Also: imapcopy - IMAP backup, copy and migration tool

On 03/29/2011 08:04 PM, Jim Lawson wrote:

Does the proprietary solution allow IMAP access? If so, I would use imapsync.

http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/

Jim

On 3/29/11 18:26 , Alexandre Chapellon wrote:

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Hello,

I am trying to setup a migration scenario from an proprietary solution to dovecot IMAP/POP3. Whereas am only at the strating point, things appear quite complicated because of the following reasons:

• The proprietary solution uses special/own/proprietary mailbox format (wich is more like maildir but is not maildir)
• I don't have direct access to the filesystem where the mails are stored. The best I could do would be a snapshots of the filesystem
• I have about 1,5TB of mail data.
• Having users to be forced to empty their mailbox before migration or re-download their whole mailbox after migration would be something hard for me to present as a correct option.

Am looking for advices that would avoid me loosing time searching in bad directions. Or even point me to a miraculous tool thatdoes all magic while i have a beer :)

Best regards.

On 3/30/11 03:51 , Alexandre Chapellon wrote:

Le mardi 29 mars 2011 à 19:04 -0400, Jim Lawson a écrit :

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Does the proprietary solution allow IMAP access? If so, I would use imapsync.

Thanks for answers.

Not all the accounts have IMAP enabled, but I guess I could setup some master account with IMAP enabled or even enable IMAP for all users to proceed with migration. But will imapsync keep trac of UIDs so users won't have have duplicated messages or re-download them if they use POP3?

I don't think so. The sync happens via IMAP, and I don't think IMAP clients can *set* UIDs of messages; only the server does this (someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.)

Will it preserve flags of messages so read or deleted messages do not appear as new messages? Yes; at least, it has for us in testing (with Dovecot as the destination server.) Whether it will work for you depends on the specifics of the source server. Why not give it a try and see?

Jim

Ok thanks for all thoose informations, As Jim asid, Now I have to give it a try and see. what happens.

Le mercredi 30 mars 2011 à 17:07 +0300, Timo Sirainen a écrit :

On 30.3.2011, at 16.48, Jim Lawson wrote:

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But will imapsync keep trac of UIDs so users won't have have duplicated messages or re-download them if they use POP3?

IMAP protocol doesn't know anything about POP3 UIDLs. They might or might not be based on IMAP UIDs.

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I don't think so. The sync happens via IMAP, and I don't think IMAP clients can *set* UIDs of messages; only the server does this (someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.)

That too. Although Dovecot v2.1's dsync + imapc backend can migrate mails and preserve IMAP UIDs, but even it can't preserve POP3 UIDLs at least currently (that would also require POP3 client code for Dovecot..)

-- horoa: la voie est libre