[Dovecot] need convert-tool advice

[Timo Sirainen]

On 31.7.2010, at 2.14, Dave McGuire wrote:

>  I've got a few thousand accounts that I'd like to convert from mbox to
> maildir.  I'm looking at using convert-tool from the command line to do
> this, but I'm uncertain about the command line syntax, so I hope someone
> can take a moment to go over this with me.

I'd suggest instead using mb2md.pl from http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat. It can preserve more metadata. v2.0 also has a much better dsync utility for conversion.

>  mv ${user} ${user}-mbox
> 
> convert_tool ${user} \
> /var/spool/mail/${domain}/${user} \
> mbox:/var/spool/mail/${domain}/${user}-mbox:\
> INBOX=/var/spool/mail/${domain}/${user}-mbox/inbox \
> maildir:/var/spool/mail/${domain}/${user}
> 
>  Is this correct usage of convert_tool's command line options?

Probably.. Although the INBOX= is unnecessary, since that's the default anyway.

>  The
> thing that confuses me is the "home directory" command line option, not
> sure what that's for, as my mail users don't have home directories...

http://wiki.dovecot.org/VirtualUsers/Home - I don't remember why convert-tool wants the home. Probably unnecessary.

> at
> least not in the UNIX sense, does it mean something else?  Will the
> users notice anything different here, with respect to UIDs, indices, or
> anything like that?

Yes, UIDs change. That's why you should use mb2md.pl instead to preserve them.

>  If this is completely the wrong way to do it, I'm not opposed to using
> a different tool like mb2md.pl, but I looked at that and couldn't quite
> figure out how to make it work within my current directory structure.

Well, I don't know about that. :) Never used it myself..