moving imap account

[Paul Kreiner]

Probably your best bet, especially since you've only got one account, is
to set up a clean new account, keeping the old server available, then use
the UW-imap tools (forget the name right now, but they're mentioned in the
info-cyrus archives) to fetch each message from the old imap account/server
and store it in the new account/server.

That said, you *can* do it by backing up directories and restoring them, but
it tends to be a bit more involved than just backing up /var/spool/imap.
You'll also need to back up /var/imap (*.db, user/*.sub and user/*.seen),
since that's where the metadata regarding each mailbox is actually stored.

In my experience, your biggest risk is that the Berkeley DB environment will
have changed when you fire up your new box, and it can cause complications
when trying to get the BDB files to be recognized in your new installation.
Probably use cvt_cyrusdb to convert /var/imap/mailboxes.db, deliver.db,
tls_sessions.db, and annotations.db from db3 (or skiplist) to flat, then when
you're on the new installation, convert them back to whatever their original
format (db3 or skiplist) was.

And of course, make sure to reset permissions in the 'new' /var/imap and
/var/spool/imap, so the cyrus user can make changes in there.  That's the one
restoration step that seems to be easy to overlook. :)

_Paul K.

Michi Müller wrote:

> hi info-cyrus!
> 
> about two month ago i installed cyrus-imap 2.1.15 on my box as part of a 
> new local mail setup which has been working great since then.
> 
> i'm now thinking about moving from redhat9 to fedora but i want to continue
> using my old imap account (folders, mails...)
> 
> for your info: there's only one user right now (me) using various
> folders. i use saslauthd/pam, no sasldb
> 
> my questions:
> - is it possible to backup /var/spool/imap/* and simply drop it to the 
>   same location on the new installation? 
> - do i have to backup something else? 
> - do i have to create accounts/folders on the new installation before 
>   restoring the backup or will cyrus-imap know what to do when it finds
>   the restored data?
> 
> thx,
> michael
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