On 16/11/2009, Andreas Ntaflos <d...@dword.org> wrote: > On Friday 13 November 2009 15:00:09 Halim Issa wrote: >> Hello, >> >> I'm about to migrate a number of existing users who have been using >> POP3 with emails stored locally in KMail's Maildir format into an >> IMAP solution based on Dovecot. >> >> Will it be possible to simply move all the KDE Maildir folders from >> the local PCs to the Maildir folder on the IMAP server running >> Dovecot and then have the emails accessible on the server, or will >> this most likely mess up the Dovecot index files? >> >> If this causes index file trouble, is there any way to force a >> re-indexing of all these files, or is there another recommended way >> of migrating up to 7 years of email communication from local hosts to >> the IMAP server, for later putting them in folders? > > I don't think the migration of the Maildir structure itself is the > problem. Dovecot has no problem reading it, no matter where it came > from, as long as it is a proper Maildir structure. Existing indexes > should not be affected. > > The indexes that KMail writes, however, will probably not migrate well > or at all. I do not know anything about the index format KMail uses but > converting it to something Dovecot understands and accepts seems > troublesome and difficult to me. > > This means that you can copy all existing, local Maildirs over to the > server (you can even put them in subfolders in existing accounts) and > Dovecot will read them just fine. But it also means that Dovecot will > very probably present them to the user as new messages, never seen > before. > > But do yourself a favour and test any procedure you plan on implementing > properly and extensively before actually implementing it. Otherwise it > could end up messy and irreparable.
Thanks much for your thorough answer! I'll make sure to test extensively. One thing came to mind - would it be possible to use Dovecot and Disconnected IMAP itself for the transfer, and perhaps thus keep the indexes? If I move the messages from the local mailbox to the IMAP mailbox from within Kmail it should perhaps keep the status? Also - is there any documentation anywhere (or tips on better google search terms) on what is stored in these indexes? I suppose apart from Read/New status, it also contains whether or not there have been replies to the mail and on what date the email was replied to? Thanks again!
