Comments

Directives

base=base-directory

This defines the path to the common parent directory of all your maildir folders.

imap_server=hostname

If any IMAP source folders are specified or the results folder is an IMAP folder, this defines the host name of the IMAP server. The port is currently always 143. This option is mutually exclusive with the

imap_pipe=shell-command

If any IMAP source folders are specified or the results folder is an IMAP folder, this defines a shell command that can be used to connect to the IMAP server and talk to it over UNIX pipes instead of a TCP/IP connection. This option is mutually exclusive with the 'imap_server' option.

imap_username=username

If any IMAP source folders are specified or the results folder is an IMAP folder, this defines the user name to use to log in to the IMAP server. This parameter is optional, but IMAP servers normally require clients to log in, so it is normally necessary to specify it. One example of a case where it is not required is if the 'imap_pipe' option is in use the the shell command established a connection with an IMAP server in pre-autenticated state.

imap_password=password

If any IMAP source folders are specified or the results folder is an IMAP folder, this defines the password to use to log in to the IMAP server. This parameter is optional, but IMAP servers normally require clients to log in, so it is normally necessary to specify it.

maildir=list-of-folder-specifications

This is a colon-separated list of the Maildir folders (relative to `base') that you want indexed. Any entry that ends `...' is recursively scanned to find any Maildir folders underneath it.

More than one line starting with `maildir' can be included. In this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though a single list of folders had been given on a single very long line.

Each colon-separated entry may be a wildcard. See the discussion under mbox (below) for the wildcard syntax. For example

maildir=zzz/foo*...

will match maildir folders like these (relative to the base-directory)

zzz/foobar/xyz
zzz/fooquux
zzz/foo
zzz/fooabc/u/v/w

and

maildir=zzz/foo[abc]*

will match maildir folders like these (relative to the folder_base)

zzz/fooa
zzz/fooaaaxyz
zzz/foobcd
zzz/fooccccccc

If a folder name contains a colon, you can write this by using the sequence '\:' to escape the colon. Otherwise, the backslash character is treated normally. (If the folder name actually contains the sequence '\:', you're out of luck.)

mh=list-of-folder-specifications

This is a colon-separated list of the MH folders (relative to `base') that you want indexed. Any entry that ends '...' is recursively scanned to find any MH folders underneath it.

More than one line starting with 'mh' can be included. In this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though a single list of folders had been given on a single very long line.

Each colon-separated entry may be a wildcard, see the discussion under maildir (above) and mbox (below) for the syntax and semantics of specifying wildcards.

mairix recognizes the types of MH folders created by the following email applications:

mbox=list-of-folder-specifications

This is a colon-separated list of the mbox folders (relative to `base') that you want indexed.

Each colon-separated item in the list can be suffixed by '...'. If the item matches a regular file, that file is treated as a mbox folder and the '...' suffix is ignored. If the item matches a directory, a recursive scan of everything inside that directory is made, and all regular files are initially considered as mbox folders. (Any directories found in this scan are themselves scanned, since the scan is recursive.)

Each colon-separated item may contain wildcard operators, but only in its final path component. The wildcard operators currently supported are

*

Match zero or more characters (each character matched is arbitrary)

?

Match exactly one arbitrary character

[abcs-z]

Character class : match a single character from the set a, b, c, s, t, u, v, w, x, y and z.

To include a literal ']' in the class, place it immediately after the opening '['. To include a literal '-' in the class, place it immediately before the closing ']'.

If these metacharacters are included in non-final path components, they have no special meaning.

Here are some examples

mbox=foo/bar*

matches 'foo/bar', 'foo/bar1', 'foo/barrrr' etc

mbox=foo*/bar*

matches 'foo*/bar', 'foo*/bar1', 'foo*/barrrr' etc

mbox=foo/*

matches 'foo/bar', 'foo/bar1', 'foo/barrrr', 'foo/foo', ´foo/x' etc

mbox=foo...

matches any regular file in the tree rooted at 'foo'

mbox=foo/*...

same as before

mbox=foo/[a-z]*...

matches 'foo/a', 'foo/aardvark/xxx', 'foo/zzz/foobar', ´foo/w/x/y/zzz', but not 'foo/A/foobar'

Regular files that are mbox folder candidates are examined internally. Only files containing standard mbox 'From ' separator lines will be scanned for messages.

If a regular file has a name ending in '.gz', and gzip support is compiled into the mairix binary, the file will be treated as a gzipped mbox.

If a regular file has a name ending in '.bz2', and bzip support is compiled into the mairix binary, the file will be treated as a bzip2'd mbox.

