[pm-h] mail processing after download

[Todd Rinaldo]

On Nov 21, 2013, at 9:52 AM, rlharris at oplink.net wrote:

> Regrettably, I have about a gigabyte of unread mail on the pop3 server
> of my isp.  I do not wish to lose these messages.  I would like to
> download this backlog of messages to my desktop machine, and sort
> through them over the holidays.
> 
> Also, I question whether the pop3 server allows such a large volume of
> mail to be downloaded in a single batch.  But getmail has a download
> limit feature which permits downloading messages in small batches.
> 
> In sorting through the backlog of mail, I would like to use a
> combination of maildrop and a spam filter such as bmf.  I am running
> Debian Linux.
> 
> I know how to use getmail to download mail to a maildir or mbox on the
> desktop.  But I do NOT know how to pull messages one at a time from a
> maildir or mbox on the desktop and feed them to a delivery agent such
> as maildrop.  I would prefer to use maildir rather than mbox.
> 
> Would the Perl module Mail::Maildir be the proper choice for this
> task?

Your real problem is you’re using pop3. If I remember correctly, pop3 requires the server parse the entire file in order to send you the data. Can’t you just fire up thunderbird or something and suck down and delete the data from the server? 

Todd