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Migrating Mailboxes ​

WARNING

Badly done migration will cause your IMAP and/or POP3 clients to re-download all mails! Read this page carefully!

This guide assumes that the target host has a v2.3 or newer version of Dovecot.

You should use migration when you are changing Dovecot storage configuration, such as compression, encryption or mail location driver; or want to restructure your mails in some way.

Things that you should consider in your config:

Sometimes, if your production configuration file has complex authentication flows, push notifications, or other settings that might cause unwanted effects during migration, you can make a separate migration configuration file. To use this configuration file, you can store it as, for example, /etc/dovecot/dovecot-migration.conf, and use it with doveadm -c /etc/dovecot/dovecot-migration.conf sync.

Other settings to use:

Testing ​

It is a very good idea to do some test migrations first using test accounts to ensure everything works.

When migrating mails from another server, you should make sure that these are preserved:

  1. Message flags

    • Lost flags can be really annoying, you most likely want to avoid it.

  2. Message UIDs and UIDVALIDITY value

    • If UIDs are lost, at a minimum clients' message cache gets cleaned and messages are re-downloaded as new.
    • Some IMAP clients store metadata by assigning it to specific UID, if UIDs are changed these will be lost.

  3. Mailbox subscription list

Migrating Mailboxes from Another Dovecot Server ​

Preparations ​

If the old system is running v2.1.14+ , you can use doveadm protocol to migrate your mails.

If the old system is older, see migrating messages over IMAP.

First, setup doveadm service on old server:

service doveadm {
  inet_listener {
    port = 12354
  }
}

doveadm_password = supersecret

Then set doveadm password on new server:

doveadm_password = supersecret

Now you are ready to migrate.

Executing Migration ​

If you want to avoid any changes to your source system, unidirectional synchronization is recommended.

To migrate users, use: doveadm backup -Ru username tcp:host:port.

If you are experiencing problems, run:

console
$ doveadm -D backup -Ru username tcp:host:port

This will enable debug logging.

The doveadm backup command forces the destination to look exactly like the source, deleting mails and mailboxes if necessary.

If it's possible that the destination already has new mails (or other changes), use doveadm sync -1 instead:

console
$ doveadm -o imapc_password=bar sync -1Ru user imapc:

You can run the command again to perform incremental updates.

Note that Public and Shared namespaces are synchronized automatically (see caveats).

Caveats ​

  • Migrating shared namespaces is difficult prior to v2.3.15+. To migrate Shared namespaces, you need to use -n Shared -n Shared/Mailbox.
  • If you are using ACLs, some ACL types can cause problems. Especially if you have ACLs that only permit writing to folder, but not reading it. This applies to shared folders only.
  • Migration can cause unexpectedly high loads on the source system. Beware! There is no way to throttle the synchronization.
  • Avoid accessing the target mailboxes before the first sync. At best this causes warnings about GUID or UIDVALIDITY changes, and at worst it fails the sync entirely.

Migrating mailboxes over IMAP ​

When migrating mails over IMAP, you need to have valid credentials to the source system.

You can either use master password, master user, or individual user authentication.

This depends entirely on the source system. See master users for more details.

Preparations ​

Configure authentication on the source system to match your preference. Ensure both source and target system agree on usernames.

Configure IMAP client on the target system.

Changed: 2.4.0

Some selected IMAPC features are auto-enabled by default. Please refer to imapc_features for description on individual flags.

Common settings:

Master password auth:

imapc_user = %u
imapc_password = supersecret

Master user auth:

imapc_user = %u
imapc_master_user = master-user
imapc_password = master-password

Individual password auth:

imapc_user = %u

# doveadm -o imapc_password=password backup -Ru user imapc:

You can verify that the settings are done correctly with:

console
$ doveadm -o imapc_password=password -o mail_location=imapc: mailbox list -u user

POP3 notes ​

If you need to retain POP3 support on your new system, you should use pop3-migration plugin.

pop3c_host = hostname

# Authenticate as masteruser / masteruser-secret, but use a separate login
# user.
# If you don't have a master user, remove the pop3c_master_user setting.
pop3c_user = %u
pop3c_master_user = masteruser
pop3c_password = masteruser-secret

# if you are using TLS
pop3c_ssl = pop3s
pop3c_port = 995

# if you are using StartTLS
pop3c_ssl = starttls
pop3c_port = 110

namespace {
  prefix = POP3-MIGRATION-NS/
  location = pop3c:
  list = no
  hidden = yes
}

protocol doveadm {
  mail_plugins = $mail_plugins pop3_migration
}

plugin {
  pop3_migration_mailbox = POP3-MIGRATION-NS/INBOX
}

You can alternatively configure compatible UIDL format in Dovecot. See pop3_uidl_format.

