[Dovecot] Migrating from UW: mbx detection and conversion
I want to migrate my big mail folder hierarchy in preparation for converting from UW-IMAP to Dovecot. I've got a bunch of mbx format folders but some remain mbox. Has anyone done this? Any scripts out there for automating the conversion to all-mbox?
I believe the only format conversion available is mailutil (part of UW-IMAP) and it works by opening an IMAP connection to the server and moving messages from one folder to the other. Is there any simpler method?
I'm using the script from
http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/
I want to migrate my big mail folder hierarchy in preparation for converting from UW-IMAP to Dovecot. I've got a bunch of mbx format folders but some remain mbox. Has anyone done this? Any scripts out there for automating the conversion to all-mbox?
I believe the only format conversion available is mailutil (part of UW-IMAP) and it works by opening an IMAP connection to the server and moving messages from one folder to the other. Is there any simpler method?
--On Thursday, January 29, 2004 2:44 PM -0500 Joshua Frigerio joshua@uic.edu wrote:
I'm using the script from
This converts mbox to maildir. I'm looking for mbx to mbox.
Kenneth Porter wrote:
--On Thursday, January 29, 2004 2:44 PM -0500 Joshua Frigerio joshua@uic.edu wrote:
I'm using the script from
This converts mbox to maildir. I'm looking for mbx to mbox.
I'm faced with the exact same problem at a client site. Unfortunately, all you can do is use mbxcvt from the UW utilities kit to convert mbx->mbox then use mb2md to finish the conversion to maildir.
it sucks, it's horrible, it's really ugly but it's a side effect of the politics of mailbox formats. BUT dovecot is so wonderful it makes it all worthwhile.
I'm just hoping that Timo gets the mbox support fixed RSN.
---eric
--On Thursday, January 29, 2004 3:12 PM -0500 "Eric S. Johansson" esj@harvee.org wrote:
I'm faced with the exact same problem at a client site. Unfortunately, all you can do is use mbxcvt from the UW utilities kit to convert mbx->mbox then use mb2md to finish the conversion to maildir.
IIRC, the utils package was deprecated and most of it was rolled into the main UW-IMAP package. mailutil replaces mbxcvt and several other programs.
it sucks, it's horrible, it's really ugly but it's a side effect of the politics of mailbox formats. BUT dovecot is so wonderful it makes it all worthwhile.
That's what I'm hoping.
I'm just hoping that Timo gets the mbox support fixed RSN.
What's broken?
Kenneth Porter wrote:
--On Thursday, January 29, 2004 3:12 PM -0500 "Eric S. Johansson" esj@harvee.org wrote:
I'm faced with the exact same problem at a client site. Unfortunately, all you can do is use mbxcvt from the UW utilities kit to convert mbx->mbox then use mb2md to finish the conversion to maildir.
IIRC, the utils package was deprecated and most of it was rolled into the main UW-IMAP package. mailutil replaces mbxcvt and several other programs.
when did this happen? I don't see it with 7.2 Red Hat of 8.0.
it sucks, it's horrible, it's really ugly but it's a side effect of the politics of mailbox formats. BUT dovecot is so wonderful it makes it all worthwhile.
That's what I'm hoping.
the additional benefit is a pleasant and helpful user community. It's probably because it isn't well known yet so let's hope that it remains a relatively unpublicized treasure lest Timo turn into the second coming of Mark Crispen.
I'm just hoping that Timo gets the mbox support fixed RSN.
What's broken?
something to do with indexing. I know I was triggering a bug which caused huge amounts of CPU load every time you did anything with the mailbox. If you've got the energy, I'm sure he could use the help. I'm up to my eyeballs in antispam (camram) work.
---eric
On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 22:51, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
the additional benefit is a pleasant and helpful user community. It's probably because it isn't well known yet so let's hope that it remains a relatively unpublicized treasure lest Timo turn into the second coming of Mark Crispen.
Heh :) I'm not changing my ways, I've already years of experience with authoring more or less popular software, irssi most notably. Only lack of time makes me unresponsive and ignore/delay replies.
I don't yet really even want Dovecot to be too well known, it's not ready yet. When 1.0 comes (this spring I hope) I'll start publicizing it more. After that I should only need to add new features - existing ones should be perfect and better than anyone else's ;)
I'm just hoping that Timo gets the mbox support fixed RSN.
What's broken?
something to do with indexing. I know I was triggering a bug which caused huge amounts of CPU load every time you did anything with the mailbox. If you've got the energy, I'm sure he could use the help. I'm up to my eyeballs in antispam (camram) work.
I'm rewriting indexing code. Actually all that code finally seems to be written, now it's just making sure it all works. And then I'll have to rewrite maildir and mbox syncing to work with the new code, that'll take some time too..
mbox also has problems with mailboxes that often get empty, such as drafts.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:16:01 +0200 Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi wrote:
Heh :) I'm not changing my ways, I've already years of experience with authoring more or less popular software, irssi most notably. Only lack of time makes me unresponsive and ignore/delay replies.
Lest it be missed: you're doing a great job. Rarely (if ever) has pre-V1 code been so rock solid in normal use. I'm using it (shhh) on production servers. Keep up the great work, and btw you are _not_ unresponsive.
K.
Keith Edmunds wrote:
Heh :) I'm not changing my ways, I've already years of experience with authoring more or less popular software, irssi most notably. Only lack of time makes me unresponsive and ignore/delay replies.
Lest it be missed: you're doing a great job. Rarely (if ever) has pre-V1 code been so rock solid in normal use. I'm using it (shhh) on production servers. Keep up the great work, and btw you are _not_ unresponsive.
Who says it's not production ready? :-) I just migrated to it from UW-IMAP. Except for a maildir/mozilla interoperability with custom flags issue, it's working just fine, and loads faster than anything else :-)
My users are happy.
-Rick
Rick Johnson, RHCE #807302311706007 - rjohnson@medata.com Linux/Network Administrator - Medata, Inc. PGP Public Key: https://mail.medata.com/pgp/rjohnson.asc
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Timo Sirainen wrote:
I don't yet really even want Dovecot to be too well known, it's not ready yet. When 1.0 comes (this spring I hope) I'll start publicizing it more.
I was going to propose making dovecot the default IMAP and POP3 server in the upcoming sarge distribution of Debian. But I won't if you don't want it just yet. (Though realistically sarge won't be released until summer at the earliest so you may well have 1.0 out by then.)
--On Thursday, January 29, 2004 3:51 PM -0500 "Eric S. Johansson" esj@harvee.org wrote:
IIRC, the utils package was deprecated and most of it was rolled into the main UW-IMAP package. mailutil replaces mbxcvt and several other programs.
when did this happen? I don't see it with 7.2 Red Hat of 8.0.
I just pulled utils from the UW distro site and it's dated 2002. RH has never included the utilities in its RPM's. I only know about them from building from the SRPM, and added a patch recently to the spec file to create a utils sub-package:
BTW, I discovered that "file" on Fedora understands mbx format, so the following one-liner will find all the mbx files in a hierarchy:
file find . -type f | grep MBX
participants (7)
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Eric S. Johansson
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Jaldhar H. Vyas
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Joshua Frigerio
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Keith Edmunds
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Kenneth Porter
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Rick Johnson
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Timo Sirainen