mbx repair script

[David Isaac]

"Donn Cave" <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:donn-0E4BE4.09145528042005 at gnus01.u.washington.edu...
> All mbx files start with a 2048 byte
> header, and a valid header can be copied to another
> file and still be valid.  For example, if the damaged
> file still has 2048 bytes of header,
>
>    1.  Find or create another mbx file "spud".
>    2.  Copy header:    $ dd if=spud count=4 > newbx
>    3.  Copy old file:  $ dd if=oldbx skip=4 >> newbx
>    4.  change ownership and permission to match oldbx.


This did not work for me.
Should it?
I thought the header contained information tightly tied
to the rest of the content (to speed search etc) so that
e.g., byte counts could matter.

Can you point me to documentation of the mbx format?

Thanks,
Alan Isaac