[Dovecot] Import from Evolution

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Sat, 2012-06-16 at 22:16 +0200, Patrick Ben Koetter wrote:
> * Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh at pacbell.net>:
> > I need to import the mail database generated by the evolution mail
> > reader into dovecot.  Evolution stores its mail in maildir format (fully
> > standards compatible, I think); I would be using the maildir format in
> > dovecot.  Is there anything in the wiki, etc. explaining exactly how to 
> > do this?
> > 
> > Why do this?  Evolution is hopelessly broken, and is not likely to be 
> > fixed in the forseeable future, and I would like to keep my mails in
> > maildir form.  Reviews of kmail are very bad, and thunderbird uses the
> > mbox format for storage.
> 
> If it is native maildir you can configure that/your account to use maildir and
> simply copy your mailbox over to Dovecot. When Dovecot accesses the mailbox it
> will create the necessary index files and you are ready to use it.

Sounds good.  

I'm sure than when you write "mailbox", you mean the folders (and not
the index files) in the evolution mail database, located at
~/.local/share/evolution/mail/local and whose contents start:
        $ ls -lA
        ..#evolution.Junk.cmeta        .jango.ibex.index.data
        ..#evolution.Trash.cmeta       .jfour/
        ..cmeta                        .jfour.cmeta
        ..maildir++                    .jfour.ibex.index
        .Drafts/                       .jfour.ibex.index.data
        .Drafts.cmeta                  .joer/
        .Outbox/                       .joer.cmeta
        .Outbox.cmeta                  .joyce/
        <...>
and not $MAIL, i.e. /var/spool/mail/jonrysh, where mail arrives on the
system (via fetchmail and local sendmail).  

Please excuse me for double checking; evolution has archived 218,886
messages in 132 folders, and I want to avoid trouble if possible.

Thanks for your help - jon