From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: daniel@wagner-home.com (Daniel Wagner)
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:14:39 -0500
Subject: [sup-talk] migrating email to a new computer
In-Reply-To: <1227743600-sup-8882@entry>
References: <1227135030-sup-401@buckwheat> <1227743600-sup-8882@entry>
Message-ID: <1228710381-sup-9800@buckwheat>

Excerpts from William Morgan's message of Wed Nov 26 19:05:13 -0500 2008:
> I *think* that just moving files from cur/ to cur/ and new/ to new/ will
> work, but moving from new/ to cur/ I think typically changes the
> filename slightly. I don't know if the rename is required or optional
> though. Sup certainly doesn't care, but other tools might.

As you said, sup didn't care a jot.  Lovely!  Since I'm not using any
other tools for my mail, this is just what I will do.

> to rebuild your index from scratch. You can use sup-dump to dump out
> state information into a huge text file, and sup-sync --restored
> --restore should be able to make use of that information to keep your
> message state once your new sources have been created.
> 
> But definitely, DEFINITELY test it out first. I haven't tried that stuff
> for a while and it might have experienced bitrot.

Of *course* I'm going to test first.  I don't trust software any more
since I've seen how it's made. =)

> That sounds great. Let us know how it goes, and I'll do my best to help
> you though the process if things break. Just be sure to keep a backup of
> everything. Message state is a precious asset.

I have a project due tomorrow, so naturally I figured I'd spend a few
hours playing with this stuff tonight.  For the most part, I've been
very pleased -- things have gone relatively smoothly compared to my
expectations!

I sup-dumped, copied all the files in oldmachine/Maildir/**/cur and
oldmachine/Maildir/**/new to newmachine/Maildir/cur, started up sup-sync
--restored --restore, then went and made dinner.  Now for some numbers:

The Numbers According To sup-sync
entries in the dump file    26462
entries scanned             24779
entries added               24373
warnings                       27
fakes                          75

The Numbers According To sup
                            old machine     new machine
messages in the index       26459           24416
messages with +inbox           50              45
messages with +Starred         67              57


The warnings took the form
warning: error (Iconv::InvalidEncoding) decoding message body from XXX: invalid encoding ("utf8//IGNORE", "XXX")
where "XXX" was "unicode-1-1utf7" 17 times, "unknown-8bit" 9 times, and
"X-UNKNOWN" 1 time.  It also faked message-ids 68 times, from headers 3
times, and date headers 4 times.

So, I'm not sure I understand how to reconcile these numbers.  Things
are mismatched in odd ways; for example, how could there be more entries
in the dump than there are messages in the index?  Or how come "entries
added" + "warnings" != "messages in the index"?

That's okay, though.  There are people for whom impermanence is a way of
life.  There are a few categories of messages for which I really, really
want the impermanence to start later, though -- specifically +inbox and
+Starred messages.  Since there's only 15 of these lost, is there some
way I can grab/index those manually?

...or a way to help identify and fix the underlying problem?
~d

P.S. Sorry for all the details.  I realize this is probably much more
interesting to me than to any of you, since it affects me more directly,
but I just couldn't help myself. =P