[Dovecot] repeating dsync - questions

[Timo Sirainen]

On 7.4.2013, at 17.12, Bob Gustafson <bobgus at rcn.com> wrote:

> I am still on my quest for a quick way to move mail from a live Maildir
> system to a 'soon to be live' sdbox system.
> 
> I copy Maildir to new system using:
> rsync -ar --times hoho4:/home/bobgus/Maildir/ /home/bobgus/Maildir
> 
> Then I convert from Maildir to sdbox with:
> dsync mirror maildir:~/Maildir
> 
> Then I copy more messages from live system using rsync

^^ that is the mistake

> Then I do the 'dsync mirror maildir:~/Maildir' again
> 
> There were only a few messages that were copied over in the 2nd rsync
> pass and it went quickly, but the 2nd dsync pass is taking a long time.

The second rsync is overwriting all the metadata changes (mailbox GUIDs most importantly) that the first dsync run did.

> Also, I see strange directories in the sdbox directory (see below)

Also caused by the same thing.

v2.2 dsync should be able to handle this much better, but in general you shouldn't be mixing rsync and dsync in that way. You could for example install Dovecot v2.1 dsync to the source server (could even be under /tmp by compiling from sources) and then do the conversion directly from source server maildir to destination server sdbox.