[Dovecot] Fwd: converting from vm-pop3d

[Timo Sirainen]

On ke, 2010-06-09 at 15:26 +1200, Tim Uckun wrote:
> >
> > You didn't really seem to have any specific questions.
> 
> Sorry. I'll try to be more specific.
> 
> My first question is what do to about the mail format. Right now it's
> mbox and from reading the migration I understand that having dovecot
> point to these files is going to reset the pointers and cause people
> to re-download the files. I see a couple of scripts there that might
> help. One of them converts the mbox to maildir the other messes with
> the UIDs of the message. Which is the better approach? Would
> converting to maildir be a better long term solution?

I think it's safer to do one thing at a time. First migrate to Dovecot.
Then maybe migrate to Maildir.

> Also vm-pop3d has their own quota system and passwd files. The passwd
> files are in /etc/virtual/%d/passwd, they are just username:password
> and nothing else. Can I safely presume dovecot can read these? All the
> files in the /etc/virtual/$d are owned by mail.mail BTW.

Yes. http://wiki.dovecot.org/AuthDatabase/PasswdFile

> The quota file is also in the above mentioned directory. Would dovecot
> be able to parse that OK?

I don't know what the quota file contains. Most likely not compatible.

> The mails are delivered to /var/spool/virtual/%d/%u  There are no
> other files that I can see, there are no other directories for
> mailboxes that I can see (sorry I didn't set this up). Those
> directories are owned by %u.mail and so are the files in the
> directories.  Do I have to change the ownership of all these to the
> mail user? I understand that dovecot uses the same user for all
> mailboxes.

Dovecot can use one or more users. You don't need to change ownership of
any files if you don't want to. You could use e.g.

userdb static {
  args = uid=%u gid=%u home=/var/spool/virtual/%d/%u
}

> > If possible, try it first with a few users. http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration should tell the most important stuff.
> 
> Any good strategy for attempting this? Put dovecot on a different port perhaps?

Different port or different IP.