mbox2msql Homepage
(and the quickrun homepage too)

If you're here looking for quickrun, you can download it here. quickrun brings up a window to let you quickly run commands without having to start an xterm. It features a command history and filename completion. It's especially nice for window managers like fluxbox and blackbox, although it should work with most others. It is known to work with enlightenment and KDE. Take a look, I think it's pretty nice.


From the mbox2mysql man page:
"mbox2mysql takes mailbox files used by email  clients  and stores  the  messages in a MySQL database. Messages can be searched, sorted and filtered by sending  SQL  queries  to  the  database.  Results  are  output  on the console so if desired, selected  messages  can  be  extracted  from  the database  and stored back in mbox format for use with your  favourite email client.  Email  attachments  can  also  be  extracted and saved from selected messages"

mbox2mysql was designed for archiving mail. It is NOT an email client like mutt, elm, pine and the like, nor are there currently any plans to make it an email client. Everything is handled from the command line. The program is non-interactive so mail can easily be archived using a cron job.

Archiving mail is as simple as:
  1. Verifying there are no errors with the mailbox. This is not a necessary step, but highly recommended since malformed addresses in emails and other obscurities may sometimes confuse the program.
  2. Insert messages from the specified mailbox into the database.
The mailbox is a plain text file used by email clients, typically found in ~/mail or ~/Mail etc. Different mailboxes can be stored in different tables in the database. The program can be used to create the necessary tables. See the -c option in the man page for more details. If desired, only selected messages can be archived (-l), SQL queries can be sent to the database (-q) and attachments extracted (-e). There are many more options, and the man page documents all of them. PLEASE READ THE MAN PAGE!!!!

The following are required:
GMIME - Version 1.90.8 or greater is required
Glib - Version 2.x or higher should do the trick. This comes with most distributions. Try doing a 'glib-config --version' to see if you have a suitable version

And woopee, now you get to download the program:
mbox2mysql-0.3
mbox2mysql-0.2
mbox2mysql-0.1
Man Page



Other Links
MySQL - the MySQL hompage
PHPMyAdmin - the coolest web based database thingie around