---
name: "mb2md"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "mb2md"
version: "3.20-10"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/mb2md"
---

# mb2md(1)

Converts Mbox mailboxes to Maildir format.

## NAME

mb2md — Converts Mbox mailboxes to Maildir format.

## SYNOPSIS

**mb2md** \[-h\]

**mb2md** \[**-c**\]  \[-m\]  \[**-d** *destdir\]*

**mb2md** \[**-c**\]  \[-s *sourcefile*\]  \[**-d** *destdir\]*

**mb2md** \[**-c**\]  \[-s *sourcedir*\]  \[**-l** *wu-mailboxlist\]  \[***-R\|-f** *somefolder\]  \[***-d** *destdir\]  \[***-r** *strip\_extension\]*

## DESCRIPTION

**mb2md**     Converts Mbox mailboxes to Maildir format.

## OPTIONS

- **-h**

  Show summary of options.

- **-c**

  Use the Content-Length: headers (if present) to find the  beginning of the next message.  Use with caution! Results may be unreliable. I recommend to do  a run without "-c" first and only use it if you are certain,  that the mbox in question really needs the "-c" option.

- **-m**

  If this is used then the source will  be the single mailbox at /var/spool/mail/blah for  user blah and the destination mailbox will be the  "destdir" mailbox itself.

- **-s** *sourcedir*

  Directory, relative to the user's home directory,  which is where the the "somefolders" directories are located.  Or if directory starts with a "/" or "." it is taken as a  absolute path, e.g. /mnt/oldmail/user \_OR\_  A single mbox file which will be converted to  the destdir.

- **-R**

  If defined, do not skip directories found in a mailbox  directory, but runs recursively into each of them,  creating all wanted folders in Maildir.

-

  Incompatible with '-f'

- **-f** *somefolder*

  Directories, relative to "sourcedir" where the Mbox files  are. All mailboxes in the "sourcedir"  directory will be converted and placed in the  "destdir" directory.  (Typically the Inbox directory  which in this instance is also functioning as a  folder for other mailboxes.)

-

  The "somefolder" directory  name will be encoded into the new mailboxes' names.  See the example in the USAGE file (see below).

-

  This does not save an UW IMAP dummy message file  at the start of the Mbox file.  Small changes  in the code could adapt it for looking for  other distinctive patterns of dummy messages too.

-

  Don't let the source directory you give as "somefolders"  contain any "."s in its name, unless you want to  create subfolders from the IMAP user's point of  view. See the example in the USAGE file (see below).

-

  Incompatible with '-R'

- **-d** *destdir*

  Directory where the Maildir format directories will be created.  If not given, then the destination will be ~/Maildir .  Typically, this is what the IMAP server sees as the  Inbox and the folder for all user mailboxes.  If this begins with a '/' the path is considered to be  absolute, otherwise it is relative to the users  home directory.

- **-r** *strip\_extension*

  If defined this extension will be stripped from  the original mailbox file name before creating  the corresponding maildir. The extension must be  given without the leading dot (".").  See the example in the USAGE file (see below).

- **-l** *UW-file*

  File containing the list of subscribed folders.  If  migrating from UW-IMAP the list of subscribed folders will  be found in the file called .mailboxlist in the users  home directory.  This will convert all subscribed folders  for a single user:

-

  /bin/mb2md -s mail -l .mailboxlist -R -d Maildir

-

  and for all users in a directory as root you can do the following:

-

  for i in \*; do echo $i;su - $i -c "/bin/mb2md -s mail -l .mailboxlist -R -d Maildir";done

## USAGE

Please read the USAGE documentation  (zless /usr/share/doc/mb2md/USAGE.gz).

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Noèl Köthe noel@debian.org for  the **Debian** system (but may be used by others).  Permission is  granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under  the terms of the GNU Free Documentation  License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free  Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover  Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.