How to migrate mail to a new server

[Eric Luyten]

On Fri, February 19, 2010 4:13 pm, Patrick Boutilier wrote:
> On 02/19/2010 11:03 AM, Marco van Putten wrote:
>
>> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>>
>>> I have been reading the thread about using "xfer" to migrate to a
>>> different server or to use imapsync instead. Both methods appear to require
>>> some additional work and I would prefer to simply copy the data across
>>> instead of using synchronization tools on live servers. (It's not a
>>> requirement to keep the email accessible during the transfer)
>>>
>>> I have around 21GB of mail to copy across and was wondering how best to
>>> do this. The mail server can (and most likely will) be stopped during the
>>> transfer.
>>>
>>> Will it be sufficient to simply copy the "/var/imap" and
>>> "/var/spool/imap"
>>> folders across? The contents of "/var/spool/imap" are all the emails and
>>> the db-files and such appear to be in "/var/imap"
>>
>>
>> I've done the copy method several times without loosing any mail.
>> In all cases after stopping the mail services before the copy action.
>> Don't know if its the best/preferred/nicest method but it works for me...
>>
>
>
> +1
>
>
> I have always used rsync in the past. 21G of mail shouldn't take much
> time to move.


In August-September 2009 I rsync'd a 3.5 TB Cyrus mail store, 35 million msgs.

The final incremental rsync required a 10 hour (overnight) service halt.


Eric.