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exact format of an mbox file

Thunderbird Email dhe shkëmbim mesazhesh
Lin replied 4 orë më parë
david.ledger
david.ledger

I'm using Thunderbird on Ubuntu 24 and have some messages in some mailboxes that have lost their headers. I'm trying to fix them.

Early (1980's command line mail & mailx) mbox files were pure text with messages delimited by a blank line followed by a line starting with 'From ' (or possibly 'From: '). When I open a Thunderbird mbox file in 'vi' it is 'converted', or so it says. I'm wondering what this 'conversion' is and why it's needed.

Please could someone tell me what the strict rule that delimits messages in a Thunderbird mbox file is, and what is it that 'vi' cannot handle that requires 'conversion'?

Thanks

153.3.1esr (64-bit) Thunderbird Meadow Thunderbird Snap for Ubuntuubuntu-snap-build - 1.0

I'm using Thunderbird on Ubuntu 24 and have some messages in some mailboxes that have lost their headers. I'm trying to fix them. Early (1980's command line mail & mailx) mbox files were pure text with messages delimited by a blank line followed by a line starting with 'From ' (or possibly 'From: '). When I open a Thunderbird mbox file in 'vi' it is 'converted', or so it says. I'm wondering what this 'conversion' is and why it's needed. Please could someone tell me what the strict rule that delimits messages in a Thunderbird mbox file is, and what is it that 'vi' cannot handle that requires 'conversion'? Thanks 153.3.1esr (64-bit) Thunderbird Meadow Thunderbird Snap for Ubuntuubuntu-snap-build - 1.0

Krejt Përgjigjet (3)

Lin
Lin
  • 10 Kontribuesit Kryesues

I can see from examining a Thunderbird mbox folder file with a text editor (Notepad++) that each new message begins like this. It's plain ASCII text:

From - Thu Oct 08 16:39:34 2026 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

Sample date, of course, but this shows the format.

The X-Mozilla-Status codes are defined here:

https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/x-mozilla-status

I notice from looking at a many-years-old folder, that the messages were separated with only "From ". But after Repairing and Compacting it, it now has the date and X-Mozilla headers added, which suggests to me that the format was changed sometime in the past, presumably to make it less fragile.

david.ledger
david.ledger I zoti i pyetjes

Thanks for looking into this. What I'm really looking for is a Mozilla/Thunderbird official spec/definition.

The meanings of the two X-Mozilla headers are very useful. Thankyou.

I'm hoping to write an awk or Perl script to split my problem mboxes into individual files and rescue the important headless bodies.

When I first met 'mail' on Bsd4.2 on a Vax780 in '83 I think they used '\010\015From: ', followed by the sender (uucp '!' format back then). That company closed it's UK operations and I moved to an Apollo environment where 'mail' wasn't used much. When I next used email the Internet was with us and attachments started. I had a lot to do with Sendmail configuration but not much to do with mbox as such, so I'm out of date with it.

Lin
Lin
  • 10 Kontribuesit Kryesues

I don't find your question specifically answered, but from what I've found, the mbox format is a variant of "mboxrd". The message delimiter is just what I quoted above. "From - Thu Oct 08 16:39:34 2026". The "X-Mozilla" lines are not a reliable part of the delimiter.

The answer is probably to be found in the source code, if you want to comb through it:

https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-desktop

More information can be found at the links below:

https://source-docs.thunderbird.net/en/latest/

https://www.mailtopst.com/guides/mbox-file-ultimate/

https://emlify.io/formats/mbox

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000385.shtml

Ndryshuar nga Lin

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