[Dovecot] entourage pop to dovecot imap migration

[wagner]

I'm beginning to migrate my years of mail stuck in Entourage 2004  
(MacOSX) to dovecot imap on Fedora FC4. No matter how I have tried I  
cannot get the status flags to migrate. Eg: all the mail, once  
transfered from the pop archive to the imap server looses all Status:  
and X-Status: flags and ends up being marked "new" on the imap side.

After lots of testing it appears that, while simply having both pop  
and imap configured Entourage and dragging messages from the pop  
config to the imap area does move messages, all flags are lost. This  
also is the case if I export Entourage folders as mbox files and then  
import them into the imap server with Entourage or Mail.app.

Has anyone else came upon this obstacle? Any advice? I am in the  
process now of gathering information to facilitate my own "migration  
utility". It seems the Entourage DB keeps the read/flagged/replied  
flags for each message in its own internals and doesn't deem it  
worthwhile to export them as part of it's mbox export nor retain them  
as Status or X-Status flags when moving messages from its pop DB to  
the imap server.

I believe I can write a script to work on a set of found, for  
example, "replied to" messages to add an "X-Status: A" to their  
headers before moving them to the imap server. Same for "read" and  
"flagged" MS DB internals to Status/X-Status headers. With these  
headers added, moving them to the imap server, from my limited  
testing would seem to be the method to keep those status flags per  
message? Does dovecot use those flags or does it have its own means  
of storing that status information? Will it at least use those in the  
messages to populate its DB if it does have its own method?

Flags I've identified so far:

Status: O - old
Status: RO - recent old(?)
X-Status: A - replied to
X-Status: F - flagged

Thanks for any insight or suggestions.
Mike

-- 
"Beware the fury of the patient man."-Bukowski