Hi,

Your problem might be similar to mine a long time ago. IMO behavior of "doveadm altmove -r" command with mdbox format is different to sdbox format:
My workaround for this case is: In the mdbox_altmove_add_files function, after defining action for the message which is marked as MOVE_FROM_ALT, we will continue checking other messages in the file storage. If they are not listed in altmoves (they stay in alternate storage), their action will be MDBOX_MSG_ACTION_MOVE_TO_ALT. That means they will be moved 2 times: to primary storage as usual then to alternate storage again to ensure finally they are in alternate storage.
If you don't mind building Dovecot from source, give my patch a look.


On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 at 05:26, Benoit Branciard <Benoit.Branciard@univ-paris1.fr> wrote:
Hello,

I have some trouble using "doveadm altmove -r".

Regular "doveadm altmove" is OK, selected mails were moved to alternate
storage as expected. But I can't manage to get them back to original
location, "doveadm altmove -r" has no effect.

We are using Dovecot 2.3.4 (Debian Buster package).

mail_location = mdbox:~/mdbox:DIRNAME=_@@_dbox-Mails_@@_:ALT=/slow%h/mdbox

doveadm altmove -u myuser since 90d

-> some message files are created under /slow/my/homedir/mdbox/storage

doveadm altmove -r -u myuser all

-> message files are still sitting under /slow/my/homedir/mdbox/storage,
none were created into /my/homedir/mdbox/storage.

Is there some known issues with doveadm altmove in this version ? Or am
I missing something ?

I can share more config details if needed.

--
Benoit BRANCIARD
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - DSIUN-SIS
B405 - Centre PMF - 90 rue de Tolbiac - 75013 Paris
Tel. 01 44 07 89 68
http://dsiun.univ-paris1.fr