Introduction
Be warned that while simple in concept, this procedure can be a bit daunting. My personal experience was that of migrating over 1,000 nested folders which consumed several hours as I chose to resave each Eudora file (which contains multiple emails) as a UNIX file format from BBEdit (described below) as compared to writing a script to do so automatically on the Linux side.
None the less, it is worth it to have your life-blood, your email running under YDL.
This HOWTO assumes you have YDL running with MOL providing realtime access to Mac OS as well, and netatalk enabled for AppleShare transfers between the OSs. If you do not, you can boot first into Mac OS, conduct the Eudora preparation, then reboot into YDL, mount the Mac OS partitions where your Eudora data is stored, and move it into position for transition into Eudora.
- Quit Eudora.
- From the Mac-side, locate the Eudora Folder in which your email is stored. This is a standard Mac OS file structure in which directories contain text files which contain your email and is typically contained (by default) in your System Folder.
- Duplicate your entire Eudora Folder and move the copy to a safe place (backup, just in case something goes wrong :)
- Launch Eudora.
- Clean-out all unwanted mail, mail boxes, and folders --makes the transition less time consuming.
- Open all of the mailboxes (not the Mac OS Folders) with BBEdit (or something similar) and resave them in a UNIX file format to force UNIX-style line breaks:
Save As --> Options --> UNIX --> Ok --> Save --> Replace
- Rename "In" as "inbox".
- Rename "Out" as "drafts".
- Enable 'atalk' on the Linux side, select the Chooser from the Apple Menu items, mount your /home/directory on the Mac OS desktop.
- Open the "Mail" (if there are 2, the one with the cap "M", not lower case) directory.
- Copy the 'inbox' and 'drafts' into the Mail directory, replacing the existing items.
- Switch back to YDL (CONTROL-OPTION-F7).
- Launch KMail (K --> Internet) to test if your new boxes are working.
- Quit KMail.
- Switch back to MOL (CONTROL-OPTION-F8).
- Now comes the fun part :)- you must open every single mailbox that resides in each Folder in BBEdit and Save As a UNIX file, not Mac OS. If you have as many mailboxes as I did (over 1,000), this may take a while.
- When complete, drag all of your Folders and mailboxes to your Apple Shared YDL home directory.
- Unless you have a nifty script to do this manually, you must now undergo the challenging part. Launch a shell. As your user (not root), you must change the name of all directories to start with a "." and end with ".directory":
ls -al [ENTER] mv "My Directory" ".My Directory.directory" [ENTER]
(yes, the "[quotes]" are included) - Make certain you have done this for all nested directories as well:
cd .My Directory.directory [ENTER]
ls -al [ENTER] - Now you must create an empty text file that matches the original name of the directory before you modified it in the previous step:
touch "My Directory [ENTER]
- That's all! Now launch KMail. And now view the contents of your Mail directory again and you will find that KMail has created an index of each of the new directories you have created. In this fashion, as you had with Eudora, you have a great amount of flexibility in how you manage your email. Even from the command line you can add, delete, and modify your email and the structure in which it is contained.
If you desire to import your addess book as well, simply drag the "Eudora Nicknames" file to the shared YDL directory, rename it "addresses.txt" and then choose Import --> Eudora Address Book.
This HOWTO was written by Kai Staats, Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
