FossaMail

From Indie IT Wiki
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

As of 2018 development of FossaMail has been discontinued.

Introduction

FossaMail is an Open Source mail, news and chat client for Windows and Linux. Developed by the Pale Moon team FossaMail is a forked version of Mozilla's Thunderbird and is based on the Pale Moon browser core.

Official Web Sites

HOWTO: BACKUP:

Message Filters

The filtering rules are stored in a file called msgFilterRules.dat within the Thunderbird profile folder, if you have multiple accounts there is a separate file for each account. The file(s) just needs to be backup up and then restored to a profile, on starting Thunderbird it will read and integrate the filters.

Message Tags

The Tags used to mark messages are save within the prefs.js file found in each mail accounts profile. Each Tag has two entries, one for the tag name the other for its colour.

Example 1:

user_pref("mailnews.tags.printed.color", "#3366FF");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.printed.tag", "Printed");

Example 2:

user_pref("mailnews.tags.invoiced.color", "#993300");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.invoiced.ordinal", "00005");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.invoiced.tag", "Invoiced");

Example 2 shows an additional line between 'color' and 'tag', this is because the add-on Tag Sequencer Arranger has been installed.

Ensuring Thunderbird is closed open the prefs.js file with a text editor and search for the following line:

user_pref("mailnews.tags.printed.color",

Copy and paste all the entries in to a separate text file, save and exit both files. The copied entries can be used to overwrite the tag entries in another prefs.js file.

HOWTO: CONVERT FROM THUNDERBIRD TO FOSSAMAIL:

Mail Filters

There is a slight difference between Thunderbird's and FossaMail's mail filters:

The formatting of each filter consists of six lines:

Thunderbird Example:

name="EXAMPLE / server backup log"
enabled="yes"
type="17"
action="Move to folder"
actionValue="imap://user@server1.example.com/Notifications/Backup Logs"
condition="AND (subject,is,EXAMPLE / server backup log)"

FossaMail Example:

name="EXAMPLE / server backup log"
enabled="yes"
type="17"
action="Move to folder"
actionValue="imap://user%40example.com@server1.example.com/Notifications/Backup Logs"
condition="AND (subject,is,EXAMPLE / server backup log)"

As you can see in the examples above the fifth line is different, but easily correctable via 'Search and Replace' in any text editor.

HOWTO: INSTALL/UPDATE: LINUX CLIENT:

Install Latest Version

Download the latest version of FossaMail from the here.

Note: Where you see YOUR_FILENAME_HERE replace it with the name of the file you have downloaded.

Open a terminal and change directory to where you have downloaded the file from Mozilla, then run the following commands:

sudo tar jxvf YOUR_FILENAME_HERE.tar.bz2 -C /opt/
sudo chown -R root:root /opt/FossaMail/
sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/FossaMail/
cd /usr/bin/
sudo ln -sf /opt/FossaMail/FossaMail FossaMail

To create a global menu entry, in the terminal run the following command:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/fossamail.desktop

Or to create a user specific menu entry, in the terminal run the following command:

gksudo gedit /home/%username%/.local/share/applications/fossamail.desktop

Add the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8

Name=FossaMail
Comment=Send and receive mail with FossaMail
GenericName=Mail Client
Exec=/opt/FossaMail/FossaMail %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/FossaMail.png
Categories=Application;Network;Email;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=Compose;Contacts;AddressBook;ProfileManager;

[Desktop Action Compose]
Name=Compose New Message
Exec=./FossaMail -compose
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity; 

[Desktop Action Contacts]
Name=Contacts
Exec=./FossaMail -addressbook
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;

[Desktop Action AddressBook]
Name=Address Book
Exec=./FossaMail -addressbook
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;

[Desktop Action ProfileManager]
Name=Profile Manager
Exec=./FossaMail -ProfileManager
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;

Save and close gedit.

Add the icon for the start menu.

sudo cp /opt/FossaMail/chrome/icons/default/default256.png /usr/share/pixmaps/FossaMail.png

In XFCE FossaMail can be found under ApplicationsInternetThunderbird.

In Unity in the Dash type FossaMail

Update To Latest Version

sudo rm -rfv /opt/FossaMail
sudo tar jxvf YOUR_FILENAME_HERE.tar.bz2 -C /opt/
sudo chown -R root:root /opt/FossaMail/
sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/FossaMail/