Yes, I managed to re-sent mails of my mit.edu mail box to another mail address, while keeping (hopefully) most mail header information unchanged. This is useful because (1) the mit mail box is too small (250M) if you don't want to delete your mails, and (2) we can use Gmail or whatever email accounts to backup and manage our email...
The following are the steps I used to send all the mails in a folder of my mit mail to Gmail.
(Assume '%' is the command prompt in Athena, and characters in bold face are the commands you have to input.)
- % pine (ENTER, of course...)
- In pine interface, goto Folder-Collection < OLD Mail MH >
- Press 'A' to add a new sub-folder, e.g., Badminton
- Enter an original folder in Folder-Collection < MIT Mail >, say Badminton_mit
- Press ';' and then 'A' to select all mails (You might have to enable this command in pine SETUP)
- Press 'A' and then 'S' to apply SAVE command to all the selected mails
- Press down-arrow to switch folder to < OLD Mail MH >, and type Badminton, then press ENTER.
Now all the messages in current folder (Badminton_mit) have been copied to the < OLD Mail MH >.Badminton, and by default these messages are also marked as "deleted" with a 'D'.
- (Optional) If you don't want to delete all these messages, press 'A' and then '*' to apply FLAG command, and then press down-arrow three times to select the "Deleted" entry, and press 'X' twice to unmark all the delete-flags.
- Quit pine.
- Check the directory: ~/Mail/Badminton, your mails should be there (files named as consecutive numbers).
- % add consult (if you have not yet done so)
- % redistmail xxxx@gmail.com /mit/your_athena_username/Mail/Badminton/
It will pause appropriately when sending so as not to flood the mail hubs. So be patient if you have a long list of mails to send...
Note (5/10/2005):
- Make sure you know what you are doing. Read the referenced article (see below) first.
- In pine, you can create mh folders.
- To forward future mails, use chpobox.
Reference:
The "redistmail" program is designed to forward the contents of a single mail folder to the given address. This uses the mh "dist" command, so the headers will not be modified; a single Resent-To: line will be added.
Syntax:
athena% add consult
athena% redistmail address@wherever.net foldername
Give the foldername as you would specify it to mh mail; i.e. inbox, or /var/tmp/mymail.
Flags: -h will display this help message.
-n will cause redistmail to tell you what it would do, but not
actually send any mail.
The redistmail process will use appropriate pauses when sending so as not to flood the mail hubs; please do not attempt to circumvent these pauses, lest the postmasters become cranky.
Note that this only works with mh folders, not RMAIL files or Netscape mail files or any other format.
Last updated: 10/25/99
http://web.mit.edu/answers/mail/mail_redistmail.html
(Provided by MIT IS&T Stock Answers)