READPST AND READDBX

For the open -source advocates, a great tool is included in the libPST package for examining Outlook data files. ReadPST is a program made available as part of the libPST package, which is available from SourceForge at http:// sourceforge .net/projects/ol2mbox/.

Implementation

Downloading the libPST package and extracting it will place the contents of the package in the libpst directory on your hard drive. Enter that directory and execute the make command.

You can then execute the readPST program with the following options:

 ReadPST v0.3.4 implementing LibPST v0.3.4 Usage: ./readpst [OPTIONS] {PST FILENAME} OPTIONS:         -h      - Help. This screen         -k      - KMail. Output in kmail format         -o      - Output Dir. Directory to write files to002                  CWD is changed *after* opening pst file         -r       - Recursive. Output in a recursive format         -V      - Version. Display program version         -w      - Overwrite any output mbox files

ReadPST will the convert the PST into RFC-compliant Unix mail. You can access the extracted mail and attachments with any standard Unix mail client. For example, to convert a PST into KDE mail format, you would execute this command:

 ./readpst -k mypst.pst

Like its sister program libPST, libDBX contains a program called readDBX. This program, like readPST, allows an examiner to extract the contents of a DBX file into a RFC-compliant Unix mail format. LibDBX can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ol2mbox/. Downloading the libDBX package and extracting it will place the contents of the package in the libDBX directory. Enter that directory and execute the make command.

You can then execute the readDBX program with the following options:

 readdbx - Extract emails from MS Outlook Express 5.0 DBX files into mbox format. File is taken from stdin unless -f is specified. Output emails are written to stdout unless -o is specified Usage: readdbx [OPTIONS] Options:         -h           display this help and exit         -V           output version information and exit         -f "file"    input DBX file         -o "file"    file to write mbox format to         -q           don't display extra information

ReadDBX will convert the DBX into RFC-compliant Unix mail. You can access the extracted mail and attachments with any standard Unix mail client. For example, to convert a PST into Unix mail format, you would execute this command:

 ./readdbx -f mydbx.dbx -o mydbx