Re: Balsa can't download a mail with a long line, gets stuck in endless dup-creating loop.

[Jack Ostroff <ostroffjh sbcglobal net>]

On 2012.10.30 19:54, Rob Landley wrote:
> On 10/29/2012 05:11:47 PM, Jack wrote:
> > On 2012.10.29 17:46, Rob Landley wrote:
> > .....
> > > ...I haven't exited balsa to run my filters yet
> >
> > You can run filters under menu "Mailbox/Select Filters"
>
> If I could get Balsa to actually match a list-id tag, I would.
>
>   http://landley.net/notes-2012.html#15-10-2012
I haven't read all of this yet, so I don't know what you've tried, or  
why it isn't working, but would there be any point in starting a new  
thread about this problem with filters?

Separately, although I can imagine you're already down a particular  
path to working through that huge inbox, is it worth considering a  
slightly different approach?  What about writing a script to break that  
huge mbox into smaller chunks - with maybe up to a few thousand  
messages in each?  Whether you process with Balsa or your scripts, it  
might be easier (and safer?) to work incrementally.  Sorry if you've  
already thought of this and have a good reason for not.

> I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to phrase it and  
> never got a single message moved out of the inbox (imap or local), so  
> I gave up and wrote a python program.
I've sometimes had luck doing bulk filtering by using the filter  
dropdown at the top of the main window.  For example, if I filter the  
inbox by "Subject or Sender contains:" on the address that sends a  
particular list, I may still have to "ctl-click" select specific  
messages, but it's easier than looking at the complete list.  Once I  
have a bunch selected, I can right-click and "move-to" another mailbox.

> It would be nice if I could get balsa to check how many new messages  
> are in each folder at startup time without me having to click on each  
> folder before it notices "hey, my cached metadata is stale!" and  
> reparsing the mbox file. But so far, I havent' found a way to get it  
> to do that.
I have a combination of mbox and Maildir, and having Balsa check mail  
again (even if it doesn't actually find and download anything) seems to  
get it to recognize which mailboxes have new messages.   I don't know  
if it does a reread or just checks the timestamp.  Recently, I've had  
to do this more often because Balsa has been crashing every time I try  
to fetch the images in html email (webkit).  I'll probably report that  
as a separate issue, but not before more troubleshooting, and likely  
waiting to install 2.4.13.

> (Balsa honestly seems to store total/unread message count in the  
> ~/.balsa/config file, meaning it's rewriting this file constantly and  
> a power failure or kernel panic at just the wrong time can make it  
> forget where my mail server lives. Oh well.)
>
> Rob