Executing Migration ​

To migrate users, use:

console
$ doveadm -o imapc_password=bar -o pop3c_password=bar backup -Ru user imapc:

If you are experiencing problems, enable debugging with the -D parameter:

console
$ doveadm -D -o imapc_password=bar -o pop3c_password=bar backup -Ru username imapc:

The doveadm backup command forces the destination to look exactly like the source, deleting mails and mailboxes if necessary.

If it's possible that the destination already has new mails (or other changes), use doveadm sync -1 instead:

console
$ doveadm -o imapc_password=bar -o pop3c_password=bar sync -1Ru user imapc:

Note that Public and Shared namespaces are synchronized automatically (see caveats).

See doveadm error codes for details on how to handle errors.

Caveats ​

  • You cannot migrate to imap, only from.

POP3 Caveats ​

  • POP3 message order (when it's different from IMAP message order) is not preserved with mbox.

  • If source POP3 server merges multiple IMAP mailboxes into one POP3 INBOX, the migration won't be transparent.

  • If source IMAP and POP3 servers return messages somehow differently, pop3-migration plugin might not be able to match the messages

  • Don't trust the migration tools blindly. Verify manually that the UIDLs are correct before exposing real clients to Dovecot.

    You can do this by logging in using your old POP3 server, issuing UIDL command and saving the output.

    Then log in using Dovecot and save its UIDL output as well. Use e.g. diff command to verify that the lists are identical. Note that:

    • If a client already saw changed UIDLs and decided to start re-downloading mails, it's unlikely there is anything you can do to stop it. Even going back to your old server is unlikely to help at that point.
    • Some (many?) POP3 clients also require that the message ordering is preserved.
    • Some clients re-download all mails if you change the hostname in the client configuration. Be aware of this when testing.

Migration from Gmail to Dovecot ​

You can use dsync migration via IMAP protocol, but there are a few things different with Gmail compared to other IMAP servers.

With Gmail, when you delete a mail from POP3, the mail is only hidden from future POP3 sessions, but it's still available via IMAP. If you wish to preserve this functionality, there's a pop3_deleted_flag setting.

Gmail has labels. If a message has multiple labels, it shows up in multiple IMAP folders, but it's still the same message and uses quota only once for that message. Dovecot currently doesn't have label support, so the migration will copy the message to multiple folders and each instance will use up quota. There's currently no easy fix for this.

Even though the quota is duplicated, it doesn't mean that the storage usage has to be duplicated. Use the doveadm sync's -a parameter to attempt to copy mails with the same GUIDs.

A virtual All Mails mailbox needs to be configured using the virtual plugin. Then you need to give this mailbox as -a parameter, e.g.:

doveadm sync -a "Virtual/All Mails" ...

Currently this is implemented by reading through all the GUIDs in the virtual mailbox. This of course isn't very efficient for things like incremental replication.

Gmail has virtual folders: All Mail, Starred and Important. From migration point of view, this means that the migration should skip most of these folders, since their mails are in other folders anyway. You can tell dsync to skip these folders:

doveadm sync -x '\Flagged' -x '\Important'

By using the \flag parameters, dsync finds the folders by their SPECIAL-USE flag rather than their name (which may be different for users depending on their language).

The All Mail folder contains also "archived mails" that don't exist in any other folder. These mails need to be migrated. See below.

Google requires that SSL/TLS be enabled to connect through IMAP. See migrating messages over IMAP for information on the various SSL/TLS related flags.

Google has very limited support for username/password authentication, so you might have to use OAUTH2 or some other mechanism for logging in.

GMail Migration Feature ​

There is a imapc_features = gmail-migration setting that helps with GMail migration. It will:

  • Set the pop3_deleted_flag to mails that no longer exist in POP3.

  • Return POP3 UIDL in GMail format so dsync can preserve it.

  • Add a new $GmailHaveLabels keyword to archived mails in the \All mailbox, which means those mails are not archived. You probably don't want to migrate these mails.

    • Note that mails in the \Important and \Flagged mailboxes are marked with \Important and \Starred labels. If you don't migrate mails that have $GmailHaveLabels then you must not exclude the \Flagged and \Important mailboxes or some of the mails won't be migrated.

      For example use a command line:

      console
      $ doveadm backup -a 'virtual/All' -O '-$GmailHaveLabels' -R -u user@domain imapc:

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