Anyone got a good "how to move email" howto?

Post #318,248 by drook 12/7/09 4:36:47 PM Reply	Anyone got a good "how to move email" howto? I'm done moving the blog, now I need to move my email to the new host. I just set up Evolution to grab everything via IMAP, then I'll reconfigure and push it to the new host. Any gotchas to look for? Any good HowTo-s I should read? -- Drew
Post #318,249 by folkert 12/7/09 4:42:02 PM Reply	Re: Anyone got a good "how to move email" howto? use IMAP to client to IMAP to drag it over. Easiest way. No "howto" needed.
Post #318,252 by drook 12/7/09 5:15:17 PM 12/7/09 7:07:07 PM Reply	Only one problem ... well maybe more than one For now I'm hitting the new server via a hosts file entry. So I can't connect to both the old and new servers at the same time. Any ideas? === [edit] I'm thinking I can probably use IP for the new account, see if that works. But while I was dinking around, I realized I'm going to have to grab my contacts manually. They don't have an export feature, and there isn't even a single screen that has everything for a contact. It's behind a tabbed interface. It is teh suxxorz. -- Drew Edited by drook Dec. 7, 2009, 07:07:07 PM EST Expand All History
Post #318,260 by static 12/7/09 7:44:30 PM Reply	A hosts file is fine. So long as the app can resolve the two account names as separate names, it will work. If one is in a local hosts file, then you have the ultimate flexibility in naming it anything you like. :-) Mail clients don't care if the server name is resolved in a hosts file or by DNS. Besides, Evolution has a local storage option, so you can use that as a staging area, if you really need to. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #318,271 by drook 12/8/09 12:45:47 AM Reply	But both servers think they serve the same domain Still working on a few other things, but I'm pretty sure I can use the IP when I get to this one. -- Drew
Post #318,310 by static 12/8/09 5:57:31 PM Reply	IMAP doesn't care. I've written IMAP servers. There is no 'virtual host' mechanism for IMAP like there is for HTTP. Connect to the servers however it makes sense for the client and you're good to go. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #318,313 by drook 12/8/09 6:58:40 PM Reply	Yup, churning away now Set the second one up by IP. Copying/moving from the old to the new. Time to find out if the read/unread flag moves with it, or if everything gets marked read in the move. I'm assuming IMAP figures that out properly. Man, this is slow. -- Drew
Post #318,314 by folkert 12/8/09 9:31:19 PM Reply	IMAP Keeps what the Clients sets. Whatever client you are using to move the mail is the important part there. Remember, you are moving the mail twice. Personally, if you have the IMAP dir on your own host... I'd tar and scp the file up and do it once. But then, I'm a sysadmin, not a "pretty much user".
Post #318,315 by drook 12/8/09 9:44:51 PM Reply	Don't have access to the source I also don't trust Evolution to download everything, since it's got that reported bug. I'm showing 221M in my local imap dir, but my old host is reporting over 450M. So I just grabbed a bunch of folders and dragged them over to the new account before dinner. It's still grinding. -- Drew
Post #318,318 by folkert 12/8/09 9:56:22 PM Reply	Re: Don't have access to the source Evolution now stores in SQLite format. Much more betterer on disk space and quickness. I've only had Evo screw up on me... 7 or so years ago. Mostly my own doing. I've used Evolution nearly continuously since then. Thunderbird IMO SUCKS!
Post #318,316 by static 12/8/09 9:49:07 PM Reply	No, IMAP-to-IMAP transfer is safer. The IMAP protocol is actually quite rigid and rather unforgiving of mistakes. IMAP isn't an on-disk format. Tarballing the directory would only be effective if the mail engines are identical. This means both the delivery agent and the IMAP server: I know Courier's IMAP server stores information in the Maildir directories that other Maildir-aware IMAP servers will probably not know about. In fact, rsync would be better than a tarball because the file-timestamps would then stay correct. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #318,317 by folkert 12/8/09 9:54:22 PM Reply	Re: No, IMAP-to-IMAP transfer is safer. Oh I know that IMAP is a protocol. I just use courier-imap server to courier-imap server. Also, Drew, you could have setup your destination machine as a mail client and did the work with something like Mutt, so it only gets transferred once.
