Hello Craig
On 19 Feb 2002, at 10:38, Craig Sanders wrote:
> i'd love to convert it over to Maildir/ but haven't yet found any way
> that doesn't involve many hours of downtime while converting the
> mailboxes from mbox format to Maildir.
I did this a while back. It is possible with very little apparent
downtime. (We are using Exim and Courier):
- create Maildirs for all users. (This is important if both your
POP3/IMAP software and MDA are not configured to create missing
Maildirs "on the fly").
- change your MDA to deliver into the new maildirs
(At this stage new mail is not visible to users when it arrives - but
they can still see their old mail. The downtime for this phase should
be short)
- change your POP3/IMAP programs to pick up mail from the
maildirs.
(At this stage old mail is not visible to users, but new mail is. This
should not be too much of a problem - if users have left MB worth of
mail in their boxes, they can't want it too badly, it is when new mail
is not available that people complain.)
- run your script which reads the mbox files, and delivers to
maildirs. My script renamed the mailbox files just after they
had been converted, so I could restart the script without
incurring duplicate deliveries if (when) the script crashed.
- By the time the script finishes, all mail is visible again.
- Keep the old mbox files around for a few days just in case you
discover a problem ...
No corruption, no duplication, no mail lost, no file locking, no error
messages on client desktops, not too much loss of service and very
few support calls.
Have fun!
Ian
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
---------------------------------------------------------------------
