Yeah, that would work. Dovecot doesn't use absolute paths anywhere internally, except for dbox-alt-root symlink. If the alt root path changes, it logs a warning once, but other than that nothing breaks.
Alternatively you could do this using dsync still with zero downtime. Basically treat it the same as user migration or mailbox format change, and afterwards delete the old user's mails (e.g. doveadm expunge -u user@domain mailbox '*' all) before rm -rfing the home dirs. http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Tools/Dsync#example_converting
On Mon, 2013-05-20 at 12:28 +0100, Alex Crow wrote:
Just realised you can't hardlink directories. Given that (and forgetting the "delete later" thing) would it work with a symlink?
Thanks
Alex ----Original Message---- *Subject:* [Dovecot] Linking mdbox directories *From:* Alex Crow acrow@integrafin.co.uk *To:* dovecot@dovecot.org{ *CC:* }*Date:* Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:49 +0100
Hi Timo/list,
We have a scenario in which some email accounts on dovecot (stored in mdbox, separate paths for indexes, email, ALT storage and also using SIS for attachments, LDAP directory) need their names changed. I know we could just change the mail LDAP attribute (and leave mailMessageStore alone) so they keep the same directories on disk, but this would throw a spanner in the works for our backups.
Would it be possible to create a hard link of the user's directories under the new name, and change the LDAP mailMessageStore attribute to point to these without stopping and starting dovecot? And after a while unlink the original locations? Or would this mess up dovecot's internal state?
Thanks
Alex