Post #318,320 by drook 12/9/09 12:04:04 AM Reply	If I cared about fast or efficient, sure But since I was setting up two accounts in Evo anyway, drag and drop -- as slow as it is -- works just fine for me. -- Drew
Post #318,336 by drook 12/9/09 2:03:44 PM Reply	Could they be "clever" on the back-end? I switched the Evo setup to use IPs, and starting moving mail. Everything looks good. Then I updated the DNS and sent a test, and it went to the new inbox. Still good. Then I went to move the last couple of folders, and it started getting flaky. Not always pulling up the message bodies, but not always failing either. I saw a message flash past in the status bar about problems reading 'imap.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com', but the Evo setup isn't using the subdomain any more. Is it possible I'm hitting it via IP, but the server is redirecting based on DNS? -- Drew
Post #318,348 by static 12/9/09 5:25:08 PM Reply	It would be very difficult. It is possible for some of the authentication mechanisms to use the 'name' the client is using to connect, but this would be an unofficial extension. IMAP doesn't otherwise use the hostname the client is using as part of the communication. There's no also no redirection mechanism. The best it can do it say "no such mailbox" along with an IMAP 'comment' requesting you use a different server. Exchange's IMAP connector does this if you connect to the wrong mailstore, but I don't know of a client that can read this and 'fix' the account. Any workable 'redirection' mechanism would require the server you connect to to proxy the protocol to another server, so you wouldn't notice anyway. I'd be inclined to think Evolution is making some guesses that it maybe shouldn't be doing. Shut it down - and it's client backend - and give it another go. It is extremely unlikely to lose email in this sort of malfunction as the protocol makes this difficult. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #318,355 by drook 12/9/09 6:58:02 PM Reply	Yep, IMAP seems pretty durable It looks like Evo was choking on my large mailbox and slow connection. After several restarts I finally got everything. Or at least close enough to everything that I haven't noticed any problems yet. I took this opportunity to clear out a bunch of old stuff that I was keeping "just in case". I need to start doing what the real-estate company I worked for did: File everything by "keep until" date. If that date comes and something is still in the file, toss it. -- Drew
Post #318,251 by static 12/7/09 5:10:58 PM Reply	What Greg said. With a multi-account capable IMAP client it is ridiculously easy and foolproof. If you're worried about volume, I'd be surprised if Evolution can't handle a folder with thousands of emails but I know from experience that Opera can and can easily. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #318,270 by pwhysall 12/8/09 12:09:49 AM Reply	Evolution will be fine with thousands of messages. Bintheredunthatgottheshirt.
Post #318,256 by mhuber 12/7/09 6:47:59 PM Reply	That was my tech-career ender Quit a tolerable but not great job for what looked like a great opportunity with a small tech house. A few weeks in, February 13, 2006, to be exact - and there is a reason I remember the date - the boss tells me the next big project is moving email accounts to another server. And he's going to tech me how. So we spend a few hours with me at the keyboard and him standing behind me saying "OK, click here, type this there, select the server...". We started with a florist's account. Next day, boss comes in furious. "Who the hell screwed with X's email account? Their fucking florists, and somebody fucked their fucking email up the day before fucking Valentine's Day!" Not nice language for a Mormon. Does that word really have two "M"s? "We did - you were training me." "Well, we did a crap job." The job dragged on for a few weeks after that, but it really was over that day. And before I found another tech job, I had my massage therapists license.
Post #318,258 by drook 12/7/09 7:04:44 PM Reply	Good thing he said "we" -- Drew
Post #318,264 by mhuber 12/7/09 8:42:58 PM Reply	"we" didn't get fired.
Post #318,292 by drook 12/8/09 12:03:34 PM 12/8/09 12:07:33 PM Reply	Why did I wait so long to do this? Holy crap, Evolution is so much easier to work with than the crap webmail interface. Actually, the old interface that knew it was webmail was good enough that I was never prompted to change. The new one with the whizzy-slidey-dran'n'droppy interface that tried to act like a desktop app was shit. After two months of pain, I configured Evolution just so I can move to a new provider an OH MY GOD it's better. Now all I have to do is find the setting to download everything locally, not just the headers, and I'll be golden. (Yes I've checked the box for "Automatically synchronize remote mail locally" but it's still just getting the headers. Ah, looks like a bug -- https://bugs.launchp...erver/+bug/331478 ) -- Drew Edited by drook Dec. 8, 2009, 12:07:33 PM EST Expand All History

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