[Dovecot] Converting mbox to Maildir, all prior read messages are downloaded as new
I am running dovecot 0.99. Everything works great; however, now I am looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir. It seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as new.
This typically wouldn't be a problem; however, I am dealing with 100s of users with 1000s of emails and this really isn't acceptable behavior to them. Any thoughts on how to correct this issue and prevent the client from downloading these messages again?
As a note, my test client is thunderbird and my preferred mbox to Maildir tool is mb2md-3.20.pl.
Thanks!
On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
I am running dovecot 0.99. Everything works great; however, now I
am looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.
It seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do
what they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they
are stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these
messages as new.
I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to preserve
the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would
require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir
switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the
UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
Timo Sirainen wrote:
On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
I am running dovecot 0.99. Everything works great; however, now I am looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir. It seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as new.
I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to preserve the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your client set to cache all the messages and you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore) and re-downloading new ones. It would be nice to have Convert plugin, that preserves UIDs and UIDVALIDITY values.
P.S. A little unrelated question about convert plugin.
I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the dovecot.conf. But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after conversion. Is that the way it should be?
Of course, it tries to convert the same boxes next time I log in.
FiL
Timo Sirainen wrote:
On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
I am running dovecot 0.99. Everything works great; however, now I am looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir. It seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as new.
I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to preserve the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your client set to cache all the messages and you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore) and re-downloading new ones. It would be nice to have Convert plugin, that preserves UIDs and UIDVALIDITY values.
P.S. A little unrelated question about convert plugin.
I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the dovecot.conf. But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after conversion. Is that the way it should be?
Of course, it tries to convert the same boxes next time I log in.
FiL
On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 14:36 -0400, FiL wrote:
I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to preserve the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your client set to cache all the messages and you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore) and re-downloading new ones.
Right. But it's not as bad as with POP3 where the messages are downloaded as duplicates.
It would be nice to have Convert plugin, that preserves UIDs and UIDVALIDITY values.
It would require changing Dovecot internals to support that. Not a simple thing to do.
I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the dovecot.conf. But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after conversion. Is that the way it should be?
And the destination isn't /raid/mbox/%u? It should have renamed the %u to %u-converted.
On May 26, 2007, at 11:30 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in
the dovecot.conf. But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after conversion. Is that the way it should be?And the destination isn't /raid/mbox/%u? It should have renamed the %u to %u-converted.
...and as a reminder, the old mbox inbox, in this case /var/mail/%u,
will not be renamed.
B. Bodger
Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 14:36 -0400, FiL wrote:
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your client set to cache all the messages and you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore) and re-downloading new ones.
Right. But it's not as bad as with POP3 where the messages are downloaded as duplicates.
It's pretty bad if you trying to check your mail over the slow connection (and some users do that). Also at least 1/3 of my users have 100Mb just in the inbox and much more in other mailboxes. And I know, that server just wouldn't handle the load the first day after migration.
I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the dovecot.conf. But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after conversion. Is that the way it should be?
And the destination isn't /raid/mbox/%u? It should have renamed the %u to %u-converted.
The destination is /raid/Maildir/%u/ but the original folder doesn't get renamed. I will play with it a little more and let you know the details.
FiL
participants (5)
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Bruce Bodger
-
Eric and Barbara Sammons
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FiL
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FiL ＠ Kpoxa
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Timo Sirainen