Gmail for my old mail?

November 28, 2005 12:00 PM

Gmail-like interface for my old emails?

I have tons (GBs) of old emails, going back to 1992. I've pretty much got them consolidated now into mbox format and I'd like to have some sort of searchable web interface for them, much like gmails. I know Mail.app does searching, but that ties me to one machine, which is boo.

As far as the interface goes, I love gmail's searching and especially the conversation view.

Is there anything that will do what I want? At my disposal I've got an OS X server, a Sun server, and hosting space on Dreamhost.

(PS: I know about uploading scripts for gmail, but they a) get the date wrong and b) will take a very long time with this amount of email)

posted by bonaldi to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Response by poster: Oops, I forgot to say: I know about Zoe, but its flaky, has a strange concept of conversation, and is generally a bit too odd. Plus it's Java.
posted by bonaldi at 12:01 PM on November 28, 2005

If compatibility with mbox is the biggest concern, OpenWebMail is likely your best bet. Not quite GMail, but it's a fairly light webapp that puts a nice searchable web interface on any existing *NIX mail accounts on a server. There's a SunOS/Solaris port.
posted by eschatfische at 12:45 PM on November 28, 2005

I use mail.app from my desktop and laptop without issue. I just keep all the messages on my IMAP accounts.
posted by I Love Tacos at 12:54 PM on November 28, 2005

I don't know if it's compatible with mbox, but Roundcube offers a nice webmail interface that sure beats Dreamhost's default squirrelmail.
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:15 PM on November 28, 2005

Response by poster: I'd looked at roundcube before, but wrote it off because it has no search. has that changed?
posted by bonaldi at 2:02 PM on November 28, 2005

Response by poster: (btw I'm not too bothered about the mbox thing: I'm happy to upload these emails to an IMAP server or whatever if that's required)
posted by bonaldi at 2:04 PM on November 28, 2005

Why not import your old mail into Gmail?
posted by Nelson at 2:18 PM on November 28, 2005

I find mail.app gets ridiculously slow after a certain number of messages.

I'm going to be putting all of my mail into a del.icio.us style folksonomy system with automatic tagging soon :)
posted by wackybrit at 2:22 PM on November 28, 2005

How about using GMail? Check out Google GMail Loader (GML) that takes an mbox file an imports in in to GMail.
posted by gus at 2:29 PM on November 28, 2005

Response by poster: Nelson, Gus, many thanks, but see my PS in the [more above].

wackybrit: that sounds *great*. what are you going to use?
posted by bonaldi at 3:12 PM on November 28, 2005

I access my old e-mail (stored on my PC) via Mozilla's mail program. YMMV.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:36 PM on November 28, 2005

Best answer: bonaldi: I've done a lot of work with Ruby on Rails and folksonomies and the next version of Snippets will have mail support. I am considering twisting it into a full-scale mail client though, possibly for multi-user/company use.

BTW, Joyent already have an amazing system that handles mail in such a way, but it'll cost you a few thousand dollars to get on board.
posted by wackybrit at 7:19 AM on November 29, 2005

Response by poster: That does look great, wackybrit. Are you in? Snippets 2 sounds like it might do it as well. Failing that, I'll cool my heels until Roundcube comes up to speed. Thanks all.
posted by bonaldi at 5:38 PM on November 29, 2005