Can someone help with writing mbsync rule that only syncs Inbox and Sent

Question

I reviewed this article and decided to setup a similar mbsync rule.

https://jonathanh.co.uk/blog/mutt-setup.html

But I cannot get the rule for only the Inbox and Sent to work.

https://git.jonathanh.co.uk/jab2870/Dotfiles/src/branch/master/isync/.config/isync/mbsyncrc#L33-L41

Channel work-inbox
Master :work-remote:
Slave :work-local:
# Only sync  Inbox
Patterns Inbox Sent
# Automatically create missing mailboxes, both locally and on the server
Create Both
# Save the synchronization state files in the relevant directory
SyncState *

I have and have had a rule for everything like the work-all example. And I got that working. But for some reason the work-inbox will not sync.

Comments

The configuration looks simple enough, are you sure that Patterns is matching the right folder names? Can you run mbsync --debug and add the output to the question? It could give more information about what's going on.

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Good idea, thanks. The output is huge, too long to be useful. So I used diff between my original and this one and it looks like it misses the pattern for "Inbox" even though both mbsync and mutt print that directory as "Inbox". So I tried all upper case and that worked.

Here's the part of the diff from my original that shows it syncing my INBOX. I have truncated that last line due to the length and because PII...

< M: Enter select_box, name=INBOX
< M: Leave select_box, ret=0
< S: Enter select_box, name=INBOX
< S: Leave select_box, ret=0
< S: Called get_box_path, ...

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I've found this old thread from 2017 where they suggest that mbsync fails to make the pattern matching for "inbox" case insensitive despite IMAP not having such requirement. It could be that the issue remains unfixed, or you have an old version.

Answer 1

I had changed Inbox to INBOX. Answer explained here:

https://wotas.net/345/can-someone-help-with-writing-mbsync-rule-that-only-syncs-inbox-and-sent?show=348#c348