[Dovecot] dsync: convert only mbox in /var/mail to maildir?

[Jeff Simmons]

On Friday, April 20, 2012 02:27:59 pm Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 20.4.2012, at 22.26, Jeff Simmons wrote:
> > I'm migrating an old UW pop server to a new Dovecot server. The old
> > server did not allow mail to be stored on the server, so only mbox files
> > exist in /var/mail, with nothing in /home/$user. I'd like to copy the
> > /var/mail directory over to the new server and then use dsync to convert
> > the mbox files and put them in /home/$user/Maildir, but every
> > permutation of the command line I've tried dies with a variation on
> > can't find/write either /var/mail/mail or /home/$user/mail, seems it
> > won't deal with mbox files without an associated mail directory. Can
> > dsync be used for this kind of conversion, or should I look elsewhere
> > for conversion utilities?
> 
> Assuming in destination server the mbox is in /var/mail/$user and you want
> the destination to ~/Maildir:
> 
> in dovecot.conf set:
> mail_location = maildir.~/Maildir
> 
> rm -rf /tmp/emptydir
> dsync mirror mbox:/tmp/emptydir:/var/mail/$user

Actually:

dsync mirror mbox:/tmp/emptydir:INBOX=/var/mail/$user  :)

And be sure that /var/mail/$user has the same ownership:group as the user 
(i.e. $user:$user NOT $user:mail).

> be sure to delete the emptydir between users.

-- 
Jeff Simmons			               jeff at j-simmons.net
Simmons Consulting - Network Engineering, Administration, Security