Silly question… Which is preferred? MailDir or Mbox? (directory vs flat file)

How would you do this when migrating from an old server to a new one?

Thx

-Mike

On May 2, 2017, at 1:58 AM, Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi@dovecot.fi> wrote:

Assuming your maildir path is /path/to/mail/Maildir You could do it like this:

mail_home=/path/to/mail mail_location=mdbox:~/Mail

Then run

doveadm import -A -s maildir:~/Maildir "" ALL

mdbox should end up in

/path/to/mail/Mail

Please try it with doveadm import -u username first and keep backups, naturally.

Aki

On 2017-05-02 09:51, Tamas Papp wrote:

...

Hi,

I replaced HDDs in my home server and reinstalled the OS (Ubuntu 17.04). Since I had some time I reviewed my Dovecot configuration and changed a couple of things, including mailbox format.

Now I would like to migrate e-mail (about 20G -- I use this server as an e-mail archive). The Maildir is available on the (old) hard disk. The new dovecot is running. What should I use? Would mbsync work? I would prefer a solution that does not mess up the UUIDs, but I can live with that too.

$ dovecot --version 2.2.27 (c0f36b0)

Incidentally, would you recommend sdbox or mdbox? Lots of e-mails, many of them have large attachments.

best,

Tamas

On Tue May 02 2017 10:58:33 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time), Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi@dovecot.fi> wrote:

mbox is not recommended for new setups unless you have very good reason to do so.

Use maildir or sdbox.

Just curious - why not mdbox?