Gmail to Dovecot migration

Yuri yuri at gooffcloud.net
Mon Aug 12 01:05:01 EEST 2019


Hi everyone,

I'm trying to migrate my gmail to dovecot following instructions at 
https://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/Gmail


Using -a 'virtual/All' option does not seem to work because the gmail
folder with that name does not exist, but -a '[Gmail]/All Mail' seem to
work.  I'm using the following command:

sudo doveadm \
-o imapc_host=imap.gmail.com \
-o imapc_user=user at gmail.com \
-o imapc_password=gmailpassword \
-o imapc_features="rfc822.size gmail-migration" \
-o imapc_port=993 \
-o imapc_ssl=imaps \
-o ssl_client_ca_dir=/etc/ssl/certs \
-o imapc_ssl_verify=yes \
backup -a '[Gmail]/All Mail' -O '-$GmailHaveLabels' -R -u 
user at exmaple.com imapc:


The problem is this command only migrates approximately 25% of my
emails by size.  Google Takeout exports 4 times more data in mbox
format, the size of exported mboxes aligns with what Google tells me a
the bottom of gmail settings page.


I experimented with other options of 'doveadm backup' command, but they
all resulted in less data being migrated. The above options are the
best I was able to achive so far.


Another option I was considering is to convert Google Takeout mboxes to
dovecot format. I tried using 'doveadm import' command, but got
confused with various user and search query options of the
command.  The best I was able to achive was to output a folder under
/Takeout which mimics my mbox structure, but with no imported messages.


A third option I'm considering is to convert Google Takeout mboxes
using mb2md command.  Conversion seems to work fine, but the output is
in the traditional (dotted) format, and for historical reasons I use
'LAYOUT=fs' option.  So I need to do some extra work to convert folder
names.  And even if I do so, I'm still not sure if I can import Maildir
to dovecot because dovecot's Maildir has other information, such as
indices, logs, etc., not just email folders.


I'll keep investigating the second and the third option because it
seems that Google Takeout gives me all my emails, but I'm not sure if
those are the right paths.

I wanted to ask the experts about the best option to migrate gmail to
dovecot.  Has anyone being able to successfully migrate all their
emails from gmail and what steps have been used for that?


My Dovecot version: 2.3.4.1


Thank you,
Yuri


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