MBTOOL(8)

📦
version 3.12.3 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 MBTOOL(8) — the Cyrus IMAP girlie's guide to mailbox index surgery 💖

okay so bestie, this is the mbtool page from the Cyrus IMAP manual, section 8, and it's lowkey a tiny tool but it does some very specific iconic things to your mailbox indexes. let's get into it 💅

✨ NAME ✨

mbtool — Cyrus IMAP documentation

intro 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mbtool [ -C config-file ] -r mailbox...
mbtool [ -C config-file ] -t mailbox...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Okay so mbtool is the tool for doing various actions on the indexes of a list of mailboxes. Like, it's a little specialist. It's not trying to do everything, she's just doing her thing 💅

The only actions supported right now are:

  • -t, which will normalize the internaldate time stamp of each record in the index to GMT
  • -r, which will create a new unique ID for each mailbox

Only one action may be given, and at least one mailbox must be listed. That's the vibe check — one action, at least one mailbox, no notes.

The intention is that mbtool will be extended over time to perform more such actions 🌈 so like, watch this space, she's growing.

mbtool reads its configuration options out of the imapd.conf(5) file unless you specify otherwise with -C.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -C config-file — Use the specified configuration file config-file rather than the default imapd.conf(5). basically "no bestie, use MY config file" 💅
  • -t, --normalize-internaldate — Normalize internaldate on all index records of all listed mailboxes to match the Date: header if they're off by more than a day. This one is the glow-up 💖 You'd use it to fix up a mailbox that has been restored from backup and lost its internaldate information. Like, it forgot when everything happened, and -t fills in the blanks from the Date: header.
  • -r, --new-uniqueid — Create a new unique ID for all listed mailboxes. Heads up tho: this only works for legacy mailboxes. Not for the new ones. Periodt.

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

mbtool -r user.jsmith

Create new UUID for mailbox user.jsmith. 🎀

mbtool -t user.jsmith

Normalize internaldate on all index records in user.jsmith. 🦋

✨ FILES ✨

  • /etc/imapd.conf

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

✨ AUTHOR ✨

The Cyrus Team 👑

1993–2026, The Cyrus Team

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💖✨

this was MBTOOL(8) from Cyrus IMAP, version 3.12.3, dated Jul 15, 2026 🫶 go normalize something, ily, bye!! 🌸

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