Koozali.org: home of the SME Server
Contribs.org Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: david000 on October 21, 2025, 04:09:15 PM
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To follow on from another thread I'm trying to use Thunderbird's 'save as' function from a local folder to archive our legacy mail.
After a bit of testing it all seemed to work ok, I ended up with lots of .eml files on my NAS which could be zipped up and dropped to a cold USB drive.
However when I moved onto the main folder with 50k of emails in it, Thunderbird is randomly stopping the 'Save As'. The difficulty being that the order in which Thunderbird is exporting the selected files is unclear so I can't tell what's been 'Saved As' and what hasn't.
I appreciate this isn't a Thunderbird Support place but wondered if anyone has heard of this or can suggest a solution.
My next stop is the Thunderbird Archive function but I'm unclear how the resulting file will be accessible x years down the line.
Thanks in advance...
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https://wiki.koozali.org/User_homes_admin_access can be used to directly access user homes,
then folder by folder copy/move out emails (sorted by date) from Maildir folders and rename files to *.eml.
Don't copy anything to Maildir folders without setting ownership to user:user, otherwise users won't have access to them.
I use this custom-template: /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf/55adminhomes
[admin_homes]
comment = home_directories
path = /home/e-smith/files/users/
valid users = admin root
admin users = admin root
write list = admin root
public = no
browsable = no
writable = yes
then:
expand-template /etc/smb.conf
systemctl restart smb
now go to \\serverIP\admin_homes (with the two-panel file manager of your choice)
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https://wiki.koozali.org/User_homes_admin_access can be used to directly access user homes,
then folder by folder copy/move out emails (sorted by date) from Maildir folders and rename files to *.eml.
Don't copy anything to Maildir folders without setting ownership to user:user, otherwise users won't have access to them.
I use this custom-template: /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf/55adminhomes
[admin_homes]
comment = home_directories
path = /home/e-smith/files/users/
valid users = admin root
admin users = admin root
write list = admin root
public = no
browsable = no
writable = yes
then:
expand-template /etc/smb.conf
systemctl restart smb
now go to \\serverIP\admin_homes (with the two-panel file manager of your choice)
Thank you for this - just the job. I need to brush up (!) on my linux skills but this will be a quick job than Thunderbird.
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Thank you for this - just the job. I need to brush up (!) on my linux skills but this will be a quick job than Thunderbird.
It looks like the reason Thunderbird is failing is because of 'special characters' in (at least) one of the emails. So far that appears to be from one of our German suppliers although so far just the one.