What's an easy way to transfer mail?

I'm building a new Linux email server, this time using SuSE OpenExchange. Fortunately, this new server uses the same kind of email system as my old server (postfix and cyrus), so the layout and setup is basically the same.

Is there any easy way to transfer the mail from the old server to the new? I am planning on recreating the accounts, themselves, manually, because I don't have many to do. Moving the email, itself, along with subfolders, read and unread messages, etc, is what I'm clueless about.

Anyone got any experience with this?

I'm not familliar with OpenExchange, but if it supports the same format (MBox or Maildir) that you were using with your old system, you just copy the mail right over.

If it doesn't, then open up a mail client like Thunderbird, create an IMAP connection to both servers, then drag and drop your mail from one to the other.

There is also a Mbox to Maildir converter in the QMail package if you need to convert it that way. (Although I would suggest doing it the thunderbird way..)

Whatever you do, backups are your friend

Didn't you already ask this question once?

Anyway, Tar and FTP.

I did ask a similar question once, but I didn't get a useful answer, so I thought I would rework the issue and repost. Last time I had asked about transferring account information and everything. After further thought, I decided that recreating the accounts would actually be quite simple. Moving the mail, itself, is the only thing I need help doing.

Simply copying the files from their current /var/spool/imap/user folder to their new /var/spool/imap/user folder will not work correctly, I'm told.

This is what my old Linux administrator said about that option:

"As far as transferring the existing email data, no - you cannot
just scp/copy the data files and sub folders. Cyrus keep careful track of
the index files and the reconstruct utility will not create the sub-folders."

He offered to write a script, using "Mail::IMAPClient", but this will take several hours of his very expensive time. I'd like to figure out a way I could do it myself, if possible.

I have successfully copied over all of my mail via scp. My setup was using the Mbox format, using UW-IMAP as an IMAP server, and Postfix as a MTA, and fetchmail/procmail as an MDA. It was copied to a similar system, using the same programs. In my setup, only the inbox is in the mail spool directory, after you move your mail to another folder, it is actually kept in the user's home directory. This will only work if your using the same mailbox format on both servers.

The surest way is to have all of your users back up their mail, by logging on with a decent mail client, then copying their mail to "Local Folders", then connect to the new server, and copy it to the new server, inside the mail client. I have also seen this done effectively. This will work despite mailbox format. This is percisely what your linux administrator will script for you.

I've got about 50 users, so backing up all 8 GB of their mail, to local folders, would be really time consuming for me.

I think I'll try to figure out this "Mail::IMAPClient" script myself. Maybe I can do this...

how many folders do you have to move?

Every user has at least three folders (Drafts, Sent, Trash.) Some have many more. I have 17 folders and subfolders in my Inbox.