[plug] Backup of Cyrus Imap Mail

[Bernd Felsche]

"Shannon Carver" <shannon.carver at gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm about to go abroad for a couple of years,

Look, just because astronomers have spotted a "habitable" planet
orbiting a red dwarf some 20 lightyears away, doesn't mean you
should pack your bags just yet! :-)

>and take my home mail server off line.  I've got approximately 3GB
>of personal mail stored in .maildir/<mailbox>/cur/* format (in
>plain text).  If I was to take a backup of this, can this be copied
>directly into a similar IMAP server that uses .maildir format?

>The huge bulk of the mail isn't important at all, but, like a library, I'd
>rather keep it and realise I need something later than lose it altogether.

>Anyone had any experience with this in the past?

>It's a Cyrus IMAP server, using postfix for the MTA, but I've played with
>similar setups in the past using dovecot and other imapd's and the layout
>of the maildir seems to be the same.

I've transferred mailboxes from one Cyrus system to another with
"identical" configuration. (Not .maildir, as that's not afaik a
_Cyrus_ format. Perhaps you're thinking Courier?)

There's a "rebuild" of sorts that should be run to bring the
articles "online" -- don't remember exactly what it's called.
Cyrus maintains a database of articles and mailboxes in
e.g. /var/lib/imap

I suggest that instead of feeding the "backup" into an existing
user's mailbox, set up a fresh one, load the articles, "rebuild" the
cyrus databases and give access to the real users who need it.

You will of course organize folders within the main IMAP folder,
won't you? I had one user complain that his Outlook was slow
starting (and so was Thunderbird) and would lock up for minutes
at a time. He had 13 GB in roughly 60,000 articles in his Inbox.
One can probably recognize his house by the 18-metre shipping
container that he uses as his letter-box at the front of his house.

-- 
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