is telling me that nobody from Netscape will be working on this....but I'm
> quite sure that if someone does feel like adding this functionality, many unix mail people
> would be very pleased...

Question(s):
- What must/should be implemented to get this working (maybe a list of parts which must
  be implemented) ?
  Our current way is to use a POP3 server for Mozilla. The idea would be to strip-down
  the pop3-server code, strip-down the Mozilla5-pop3-client code and connect both code
  pieces at their ends. Sound simple (in theory), does it (in real world) ?
- Does Mozilla 4.x implement local Unix mail ?
- Does Solaris 2.7 implement a genereric mail access support API for this ?

----

Bye,
Roland

--
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o)  Roland Mainz                               C programmer
  \__\/\/__/   Roland.Mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de MPEG specialist
  /O /==\ O\   gisburn@w-specht.rhein-ruhr.de             Sun&&Amiga programmer
 (;O/ \/ \O;)  TEL +49 (0) 2426901568  FAX +49 (0) 2426901569



From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Alec Flett <alecf@netscape.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 17:46:25 -0700
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <375DB961.86D7518B@netscape.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com> <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: h-208-12-40-101.netscape.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.3 i686)
X-Accept-Language: English, en
To: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

Roland Mainz wrote:

> Hi !
>
> ----
>
> Alec Flett wrote:
>
> > > I don't know whether this is implemented or not...
> > >
> > > Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?
> > >
> >
> > Hmm... my gut is telling me that nobody from Netscape will be working on this....but I'm
> > quite sure that if someone does feel like adding this functionality, many unix mail people
> > would be very pleased...
>
> Question(s):
> - What must/should be implemented to get this working (maybe a list of parts which must
>   be implemented) ?
>   Our current way is to use a POP3 server for Mozilla. The idea would be to strip-down
>   the pop3-server code, strip-down the Mozilla5-pop3-client code and connect both code
>   pieces at their ends. Sound simple (in theory), does it (in real world) ?

(I'm going to start calling Unix Mail "movemail" because we've called it that in past versions
of the product)

It's actually probably simpler than your description - we've done a fairly good job at keeping
the idea of POP (as a protocol for retrieving remote mail) and Local Mail (as a way of storing
mail messages locally) as seperate entities, though there is still work to be done to seperate
the two. Both implementations reside in mozilla/mailnews/local though.

the movemail implementation could leverage the Local Mail work, performing the same function as
POP is today. Ideally, Local Mail would not be aware of any protocol specifics, so that Pop3
and movemail are both first class mail protocols.

Scott or Scott could go into more specifics.

If you're interested in helping us, the first thing to do would be to try to break local mail
apart from POP in a way that POP is just one more pluggable mail protocol that stores mail in
Local Mail....if you submit patches, I'll be more than happy to review them and check them
in...

>
> - Does Mozilla 4.x implement local Unix mail ?

Yes, but the code is VERY different than our current codebase, it's fairly simple, and wouldn't
really be worth the effort of bringing it over

>
> - Does Solaris 2.7 implement a genereric mail access support API for this ?
>

No, unfortunately not...and even if it did, there's no cross-Unix API so I wouldn't want us to
be tied to one particular unix.

                                        Alec



From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Akkana Peck <akkana@netscape.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 18:43:56 -0700
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <375DC6DC.815E9790@netscape.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com> <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: h-208-12-38-95.netscape.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.6 i686)
X-Accept-Language: en
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

> > > Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?

> Alec Flett wrote:
> > Hmm... my gut is telling me that nobody from Netscape will be working on this....but I'm
> > quite sure that if someone does feel like adding this functionality, many unix mail people
> > would be very pleased...

Roland Mainz wrote:
> Question(s):
> - What must/should be implemented to get this working (maybe a list of parts which must
>   be implemented) ?
>   Our current way is to use a POP3 server for Mozilla. The idea would be to strip-down
>   the pop3-server code, strip-down the Mozilla5-pop3-client code and connect both code
>   pieces at their ends. Sound simple (in theory), does it (in real world) ?
> - Does Mozilla 4.x implement local Unix mail ?
> - Does Solaris 2.7 implement a genereric mail access support API for this ?

Seems like it should be easier than that.  /var/mail/username (or
whatever) is just a Berkeley mail folder, which we already support. 
Seems to me that if you did two things:

1. Make the inbox folder name, not just the directory it lives in
(mail.server.server1.directory) configurable, so you can say "the inbox
file is [file name]" instead of "the inbox file is [directory
name]/Inbox" the way it does now.  (Alternately, I suppose users could
just symlink /var/mail/`whoami` to ~/mozillamail/Inbox or wherever ...)

2. Change the periodic mail download so that instead of polling the POP
or IMAP server, it just refreshes from the inbox folder.  I haven't
looked into the biff code in 5.0 (if it's there yet) so I don't know
how configurable this is.

Is there something else here that's tricky?  I never understood why we
had all that movemail stuff in 4.x when we already supported Berkeley
mail files.

	...Akkana
From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 16:56:11 +0200
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <375E808B.C3A02DE0@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com> <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DC6DC.815E9790@netscape.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: castor.informatik.med.uni-giessen.de
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4u)
X-Accept-Language: en
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000


Hi !

----

Akkana Peck wrote:

> > > > Is it planned that Mozilla 5 implements support for local Unix mail (e.g. /var/mail/) ?
>
> Seems like it should be easier than that.  /var/mail/username (or
> whatever) is just a Berkeley mail folder, which we already support.
> Seems to me that if you did two things:

I filed Bugzilla (Mail/news) bug 7836 (feature request) to track this idea (and to get this
feature implemented in the mail/news-prefs dialog).

