[Arkham_c]

I was following a tutorial on getting SpamAssassin working on OSX. I havt it working pretty well, but when I got to the step about making Mail.app use the mbox file it didn't have that as an account option. I remember reading somewhere about this feature disappearing in 10.2. Does anyone know about this?

I know I could go download and install imapd, but that requires me to compile up BerkeleyDB and a bunch of other junk, which is pretty silly just so I can filter my spam a little better. Anyone know if Mail.app can use the /var/mail/username mailbox as the UNIX gods intended?

[wataru]

Well Mail.app uses mboxes to store its mail, but that doesn't have anything to do with making an account. You can import mboxes with the import command. Is that what you're looking for?

[Mithras]

I have a solution I use, though it's a bit hackish. I wish Apple had just left the "local mail" feature in...

Here's what I do:
1. Make an Account
Make a new POP account. Set the server to "localhost", and enter anything for the username. Set the SMTP server to "localhost", of course:


*Important: Under the "Advanced" tab, turn off "Include when automatically checking for new mail". Otherwise Mail.app will squawk about failing to connect to the POP server at localhost, which would be fair, since you're not running one...


2. Point the Inbox to the local mbox
* In the Finder, open up ~/Library/Mail/POP-arkham@localhost/ (or whatever)

* Open the "INBOX.mbox" package.
* Delete the "mbox" and "table_of_contents" files, if they exist.

This next part is key:
* Go to the Terminal, and navigate to the same folder (by doing cd and dropping the folder onto Terminal).
* Type
ln -s /var/mail/arkham mbox
to point the mbox to your local mail.

If you stopped here, it would work at first, but Mail.app wouldn't notice new mail. That's because Mail.app relies on the "table_of_contents" file to keep tabs on changes - if you get new mail, but the table_of_contents doesn't change, Mail.app won't notice.

So do this: Type
touch table_of_contents to make a blank file, then
chmod u-rw table_of_contents to keep yourself (or Mail.app) from changing this file any more.

When Mail.app sees the blank table_of_contents, it will refresh its view of the mbox.

That's it!

The one problem is that Mail.app always thinks the mail is new. But it's handy, anyway.


For going the other way (reading your Mail.app mail from pine), see this machosxhints.com article and my scripts towards the bottom.