changing from mbox to maildir

[Ric Otte <ric@otte.ucsc.edu>]

Hi,

I am wanting to change my mail from mbox format to maildir format (to make it
easier to incrementally backup my email using rsync).  I don't really understand
the differences between MH and maildir, but rather arbitrarily decided to go with
maildir.  Before I completely screw things up I thought I'd ask to see if my plan
to change is workable.  I am using fetchmail, procmail, and mutt.  I assume my
fetchmail settings can remain the same.  For procmail and mutt I put "/" at
the end of the mailbox names.  For my .procmailrc file, I thought something like
the following would do:

  PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
  MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail             # you'd better make sure it exists
  DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/inbox/          # completely optional
  LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail.log  # recommended

  :0:
  *^Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
  in.debian/.

For my .muttrc, I was thinking of changing to the following (in addition to the
other stuff I believe is irrelevant to this change):

  set mbox_type=Maildir
  set mbox=~/Maildir/inbox/
  set folder=~/Mail/
  set record="~/Mail/outbox/"
  set spoolfile=~/Maildir/inbox/

I also want some lines like the following which (I hope) will provide default
mailboxes when saving from various email addresses:

  save-hook neu =jerry/

I also like read mail from certain inboxes, such as 'in.debian', to be moved to
mailbox 'debian' when the mailbox is closed.  So I think I want something like
this:

  mbox-hook =in.debian/ =debian/

I want mutt to look for new mail in the following mailboxes:

  mailboxes ! +inbox/ +in.debian/

Does it look like the above will work?

Another question is whether I could put some of my old mbox files in the Mail
directory, and if mutt could work on a mixture of maildir and mbox formats.  I
have several directories of old mail that I keep and occasionally look at.  If
not, I will have to convert all of my old mbox files to maildir files, but I'd
really like to avoid that.  

Any advice about modifying .procmailrc and .muttrc would be appreciated.  Thanks,

Ric