I have a machine with my mail service on it running Debian Squeeze. The version of dovecot on that server is 1.2.15.
I'm building a new server with Ubuntu 18.04 (started with 16.04, upgraded in place), where the dovecot version is 2.2.33. I plan to migrate all my services to this new machine.
The virtual mailboxes are on disk in maildir format, with accounts in a mysql database managed by postfixadmin. When I copy them over to the new machine, would there be any value to excluding the files that dovecot creates, and letting the new version recreate them? In one mailbox here are some of the files I am considering excluding:
dovecot.index dovecot.index.cache dovecot.index.log dovecot.index.thread dovecot-keywords dovecot-uidlist dovecot-uidvalidity dovecot-uidvalidity.5876ca77
There are other files under consideration, like maildirsize and maildirfolder. One that I would be sure to *not* remove is subscriptions.
If there are recommendations about dovecot files in a maildir that should not be removed during a migration, please let me know.
I'm aware that rebuilding this information could be slow. My own personal mailbox on the system is over 8GB in size and has well over nine hundred thousand files in it.
Thanks, Shawn