This is a set of scripts for converting e-mail from various historic mail formats into RFC822-style messages. These were written to convert some old message archives into an format suitable for indexing and reading using modern e-mail management software.
The output of each script is one of a number of possible formats, but each is supported by modern software. The results can later be easily converted into a consistent format if needed (see the Other programs section below).
Adds a Date: line to an existing RFC822 message using the modification time of the message file. The script takes a file name as an argument and writes the modified message to stdout. If the message already has a Date: field, it is left untouched.
Usage:
adddate old.eml > new.eml
Converts CompuServe messages. These consist of messages as logged in a terminal as they were displayed while using the remote message viewer. A single message is passed in to stdin and the converted messages is written to stdout. One command-line parameter is mandatory: "-t nnnnn,nnn" which specifies the CompuServe user ID that received the message. This is so a To: line can be added to the message, which otherwise would show no indication of the receiver.
CompuServe was an early time-share and information system that began offering access to the consumer public in 1979, and dominated the field in the 1980s before competitors like AOL entered and Internet access became publicly available.
Usage:
compuservecvt -t 77777,111 < old.txt > new.eml
Converts a big file with multiple mail messages into an MMDF mailbox. The file may have been created by logging a mail reading session on a terminal, by manually concatenating mail messages into a text file, or through some other ad hoc means. This script is likely to need some modification for it to work in your specific case.
The input file is just a text file with a bunch of e-mails concatenated, with some standard headers (like To:, From:, Subject:) at the start of each message. It tries to detect forwarded messages and keep them attached to the right message, since forwarded with their headers can look like an entirely new message otherwise. This is tricky business, and can easily go wrong. You may need to add some of the headers found in your messages to the script in order for it to split messages on the correct boundaries.
Everything in the input is assumed to be part of a message and nothing is thrown out, which can result things that aren't messages in the output file or lines that aren't really part of an MMDF message (like "From " lines). GIGO. You may need to iterate a few times on your input files to either tweak the script or preprocess your input before finding a satisfactory result.
Usage:
maillogcvt < old.txt > new.mmdf
Converts MANTES messages. The input to this program is expected to be a terminal log of a single message as displayed in MANTES with extraneous lines removed. A single message is passed in to stdin and the converted messages is written to stdout.
MANTES was a file management system running on an IBM mainframe under MVS which was used from the 1970s through the 2000s. It was developed at the University of Manitoba and used at a number of universities and companies in Canada and around the world.
Usage:
mantescvt old.txt > new.eml
Converts a message mailbox created by UUPC/extended, which is a custom mailbox format somewhat reminiscent of MMDF. A single message mailbox is passed in to stdin and an mbox mailbox is written to stdout. The normal "From" encoding is performed on the body of messages when required, as it required by the mbox format.
UUPC/extended was a uucp package for MS-DOS systems developed in 1985. It provided a uucp-style suite of programs for mail, USENET news and file transfer over dial-up modems that ran on DOS systems.
Usage:
uupccvt < old.mbo > new.mbox
The latest source code can be obtained from https://github.com/dfandrich/oldmailconvert/
The scripts are written in a mix of Python and Bourne shell. They use some standard POSIX utilities, but assume some of them have GNU extensions available.
Build and install the latest release of code from Github with:
pip3 install https://glare.now.sh/dfandrich/oldmailconvert/tar
The regression test suite can be run with the command:
pytest
or, if pytest is not installed:
python3 tests.py
I've found some tests related to dates fail in one Python 3.8.14 environment because dateutil seems to improperly handle time zones in that version.
To convert Fidonet messages, try my program dumpfidomsg (https://github.com/dfandrich/dumpfidomsg/)
If you're more interested in converting between the contemporary formats mbox, MMDF, Maildir and MH mail, one simple way is to use the Mutt mailer (http://mutt.org/), by reading from one style of mailbox, tagging all the messages, then mass saving them all into an empty mailbox of the other style.
A simple way of turning a plain RFC822 message into a mailbox is to pipe it to formail, which is part of procmail (https://www.procmail.org/).
Daniel Fandrich dan@coneharvesters.com
This program is Copyright (C) 2021–2023 Daniel Fandrich. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.