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tilkov
Asked: 2020-02-11 05:32:25 +0800 CST

Dovecot migration from mbox to mdbox

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I am doing a migration from mbox to mdbox on a new disk. From /mnt/mail/$user to /mnt/mail2/$user

Current mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/mnt/mail/%u/mail/Inbox

The new mail_location = mdbox:/mnt/mail2/$user/mdbox

My main userdb is passwd, and i have an override for all the users with another userdb:

userdb {
  driver = passwd
  result_success = continue-ok
}

userdb {
  driver = passwd-file
  args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/passwd.override
  skip = notfound
}

First step, overriding mail_location for that user:

$user:::::::userdb_mail_location=/mnt/mail2/%u/mdbox

Starting migration: 

doveadm sync -f -u $user mbox:/mnt/mail/$user/mail:INBOX=/mnt/mail/$user/mail/Inbox

Sync goes well, all the folders and mails are there in the mdbox location on /mnt/mail2/$user/mdbox.

The home directory of that user is then changed from /mnt/mail/$user to /mnt/mail2/$user, permissions are set.

/etc/passwd shows that home dir of the user is /mnt/mail2/$user.

/etc/dovecot/passwd.override has the new mdbox mail_location for that user.

Unfortunately, when new mail arrives, it still goes to the old mbox.

Postfix uses dovecot-lda as delivery agent:

mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f "$SENDER" -a "$RECIPIENT"

Is it possible dovecot-lda doesn't understand the override? And why it still delivers to the old $HOME for that user, no matter that it was changed?

migration email-server dovecot mbox

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The problem was that dovecot-lda does not do userdb lookups, and my overridden mail_location was not in effect. Mentioned in the docs, and the answer is to add -d "$USER" to the parameters.

    In postfix the configuration for mailbox_command should be:

    mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -d "$USER" -f "$SENDER" -a "$RECIPIENT"

    • 1

  2. Have you looked into https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat? This is usually very easy to do with dsync using the instructions there.

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