public-inbox-edit - Man Page

        public-inbox-edit -m MESSAGE-ID --all|INBOX_DIR

        public-inbox-edit -F RAW_FILE --all|INBOX_DIR [.. INBOX_DIR]

public-inbox-edit allows editing messages in a given inbox to remove sensitive information.  It is only intended as a last resort, as it will cause discontiguous git history and draw more attention to the sensitive data in mirrors.

--all

Edit the message in all inboxes configured in ~/.public-inbox/config. This is an alternative to specifying individual inboxes directories on the command-line.

-m MESSAGE-ID

Edits the message corresponding to the given MESSAGE-ID. If the MESSAGE-ID is ambiguous, --force or using the --file of the original will be required.

-F FILE

Edits the message corresponding to the Message-ID: header and content given in FILE.  This requires the unmodified raw message, and the contents of FILE will not itself be modified.  This is useful if a Message-ID is ambiguous due to filtering/munging rules or other edits.

--force

Forcibly perform the edit even if Message-ID is ambiguous.

--raw

Do not perform "From " line escaping.  By default, this generates a mboxrd variant file to detect unpurged messages in the new mbox.  This makes sense if your configured publicinbox.mailEditor is a regular editor and not something like mutt -f

publicinbox.mailEditor

The command to perform the edit with.  An example of this would be mutt -f, and the user would then use the facilities in mutt(1) to edit the mail.  This is useful for editing attachments or Base64-encoded emails which are more difficult to edit with a normal editor (configured via GIT_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR).

Default: none

GIT_EDITOR / VISUAL / EDITOR

public-inbox-edit will fall back to using one of these variables (in that order) if publicinbox.mailEditor is unset.

PI_CONFIG

The default config file, normally "~/.public-inbox/config". See public-inbox-config(5)

Only v2 repositories are supported.

This is safe to run while normal inbox writing tools (public-inbox-mda(1), public-inbox-watch(1), public-inbox-learn(1)) are active.

Running this in parallel with public-inbox-xcpdb(1) or "public-inbox-index --reindex" can lead to errors or edited data remaining indexed.

Incremental public-inbox-index(1) (without --reindex) is fine.

Keep in mind this is a last resort, as it will be disruptive to anyone using git(1) to mirror the inbox being edited.

Feedback welcome via plain-text mail to <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

The mail archives are hosted at <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> and <http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/meta/>

Copyright 2019-2021 all contributors <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>

public-inbox-purge(1)

public-inbox-config(5), public-inbox-index(1), public-inbox-purge(1), public-inbox-xcpdb(1).