[Dovecot] Moving Maildir email messages and backing things up.

[Karl Schmidt]

mouss wrote:
>> karl wrote:
>> What would happen if I ran a script that did this:
>>
>> mv ~/Maildir/.folder_one/cur/* ~/Maildir/.folder_two/cur/
>>
>> My hunch is it might break things.
> 
> shouldn't break anything. if the MUA is caching "actions" (happens with 
> thunderbird at least), then the view in the client will be different but 
> this is not a big problem (at least for me).

So on the server I could run something simple like:

#!/bin/bash
bogofilter  -Ns  -B /home/karl/Maildir/.s-2B-scaned_spam
mv ~/Maildir/.s-2B-scaned_spam/cur/* ~/Maildir/.archived_spam/cur/

Afterwards the MUA 'view' of the folder might not be correct until thunderbird re-caches the 
folder?

Is there a command line tool that would allow for moving emails that would do it in a way 
that dovecot and the MUA would know to update caches?

.,.,

If I have two users share a mail folder, I would think the MUA 'view' would also get behind. 
Is there a way to get thunderbird to re-cache a folder?

 > but if it's for backup, why are you moving files?

I'm looking into three separate issues: automating spam training, backup issues, and sharing 
folders.

I really wish I could see a list of the ~/Maildir indexing files and what they do - probably 
I don't need to know, but it might help me understand what problems I might run into 
restoring a backup.


>> Where can I find a list of files in ~/Maildir/ and a note on what they 
>> are? (And similarly for a ~/Maildir/.folder)
>>
>> I'm wondering if everything needs to be backed up, or if I can/should 
>> skip the indexes. What happens if any of these files changes during 
>> the backup? (I'm thinking I shouldn't have to stop dovecot for a backup).

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Karl Schmidt                         EMail Karl at xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc.                     WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street                    Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049                     FAX (785) 841-0434

Misdirection is the key to being a good magician. Magicians tell
you they are doing something while they do something quite
different; much like politicians -- except we can afford magicians.
-KPS

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