Howto backup your Yahoo Mail in Linux

So you want to archive/backup your Yahoo Mail! on your Linux or Unix machine. You can use these tools to do that.

Tools

 * fetchyahoo - http://fetchyahoo.twizzler.org/
 * mbox2eml.pl - http://joshbeam.com/files/mbox2eml.pl
 * mpack - http://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack/

Download emails into a mbox file

 * This will download all your Yahoo emails into a single mbox file
 * Install fetchyahoo
 * Configure ~/.fetchyahoorc
 * Set username, password and spool
 * spool is the mbox output file
 * recommended setings
 * no-delete = 1
 * safe-download = 1
 * if you have more than 400 messages in a folder
 * Set folders to the folder or folders you want to archive
 * I like to run fetchyahoo seperatly for each folder creating separate mbox files
 * Example, settings
 * spool = /home/zymos/mail/yahoo_inbox.mbox
 * folders = Inbox
 * then
 * spool = /home/zymos/mail/yahoo_sent.mbox
 * folders = Sent
 * run fetchyahoo for each folder, if desired

Convert mbox file to eml files
if you want eml files for each message instead or a single mbox file for all messages use mbox2eml.pl
 * for each mbox file run
 * ./mbox2eml.pl /home/zymos/mail/yahoo_inbox.mbox

Extract all attachments from files
To extract all the attached files in the various eml files run
 * munpack *.eml
 * note this extract the files as they are named in the email, it will not have a filename to show which eml file they came from