dovecot - May 2007 - Converting mbox to Maildir, all prior read messages are downloaded as new

I am running dovecot 0.99.  Everything works great; however, now I am 
looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.  It seems 
the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what they 
claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are stored in 
Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as new.

This typically wouldn't be a problem; however, I am dealing with 100s of 
users with 1000s of emails and this really isn't acceptable behavior to 
them.  Any thoughts on how to correct this issue and prevent the client 
from downloading these messages again?

As a note, my test client is thunderbird and my preferred mbox to 
Maildir tool is mb2md-3.20.pl. 

Thanks!

Can you elaborate on this convert plugin?  I have not heard of it and am 
curious if it is available in 0.99.

Thank you!

Bruce Bodger wrote:
>
> On May 24, 2007, at 3:22 PM, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
>
>> I am running dovecot 0.99.  Everything works great; however, now I am 
>> looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.  It 
>> seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what 
>> they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are 
>> stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as
new.
>
> Like you, I played with all the available scripts.  Settled on using 
> ONLY Dovecot's convert plugin to convert a uw-imap mbox system to 
> Dovecot maildir. Believe it or not, it ran 100% perfectly and users 
> never even noticed the switch!
>
> Good luck.
> B. Bodger
> New York, NY
>

On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
> I am running dovecot 0.99.  Everything works great; however, now I  
> am looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.   
> It seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do  
> what they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they  
> are stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these  
> messages as new.
I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to preserve  
the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would  
require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir  
switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the  
UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.

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Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
>
>> I am running dovecot 0.99.  Everything works great; however, now I am 
>> looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.  It 
>> seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what 
>> they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are 
>> stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as
new.
>
> I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to
preserve
> the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would 
> require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir 
> switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the 
> UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
>
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting 
mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your 
client set to cache all the messages and
you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your 
mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore) 
and re-downloading new ones.
It would be nice to have Convert plugin, that preserves UIDs and 
UIDVALIDITY values.

P.S. A little unrelated question about convert plugin.

I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u
I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the 
dovecot.conf.
But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after 
conversion. Is that the way it should be?

Of course, it tries to convert the same boxes next time I log in.

FiL

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 24.5.2007, at 22.22, Eric and Barbara Sammons wrote:
>
>> I am running dovecot 0.99.  Everything works great; however, now I am 
>> looking at several different tools to convert mbox to Maildir.  It 
>> seems the tools, mb2md.pl, perfect_maildir.pl, and others all do what 
>> they claim; however, when the messages are converted and they are 
>> stored in Maildir/cur, the email clients download these messages as
new.
>
> I guess you're talking about POP3. You'd need to be able to
preserve
> the POP3 UIDLs (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration), which would 
> require that you also preserve the IMAP UIDs in the mbox -> Maildir 
> switch. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scripts that preserves the 
> UIDs, although it wouldn't be difficult to write support for that.
>
This is not only about POP3, as far as I can tell. If you converting
mbox to Maildir (dovecot to dovecot) - UIDs change. And if you have your
client set to cache all the messages and
you have over 1Gb in your mail... well, it will be transferring all your
mail again. Deleting the old one (as it is not on the server anymore)
and re-downloading new ones.
It would be nice to have Convert plugin, that preserves UIDs and
UIDVALIDITY values.

P.S. A little unrelated question about convert plugin.

I have all my mbox-es in /raid/mbox/%u
I have set convert_mail = mbox:/raid/mbox/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u in the
dovecot.conf.
But for some reason the folder with mail doesn't get renamed after
conversion. Is that the way it should be?

Of course, it tries to convert the same boxes next time I log in.

FiL