Importing/moving an older cyrus message tree into a new system, without IMAP

[Shuvam Misra]

Dear Dan,

> See the manpage for imapd.conf for possible formats, but for my 2.3.12
> installation, with configdirectory specified at /var/lib/cyrus (and no
> customization to my *_db options), my database files are:

Got it. Thanks a lot for the details.

> /var/lib/cyrus/annotations.db

What are "annotations"?

> /var/lib/cyrus/tls_sessions.db

You were saying these are transient data -- can one skip this?

> /var/lib/cyrus/deliver.db

This too can be skipped right? They won't affect the user's perception of
his emails, mailfolders, ACLs, quotas, flags, etc.

> /var/lib/cyrus/domain/e/example.org/user/j/jsmith.mboxkey
>   backend for mailbox keys

What are mailbox keys?

> /var/lib/cyrus/domain/e/example.org/user/j/jsmith.seen
> /var/lib/cyrus/domain/e/example.org/user/j/jsmith.sub

Yes, these two are important.

> /var/lib/cyrus/domain/o/olp.net/quota/j/user.jsmith
> 
> Some of those you may not be able to convert to flat (although I haven't
> actually tried).

Okay, got it. In that case, if I can't convert to/from flat, I can't
safely move between dissimilar Cyrus servers. In that case, I'll have to
drop that file and lose that data, to be safe.

> The most straight forward way to restore from a filesystem backup is to
> have a backup system available with identical libraries and Cyrus version.

yes, absolutely, and that's what we offer. However, when there are
disaster situations not planned for, I was wondering how far I can
provision against data loss when the exact version of Cyrus is simply not
available.

> If not in a failed scenario, then doing an imap sync, or rolling cyrus
> replication, is a safe bet.

Yes, we do this too. The problem was for situations where the
installation is too small to justify a second server. I have one customer
who intends to deploy our product in about 200 offices all over India.
Each office has less than 20 users and just one server. I'll have to
provide a complete-snapshot backup facility for him onto removable media,
and then provide a restore in case there's a disaster. For situations
like that, I was weighing options.

Thanks a lot. You've given me more details than I'd hoped for. I'll work
on this now.

Shuvam