Restoring from Gmail Backup

 Migrating to a new Gmail email account is a lot easier using Google Takeout this Thurderbird Add-on ImportExportTools NG. I have been splitting up my email accounts so that I have several distinct accounts - more on that below. The gist was that in the past I was forwarding all mail into one account which I'm no longer doing but now I want to move all that old mail, ~30,000 emails, into a different mailbox. Recommendations online were to connect Thunderbird to the two accounts and move messages in batches but in practice Gmail times out these connections very quickly and the batches are way too small. Instead I ended up exporting my email and importing it - why Google does not offer an import of the format in which they export boggles the mind, and while it's possible I've simply missed proper screen where this can be done, somehow I think not. This seems to be one of those things that is easy enough, but not obvious and took a bit of searching. 

The easiest process I found was to use the ImportExportTools Add-on:

1. Spring cleaning time of your old email! Newsletters and automated notifications that were being filtered to a folder go 💥, gone.
2. Go to Google Takeout and export mail. This produces a ZIP file which you can extract and there is a single large MBOX format file
3. Install  Thurderbird and the ImportExportTools NG add-on
4. Import the MBOX as a local folder with ImportExportTools
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5. Re-Export the email from local folder to a directory of EML files with ImportExportTools
• 
6. Connect Thunderbird to your new email account
7. Import with ImportExportTools "all messages from a directory" and import into your "All Mail" folder
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8. Wait.  ... Wait ... Ponder if you should have done more aggressive cleaning... And wait. My mailbox I think it ran at least 3 hours? Not sure, but a lot time, many hours.
9. Tada! Go into your Gmail account and try a few searches and see if you got everything you expected.

This ImportExportTools is generic enough you could use it for any sort of mail service and I think I could have done the initial export with it instead of Google Takeout thus saving a couple steps. My confidence isn't that high that 100% of the email was coming across with the connection timeouts so I would kind of suggest sticking with Google Takeout to get the mail and go through the extra steps and also having the Takeout as a backup is a good idea regardless.

Really this stemmed from wanting to split from One Mailbox To Rule Them All, which I already was moving away from. I'm working with 4 mailboxes now.

A personal email address which I really only use with other people; friends, family,  like actual humans. Mostly, a couple exceptions but so few as to be trivial. This is on thenibble.org domain and I have a handful of aliases (yay for grand-fathered free Google Apps account).

A general email address I use for most everything - online services, loyalty points programs, emailing with contractors, the bank, etc. Some people call this a "personal assistant" in that it's handling everything outside your most personal emails. A lot of my other mailboxes forward into this one. This is where I wanted to move all the mail.

A junk email address particularly to get to websites where they require an email or registration to access whatever specific thing that I need and is probably a one-off and I really don't want to hear from them again. Basically any email into this mailbox, I flag the sender as Spam so it stays pretty clean but it is functional enough to pass a registration. Some people like using 10 Minute Mail or similar.

A second "personal assistant" email address but for the household. My wife and I sign up for Spotify - goes on the household mailbox. Also, fun spy-craft tip: you can use this as a secret message drop by writing a DRAFT email which is then read by the other person and then deleted. This way the message never went through all the delivery servers so there's no logs of it and there won't be multiple copies of it.

Ciao

Dom617b

Some Bits to Remember About Synology Standard Operating Procedures

Since running the Synology at home for a while now, there's a few things that I wanted to note which aren't really intuitive and I don't do often enough to remember. 

Encrypted folders are setup in a couple ways which I touched on in Home NAS Encryption 

One uses a key file stored on a removable USB drive. I have it setup to mount automatically so that's okay... But I used a really old USB key because obviously I didn't need an 32GB key to store a 32KB file but it's flaky so sometimes the USB key isn't available and it doesn't mount until I wiggle the key and re-mount.

Second uses a passphrase so there's no way to mount automatically and whenever I reboot like after a DSM update I have to go back in.

To mount the encrypted share manually, whatever the case it isn't mounted automatically, it is found in control panel.

1. Open Control Panel
2. Navigate to Shared Folder
3. Select the share with the closed lock
4. Encryption menu
5. Mount
6. Provide passphrase (if applicable)

The other part of the S.O.P. is updating the DSM and package software, i.e. the most common cause for reboot :) It's all been really smooth so I try to do it all the time.

DSM 7.0 was released a little while ago and I left the major version upgrade just so that I wasn't among the earliest adopters. Ran the upgrade today and it was seamless so far and Synology provided some clear prompts on cleanup items like removing obsolete packages (like Python now part of DSM).

Ciao!

Dom617b

Now Certified

Passed my Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification this week and this is my first Microsoft exam. My primary resource was Microsoft Learn where there is a lot of material broken up into 30-60 minute lessons including some labs. Also used the practice tests and did those many times before writing the cert exam itself. 

Passwords Passwords Everywhere

I seem to need passwords more and more often. They're so convenient! Couple methods I've been using depending on the lazy-vs-security trade-offs. 

Registering for websites online, Chrome or any browser can generate passwords. 

 For secure passwords I use KeePass. 

There's the old dummy password only used for the real junky junk that isn't worth protecting. 

Random.org password generator.

DuckDuckGo.com "pwgen" with or without "strong". Also for bonus lazy, I changed the search engine in Chrome to be "duck" for short so in the title bar I can type "duck pwgen 10". 

 Stay Safe!

 - Dom617B

Azure Fundamentals, PowerShell, and More

We have a big push at #dayjob to transition from traditional server operations to automation and Cloud so I've been learning new things and trying as best as possible to sweep out the cobwebs upstairs. Really want to be able to competently support my colleagues as it is going to be a very hard time for many. 

PowerShell was really what got me moving. I've been doing odds and ends scripts and finally got a couple books as to take things further. "Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches" was really just to get a passable foundation to get into "Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches". By the time I got through those two books, I was using VS Code and GitHub and will definitely re-read some of those chapters to get a more professional level of coding practice.

• Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks
• Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks

After reading those I wanted to learn more and starting using Microsoft Learn with a goal to get Azure Fundamentals certification and go from there. The material available so far has been great. Mostly in about 30 minute chunks. Lots of references available, some labs are available, and all free. I'm still on pretty basic stuff though feel like I'll plow through a lot. Azure is crazy huge - there are so many services and the global environment is absolutely gigantic. 

The Azure Fundamentals learning path lead me into another tangent to go through the learning path to build a .Net application with C#. The Azure path got to a point that one of the sessions was recommending as pre-requisites to have knowledge of API and WebAPI in C# and .Net and I do want to be able to get the best use out of labs that I can. My programming is really rusty, but having done so much in school, the pace of the early lessons are more frustratingly slow. My expectations are out of whack - like I'm learning basic syntax like variable declaration but then also what's a container anyways? 

It's been refreshing to be learning and be re-aligning my skills with the current world. 

Ciao 

Dom617b