

Migration to Dovecot
====================


This page contains generic information related to migrating from another IMAP or POP3 server to Dovecot. You should read this page, and then look at the server-specific instructions: 

 * >>UW-IMAP / UW-POP3<< 
 * >>Linuxconf / VIMAP<< 
 * >>Courier IMAP and POP3<< 
 * >>Cyrus IMAP and POP3<< 
 * >>vm-pop3d<< 
Dovecot is one of the easiest IMAP servers to migrate to because of its powerful configuration options. Dovecot can store email in both  >>mbox<< and >>Maildir<< formats, making it compatible with many existing servers. Dovecot is also very flexible as to where it stores the email. It supports many different databases for storing >>passwords<< >>user information<<. 
Migration involves several separate tasks. You either need to convert your data or make Dovecot read your existing data. Dovecot is very good at being compatible and configurable, so it is likely to read your existing mailboxes and user and password configurations. Tasks for conversion include: 

 * >>Where and how to store the email<< 
 * >>User authentication<< 
 * >>User database configuration<< (home directory structure, UID and GID) 


IMAP migration
==============


When migrating mails from another IMAP server, you should make sure that these are preserved: 

 1. Message flags 

 * Lost flags can be really annoying, you most likely want to avoid it. 

 * Message UIDs and UIDVALIDITY value 

 * If UIDs are lost, at the minimum clients' message cache gets cleaned and messages are re-downloaded as new. 
 * Some IMAP clients store metadata by assigning it to specific UID, if UIDs are changed these will be lost. 

 * Mailbox subscription list 

 * Users would be able to manually subscribe them again if you don't want to mess with it. 



POP3 migration
==============


When migrating mails from another POP3 server, you should try to preserve the old UIDLs. If POP3 client is configured to keep mails in the server and the messages' UIDLs change, all the messages are downloaded again as new messages. 
Some servers (UW, Cyrus) implementing both IMAP and POP3 protocols use the IMAP UID and UIDVALIDITY values for generating the POP3 UIDL values. To preserve the POP3 UIDL from such servers you'll need to preserve the IMAP UIDs and set 'pop3_uidl_format' properly. 
If the server doesn't use IMAP UIDs for the POP3 UIDL, you'll need to figure out another way to do it. One way is to put the UIDL value into X-UIDL: header in the mails and set 'pop3_reuse_xuidl=yes'. Some POP3 servers (QPopper) write the X-UIDL: header themselves, making the migration easy. 
Some POP3 servers using Maildir uses the maildir base filename as the UIDL. You can use 'pop3_uidl_format = %f' to do this. 
Here is a list of POP3 servers and how they generate their UIDs. Please update if you know more: 

 * UW-POP3: 'pop3_uidl_format = %08Xv%08Xu' 
 * Cyrus <= 2.1.3: 'pop3_uidl_format = %u' 
 * Cyrus >= 2.1.4: 'pop3_uidl_format = %v.%u' 
 * Citadel [None] (all versions): 'pop3_uidl_format = %u' 
 * Dovecot 0.99: 'pop3_uidl_format = %v.%u' 
 * tpop3d [None]: 

 * Maildir: 'pop3_uidl_format = %Mf' (MD5 sum of the maildir base filename in hex) 
 * mbox: MD5 sum in hex of first 512 bytes of the message (or of the full message if it's less than 512 bytes). 

 * popa3d [None] Generates MD5 sum from a couple of headers. Dovecot uses compatible MD5 sums internally, but converts them into UIDL strings in a bit different way. 
 * teapop [None] 0.3.8: Maildir: pop3_uidl_format = %Mf (MD5 sum of the maildir base filename in hex) 


IMAP <-> IMAP copying
=====================


If you don't care about preserving messages' UIDs, or if there isn't a simple way to preserve them, you can always migrate from another IMAP server to Dovecot by downloading the messages via IMAP from the old server and then uploading them to Dovecot via IMAP. 
There are several different tools for this, for example UW-IMAP [None]'s mailutil and imapsync [None]. 


imapsync
========


Here's an example of how to run imapsync for a single user: 

---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------
imapsync --syncinternaldates \
  --host1 192.168.1.57 --authmech1 LOGIN --user1 leah@example.com --password1 secret \
  --host2 127.0.0.1    --authmech2 LOGIN --user2 leah@example.com --password2 secret
---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is quite easy to script this for a number of users, assuming you have their passwords. Even if you do not, imapsync also supports logging in as an admin user that has the ability to copy message for sub users, and a variety of other authentication options. 
(This file was created from the wiki on 2007-12-11 04:42)
