[Dovecot] Thunderbird Archive to slower storage - sort of alternate storage

[Marcio Merlone]

Em 14-03-2012 09:19, Timo Sirainen escreveu:
> On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 08:51 -0300, Marcio Merlone wrote:
>> Em 13-03-2012 15:58, Marcio Merlone escreveu:
>>> Em 13-03-2012 13:49, Timo Sirainen escreveu:
>>>> A perfectly working solution would be to (upgrade to v2.x and) switch
>>>> to sdbox or mdbox format with alt storage enabled, then you could
>>>> simply do: doveadm altmove -A mailbox 'Archives*' all
>> Should this command be run every time a new folder (.Archives.2012 for
>> example) is created or can this be automated, something like instructing
>> deliver to do this to any Archives* is created? In other words, to cron
>> or not to cron?
> It's not deliver that creates it, it's the IMAP client. And it would
I first though about deliver since this seems the guy who could do that, 
but don't matter.

> have to be done when IMAP client copies mails there. But there's
> currently no easy way to automate that, so you'd need to do it in cron.
Just imagine that:

protocol imap{
     ...
     x_alternate_storage_always = Archives, Spam, Trash
     x_alternate_storage_size = 20MB
     x_alternate_storage_age = 1y
     ...
}

The client (Thunderbird?) sends imap commands to dovecot create such 
folder or to move a message to such folder. Dovecot obeys and check the 
config to see if the folder in question is one of those listed on 
x_alternate_storage_always. If the folder is not on alternate storage 
yet, create/move it there and them proceed what was asked to do.

I imagine that an age based action would depend of a cron job in order 
to not overload the server each time it performs any imap command and 
check old messages age...

> Another possibility could be to add a new feature (plugin) that always
> immediately saves mails in Archives* mailboxes to alt storage.
I don't know if the duck is male, I want the egg! :)

I know nothing about the inner workings of dovecot, and very little 
about the outer working. A well designed and integrated plugin could be, 
but seems to be a nice core feature for dovecot, based on folder name, 
size or age.

Many thanks for your time. Please be kind considering those ideas, I am 
just a poor man's server admin. :)

Best regards.

-- 
*Marcio Merlone*