Use md2mb

Making a Backup Your Mail

The Math Department makes a nightly backup of your mail and archives this backup to tape. However, users may wish to make their own backups or to make a copy of their mail in order to take it with them when they leave. You can use a program called md2mb for this purpose. Md2mb allows users to make backups of their mail in mbox format which is recognized by the import function in most email clients. To use md2mb, follow the directions below.

1. Use an ssh client to log onto login.math.wisc.edu.
2. Run the program md2mb. If you run the program with no options, it will make a copy of each of your mail folders, starting with your Inbox, each in a separate file in the ~/mail/ folder in your home directory. Use the --folder=<foldername> to make a backup of a single folder. Use the --quiet option to silence progress messages during the backup.

Caution: Md2mb makes a copy of your mail in the ~/mail/ directory in your network space. This could easily put you over your disk space quota.

Examples

1. Copy all your mail folders, starting with the Inbox to the ~/mail/ directory in your home directory.

md2mb

2. Copy the Sent-Mail folder to the file ~/mail/Sent-Items.mbx :

md2mb --folder=Sent-Mail

3. Copy all of your mail but do not issue progress reports:

md2mb --quiet