I have used mbsync and seems to be a great tool. In order to view those emails I used neomutt and works pretty ok, is there a way to access those email archives with a GUI-based email client (e.g. Thunderbird) without converting them to MBOX? My dad is not going to use a MUA for reading old backups of mails, I thought about setting up a local IMAP server (dovecot) and try to access that via Thunderbird but could not make it work at all...someone with a similar experience or some insights?
I'm assuming that you're using maildir, in which case running an imap server can be pretty easy to do. I've always used courier from the default debian install and it looks in ~/Maildir for the mails and ~/Maildir/.foldername/ for folders under the inbox and it has worked well for me before. I seem to recall the last time i tried dovecot (maybe a decade ago?) it was more difficult to setup but courier has always been nice and simple for me to manage since it's using the default PAM authentication stuff. Probably not what you'd want for an install with lots and lots of users and more complicated authentication needs but for a backup mail server it's worked great for me and also for my parents
I know it may not be the culturally appropriate message on HN, but what is wrong with using Gmail and syncing the messages with mbsync? If you're looking for better providers then look at Fastmail.