----

Bye,
Roland

--
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o)  Roland Mainz                               C programmer
  \__\/\/__/   Roland.Mainz@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de MPEG specialist
  /O /==\ O\   gisburn@w-specht.rhein-ruhr.de             Sun&&Amiga programmer
 (;O/ \/ \O;)  TEL +49 (0) 2426901568  FAX +49 (0) 2426901569



From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Alec Flett <alecf@netscape.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 18:06:42 -0700
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <375F0FA2.EF7EC89D@netscape.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com> <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DC6DC.815E9790@netscape.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: h-208-12-40-101.netscape.com
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X-Accept-Language: English, en
To: Akkana Peck <akkana@netscape.com>
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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Akkana Peck wrote:

>
> Is there something else here that's tricky?  I never understood why we
> had all that movemail stuff in 4.x when we already supported Berkeley
> mail files.

I think one of the main reasons for this is because it's kind of good e-mail karma to move your
mail OUT of /var/mail and put it in your own directory. I think this is what other unixmail
clients do....

The other issue is that metadata is kept about each mailbox file - what messages are unread, the
sorting order, the character set, etc... We do this normally by keeping a .msf file with the same
name as the directory at the same level as this directory. This means that if I try to point my
inbox at /var/mail/alecf, messenger will want to create a file /var/mail/alecf.msf

It would likely be difficult to change this, because bits of our architecture depend on in

...our architecture also depends on the folder hierarchy matching a directory structure on
disk...meaning that if I have, in messenger:

Local Mail
  +- INBOX
  +- My Folder
     +- Another Folder

The assumption is that INBOX is a sibling of My Folder on disk, and that Another Folder is a
mailbox inside the directory My Folder.sbd (since My Folder is already a file, not a
subdirectory). This means that My Folder would go into /var/mail/My Folder and Another Folder
would go in /var/mail/My Folder.sbd/AnotherFolder

it would be alot of overhead to try and abstract this so that each folder's location is
independant of it's position in messenger's hierarchy. I think this overhead is not worth the
minimal gain in capability.

                                Alec

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From - Thu Jun 17 00:59:57 1999
Path: secnews.netscape.com!not-for-mail
From: Seth Spitzer <sspitzer@netscape.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news
Subject: Re: Request for implementation: Support for Unix local mail
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 00:54:41 -0700
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Lines: 81
Message-ID: <3768A9C1.DD81537D@netscape.com>
References: <375D61D1.B3CD128F@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DA372.15BA02CC@netscape.com> <375DA759.4687D7AE@informatik.med.uni-giessen.de> <375DC6DC.815E9790@netscape.com> <375F0FA2.EF7EC89D@netscape.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: h-205-217-240-69.netscape.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.36 i686)
X-Accept-Language: en
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

Alec,

> > Is there something else here that's tricky?  I never understood why we
> > had all that movemail stuff in 4.x when we already supported Berkeley
> > mail files.
> 
> I think one of the main reasons for this is because it's kind of good e-mail karma to move your
> mail OUT of /var/mail and put it in your own directory. I think this is what other unixmail
> clients do....

I just looked at the movemail code from 4.x and alec is right.

ns/cmd/xfe/movemail.c basically did this:

lock /var/spool/mail/$USERNAME
copy /var/spool/mail/$USERNAME to .netscape.mail-recovery
call MSG_IncorporateFromFile() with .netscape.mail-recovery

I'm leaving out the gory file locking details and the builtin vs
external movemail stuff.

movemail in 5.0 is like pop, but you can't leave mail on the "server",
and the "server" is really your spool file.

> The other issue is that metadata is kept about each mailbox file - what messages are unread, the
> sorting order, the character set, etc... We do this normally by keeping a .msf file with the same
> name as the directory at the same level as this directory. This means that if I try to point my
> inbox at /var/mail/alecf, messenger will want to create a file /var/mail/alecf.msf
> 
> It would likely be difficult to change this, because bits of our architecture depend on in
> 
> ...our architecture also depends on the folder hierarchy matching a directory structure on
> disk...meaning that if I have, in messenger:
> 
> Local Mail
>   +- INBOX
>   +- My Folder
>      +- Another Folder
> 
> The assumption is that INBOX is a sibling of My Folder on disk, and that Another Folder is a
> mailbox inside the directory My Folder.sbd (since My Folder is already a file, not a
> subdirectory). This means that My Folder would go into /var/mail/My Folder and Another Folder
> would go in /var/mail/My Folder.sbd/AnotherFolder
> 
> it would be alot of overhead to try and abstract this so that each folder's location is
> independant of it's position in messenger's hierarchy. I think this overhead is not worth the
> minimal gain in capability.

we have ~/ImapMail, ~/Mail, ~/News, we could have ~/MoveMail

Its all berkeley style mail boxes, and when we process the
.netscape.mail-recovery file, it writes into ~/MoveMail/Inbox (like what
pop does to ~/Mail/Inbox)

in 5.0 you could have multiple imap, multiple pop, and local UNIX mail
all at the same time.

How about them apples?

I've sanitizing the spence's old ns/cmd/xfe/movemail.c code now.  I'll
bring it over into the 5.0 tree, and start up a
mozilla/mailnews/movemail directory.

One thing:  alecf and I (the UNIX people on 5.0 mail / news) will
probably not have time to implement movemail for 5.0

It would be so cool if someone out there wanted to take this on for 5.0.

Think about it:  

	movemail users will love you
	your peers will admire you
	free mozilla t-shirts (I'll make sure you get some)

I'm adding adding this task to http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/jobs.html
right now.

-Seth
-- 
Seth Spitzer			
http://people.netscape.com/sspitzer		about:sspitzer