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seawasp ([personal profile] seawasp) wrote2009-07-29 06:38 pm
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Mail Issues #2...

Well, I switched from Netrape Aggravator to the Mac Mail program for the interim.

So far, I can't get any of the obvious applications to open (a copy of) the original mail file. Word of course doesn't recognize it, TextEdit refuses it, and when I tried:

"formail -e -d -s inboxfile >> newinboxfile"

(substituting "Inbox" for "inboxfile" and "NewInbox" for "newinboxfile")

my console just sorta sat there for, well, a long time until I finally killed it off. There was a new file called "NewInbox", but it had nothing in it.

Any more ideas? I've got like 1.2GB of mail file sitting there mocking me. I'm sure MOST of it must be perfectly fine.
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[identity profile] kpreid.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 11:57 am (UTC)(link)
Suggestion: Take the top of the file (say as displayed in 'less', which will replace the ^Ms etc.), drop it in a text editor. blank out any personal information, and show it to us, who might then be able to recognize the format or the way it's mangled.

[identity profile] ninjarat.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 03:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. I think we're at the point where we're not going to figure it out until we see the file. Something is broken and the guessing game isn't getting it unbroken.
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[personal profile] seawasp 2009-07-30 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
If I could actually **SEE** the file (i.e., get it into a text editor) I'm pretty sure I could fix it -- or verify that it was completely screwed.

Alas, none of my text editors want to read it. Which seems utterly bizarre to me; I mean, even if it was a completely random string of bits, if I tell a plain-text editor to look at it, shouldn't those random bits unparse, as ASCII, into a jumble of text?

[identity profile] ninjarat.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Not if it isn't ASCII. That's the rub. Most text editors can't deal with non-text data, and how they deal with it varies. Anyway, there's always Emacs. It will read just about anything. Size might be a problem but content isn't. For a quick check with Emacs, "cat Inbox | head -1000 > tempfile" and then "emacs tempfile". (And for the record, I hate Lj's auto-formatting. It eats > and <.)
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[personal profile] seawasp 2009-07-30 03:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm. I had thought that if I just took 8-bit strings of 1 and 0, I'd *HAVE* ASCII, even if it wasn't MEANT to be ascii.

Typed in that line; after a while, it came back to the prompt, I typed "emacs tempfile", and it comes up "maximum buffer size exceeded."

[identity profile] ninjarat.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
ASCII is 7-bit, codes 0-127.

That error confirms something: line ends are messed up. So do this instead: "dd if=Inbox of=tempfile bs=1024 count=1024". That will give you an exactly 1MB tempfile. Edit that with Emacs. That will work even if the file is totally mangled. It may not be pretty but it will work.

[identity profile] kpreid.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
You misunderstand:
Open the file with 'less' as you did before. Make your terminal window reasonably large. Select and copy from your terminal and show us the result.
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[personal profile] seawasp 2009-07-30 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
No, I don't misunderstand; I made a post showing that stuff.
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