Moving evolution mail folder

Roken · 2018-02-12 14:07:39

I've been noticing real problems with TB becoming a resource hog, so decided to give evolution a go.

Two questions:

1. I would like the evolution email folder on my NFS. However, moving and symlinking just hangs evolution at startup until it eventually exits quietly. There's no terminal output at all. Works fine if I keep the folder at ~/.local/share
2. I have a bash script that would read the number of new mails and format the output for conky for thunderbird. Can I do a similar thing for evolution?

Happy to provide relevant information.

Trilby · 2018-02-12 14:28:42

Do thundirbird and evolution use the same format for mail (by default)? If not, you'll need to export from one or import to the other, or use some other conversion tool. Also note that most mail clients can be configured to use formats other than their default.

As for #2, how could the mail client you use to read your mail impact a bash script that counts the number of on-disk files?

Roken · 2018-02-12 14:37:19

Thanks for the reply.

Re 1. They don't, but I've successfully imported emails and contacts from TB to Evolution. It's simply an issue with storing the evolution folder elsewhere (default is ~/.local/share/evolution whilst I would like it on /mnt/media/evolution). Symlinking is supposed to work, but no go.
Re 2: The script I used was:

#!/bin/bash
# Get file
for mail in /mnt/NFS/TEmail/Mail/pop.yahoo.com/*
do
 excludedir=`echo $mail | sed 's/.*\.sbd\/\(.*\)/\1/'`
 excludedir=`echo $excludedir | sed 's/.*\(\.\).*/\1/'`
 #echo $excludedir
 if [ "$excludedir" != "." ]; then
  #echo "$mail"
  tmailcount=$(grep -c "X-Mozilla-Status: 0000" "$mail")
  #echo $tmailcount
  mailcount=$(($mailcount+$tmailcount))
  #echo $mailcount
 fi
done
tmailcount=$(grep -c "X-Mozilla-Status: 0000" /mnt/NFS/TEmail/Mail/pop.yahoo.com/Inbox)
#echo $tmailcount
mailcount=$(($mailcount+$tmailcount))
echo $mailcount

I have several email addresses, and used different scripts for different addresses. (NB. I'm writing this on my desktop, which uses a different mountpoint for the NFS share. On the laptop /mnt/NFS is /mnt/media)

Trilby · 2018-02-12 14:46:47

Ah, that makes sense. Is your symlink to the mount point (e.g. a directory on the same filesystem) or is it a cross-filesystem link? The former should definitely work, the latter can be tricky.

Ideally evolution should be able to be configured to use a different directory directly, though I have no experience with it. Alternatively, you may be able to use a bind mount rather than a symlink.

As for the counting script, that does seem to depend on an arbitrary thunderbird header, so that will not work. If this is a maildir, you may want to check out `notmuch` as it will handle this for you (and do it much more efficiently).

Roken · 2018-02-12 19:48:04

The mount point is to a drive connected directly to my router, but it shouldn't be much of an issue (I say). The same drive is used by my Pi as a plex server, and is happily mounted to both my laptop and desktop for more direct access.

EDIT: As I understand it, the OS shouldn;t really be aware of where it is, and so neither should evolution. The problem is the hard coded path in evolution I believe.

Last edited by Roken (2018-02-12 19:49:19)

Roken · 2018-02-17 22:22:22

As an update, I switched to IMAP rather than POP. Get's much the same result (except two of my email addresses are on Yahoo, which may, or may not be having issues right now - my own email server is fine with IMAP).

Had to add some extra importing for archived emails, but there now.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-02-12 14:07:39

Moving evolution mail folder

#2 2018-02-12 14:28:42

Re: Moving evolution mail folder

#3 2018-02-12 14:37:19

Re: Moving evolution mail folder

#4 2018-02-12 14:46:47

Re: Moving evolution mail folder

#5 2018-02-12 19:48:04

Re: Moving evolution mail folder

#6 2018-02-17 22:22:22

Re: Moving evolution mail folder

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