Stephen Allen wrote:> I've recovered a load of messages from a different mail server without > it's index file (it was corrupted). I now have thousands of messages > which display in Outlook Express (yes, you may puke at this), all as > today's date. However when I read them in Pine, the date of each message > is displayed correctly, but they're in no particular order whatsoever. > > There are several questions here, some of which aren't suitable for this > list, but for completeness...I'm assuming you're using Maildir storage? I believe each message, effectively, has two dates anyway. One is when it was received, and one is when it was sent. So, the date in the headers is the sent date, and (in Maildir) it's fairly safe to use the ctime of the file as the delivery date.> 2. > Can I fake Dovecot into thinking the messages arrived on a different > date by including something in the message headers, or changing the > date/time stamp of each file (but I don't know how to do this)?'touch'... I'm sure a few minutes effort could produce a script to read the date from each message file, and 'touch' it.> 3. > Pine correctly picks out a date from the message (although it doesn't > sort by this order), and Outlook Express just displays everything as the > date which it (or Dovecot) first saw the message. Does Outlook rely on > Dovecot's sorting/date information or does it do it's own?Certainly sounds like it does. See if OutLoo lets you look at the Sent Date, or similar. -- Curtis Maloney cmaloney at cardgate.net
I've recovered a load of messages from a different mail server without it's index file (it was corrupted). I now have thousands of messages which display in Outlook Express (yes, you may puke at this), all as today's date. However when I read them in Pine, the date of each message is displayed correctly, but they're in no particular order whatsoever. There are several questions here, some of which aren't suitable for this list, but for completeness... 1. Does Dovecot store what it thinks is the date the message arrived, in it's index file? 2. Can I fake Dovecot into thinking the messages arrived on a different date by including something in the message headers, or changing the date/time stamp of each file (but I don't know how to do this)? 3. Pine correctly picks out a date from the message (although it doesn't sort by this order), and Outlook Express just displays everything as the date which it (or Dovecot) first saw the message. Does Outlook rely on Dovecot's sorting/date information or does it do it's own? Many thanks, Steve :)
On 11/17/2005 10:12:07 PM, Stephen Allen wrote:> I've recovered a load of messages from a different mail server without it's > index file (it was corrupted). I now have thousands of messages which > display in Outlook Express (yes, you may puke at this), all as today's date. > However when I read them in Pine, the date of each message is displayed > correctly, but they're in no particular order whatsoever.You didn't (or weren't able to) restore the original file date/time stamps?> There are several questions here, some of which aren't suitable for this > list, but for completeness... > > 1. > Does Dovecot store what it thinks is the date the message arrived, in it's > index file?No, because you can delete the index and it gets re-created.> 2. > Can I fake Dovecot into thinking the messages arrived on a different date by > including something in the message headers, or changing the date/time stamp > of each file (but I don't know how to do this)?The file time stamp is important. You could extract the original send time stamp from the "Date:" header and use the "touch" command to change the file time stamp to that value... Success, Willem Riede.
Stephen Allen wrote: > I've recovered a load of messages from a different mail server without it's index file (it was corrupted). I now have thousands of messages which display in Outlook Express (yes, you may puke at this), all as today's date. However when I read them in Pine, the date of each message is displayed correctly, but they're in no particular order whatsoever. > There are several questions here, some of which aren't suitable for this list, but for completeness... > 1. > Does Dovecot store what it thinks is the date the message arrived, in it's index file? > 2. > Can I fake Dovecot into thinking the messages arrived on a different date by including something in the message headers, or changing the date/time stamp of each file (but I don't know how to do this)? > 3. > Pine correctly picks out a date from the message (although it doesn't sort by this order), and Outlook Express just displays everything as the date which it (or Dovecot) first saw the message. Does Outlook rely on Dovecot's sorting/date information or does it do it's own? Steve, My understanding has been that sort order is a function of (a) the information contained within the messages, in the headers and (b) the mail client. I use both Outlook Express (which is a perfectly adequate IMAP client, not to be sneered at) and Thunderbird (1.5 beta1). I've noticed that Outlook Express is rather flexible in that one can sort on "Sent" or "Received" dates. Thunderbird is less good on this allowing only "Date" which is the sent date, or "Order Received" which is the numerical order in which the messages were received, I'm not sure how this is worked out - maybe it's based on receive date, but no date is displayed. It seems to me that the display order of your messages is entirely determined by the options within your mail clients, and not influenced by Dovecot. John -- John Allen Bofferdange, Luxembourg allen at vo.lu http://www.homepages.lu/allen