[Dovecot] mbox to maildir batch conversion

Dirk Essl dirk at essl.de
Fri Jan 30 09:31:36 EET 2009


On 29.01.2009 18:29 Uhr, Mike Hobbs wrote:
> Hello,

Hi Mike,

> I'm upgrading my mail server from UW to Dovecot and I'd like to convert
> from mbox to maildir. I've successfully convert myself and a few other
> users with the mb2md script. All is well.
>
> My question is, I have somewhere around 500 users and about 122gb of
> mail folders to convert (this does not include the inbox at /var/mail).
>
> mb2md needs to be run as each user to convert. Are there any programs or
> scripts out there that will allow me to convert everyone at the same time?

I have created such a script which does a few checks before as well.
We didn't do a 'real' batch conversion, because nothing was in a defined 
state at the time of the conversion. We did do it in batches of 10 users 
per hour and everyone got an email before, telling them in which 
timeframe the migration of their account will take place.
A big help for the migration was perdition (imap proxy) so no 
reconfiguration of the client was needed.

> I know there is a Dovecot plugin to convert mail, but we didn't want to
> use this option.
>
> I'm sure someone on this list was in the same situation as me, how did
> you handle a massive conversion?

The attached script does a lot of other things as well, maybe just 
reading it will give you an idea of what to expect.

>
> Any help or suggestions is much appreciated!
>

cheers,
dirk
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: m2f
Url: http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20090130/4ffa2071/attachment-0001.pl 


More information about the dovecot mailing list