More than one line starting with 'mbox' can be included. In this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though a single list of folders had been given on a single very long line.

mairix performs no locking of mbox folders when it is accessing them. If a mail delivery program is modifying the mbox at the same time, it is likely that one or messages in the mbox will never get indexed by mairix (until the database is removed and recreated from scratch, anyway.) The assumption is that mairix will be used to index archive folders rather than incoming ones, so this is unlikely to be much of a problem in reality.

mairix can support a maximum of 65536 separate mboxes, and a maximum of 65536 messages within any one mbox.

imap=list-of-folders

This is a colon-separated list of the IMAP folders that you want indexed.

These folders must all be located on the same account on the same IMAP server. The configuration options imap_server and imap_pipe specify how to connect to the IMAP server.

More than one line starting with 'imap' can be included. In this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though a single list of folders had been given on a single very long line.

omit=list-of-glob-patterns

This is a colon-separated list of glob patterns for folders to be omitted from the indexing. This allows wide wildcards and recursive elements to be used in the maildir,mh, andmbox directives, with the omit option used to selectively remove unwanted folders from the folder lists.

Within the glob patterns, a single '*' matches any sequence of characters other than '/'. However '**' matches any sequence of characters including '/'. This allows glob patterns to be constructed which have a wildcard for just one directory component, or for any number of directory components.

The _omit_ option can be specified as many times as required so that the list of patterns doesn't all have to fit on one line.

As an example,

mbox=bulk...
omit=bulk/spam*

will index all mbox folders at any level under the 'bulk' subdirectory of the base folder, except for those folders whose names start 'bulk/spam', e.g. 'bulk/spam', 'bulk/spam2005' etc.

In constrast,

mbox=bulk...
omit=bulk/spam**

will index all mbox folders at any level under the 'bulk' subdirectory of the base folder, except for those folders whose names start 'bulk/spam', e.g. 'bulk/spam', 'bulk/spam2005', ´bulk/spam/2005', 'bulk/spam/2005/jan' etc.

nochecks

This takes no arguments. If a line starting with nochecks is present, it is the equivalent of specifying the -Q flag to every indexing run.

mfolder=match-folder-name

This defines the name of the folder (within the directory specified by base) into which the search mode writes its output. (If the mformat used is 'raw' or 'excerpt', then this setting is not used and may be omitted.)

The mfolder setting may be over-ridden for a particular search by using the -o option to mairix.

mairix will refuse to output search results to a folder that appears to be amongst those that are indexed. This is to prevent accidental deletion of emails.

If the first character of the mfolder value is '/' or '.', it is taken as a pathname in its own right. This allows you to specify absolute paths and paths relative to the current directory where the mfolder should be written. Otherwise, the value of mfolder is appended to the value of base, in the same way as for the source folders.

mformat=format

This defines the type of folder used for the match folder where the search results go. There are six valid settings for format, namely 'maildir', 'mh', 'mbox', 'imap', 'raw', or 'excerpt'. If the 'raw' setting is used then mairix will just print out the path names of the files that match and no match folder will be created. If the 'excerpt' setting is used, mairix will also print out the To:, Cc:, From:, Subject: and Date: headers of the matching messages. 'maildir' is the default if this option is not defined. The setting is case-insensitive.

database=path-to-database

This defines the path where mairix's index database is kept. You can keep this file anywhere you like.

Currently, mairix will place a single database file at the location indicated by path-to-database. However, a future version of mairix may instead place a directory containing several files at this location.

path-to-database should be an absolute pathname (starting with '/'). If a relative pathname is used, it will be interpreted relative to the current directory at the time mairix is run, (not relative to the location of the mairixrc file or anything like that.)

follow_mbox_symlinks

This takes no arguments. By default, mairix will skip symlinks to mboxes when indexing. If a line starting with follow_mbox_symlinks is present, mairix will follow them instead of skipping them.

Expansions

Home directory expansion

If the sequence '~/' appears at the start of the text after the equals sign, it is expanded to the user's home directory. Example:

database=~/Mail/mairix_database

Environment expansion

If a '$' is followed by a sequence of alpha-numeric characters (or ´_'), the whole string is replaced by looking up the corresponding environment variable. Similarly, if '$' is followed by an open brace ('{'), everything up to the next close brace is looked up as an environment variable and the result replaces the entire sequence.

Suppose in the shell we do

export FOO=bar

and the '.mairixrc' file contains

maildir=xxx/$FOO
mbox=yyy/a${FOO}b

this is equivalent to

maildir=xxx/bar
mbox=yyy/abarb

If the specified environment variable is not set, the replacement is the empty string.