[Dovecot] Info regarding conversion of mbox to maildir

Scott Silva ssilva at sgvwater.com
Fri Feb 6 18:42:19 EET 2009


on 2-5-2009 8:15 PM Timo Sirainen spake the following:
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Scott Silva wrote:
> 
>> When I finally decide to convert to maildir, will I have to set up
>> namespaces
>> during the conversion, or will dovecot figure out where everything is
>> by itself?
> 
> Just adding namespaces won't really help with anything, except unless
> you want to use both maildir and mbox at the same time.
> 
>> Should I set up deliver to go to maildir/ globally, or per user?
> 
> Depends on if you convert everything at once or one user at a time. Or
> you can just use convert plugin with deliver and then you don't have to
> worry about it.
> 
>> I have considered using the convert plugin, if there are not a lot of
>> negatives.
> 
> I don't know if anyone has really used it to do the conversion, but I
> don't see why it wouldn't work. :) The main negative is that it doesn't
> preserve message UIDs, so IMAP clients will re-download the messages and
> if you have any POP3 users that store messages on server they'll get
> duplicate messages.
> 
> 
Is the namespace example in the wiki sufficient to enable both mbox and
maildir during a conversion period? I was thinking I would do the large boxes
with one of the other scripts, and turn on the convert plugin for the rest.
Maybe I will have to do some more research. The ideal thing would be if I
could turn on globally new mail in maildir, and convert the existing mail
later. Maybe get the inboxes in /var/spool/mail also done initially. Of course
the users need to be able to access all mail doring the conversion period.

It is only less than 100 users at each site, so less than 200 total users.

I just think it would be more reliable for the backups to not worry if an
inbox is locked during a backup run.


-- 
MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!

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