No way to automate the entire process.
Now I copy all mailbox for user in thunderbird and upload the folders manually in a temp IMAP account. After I move these folder in teh proper user dir.
Greetings,
I must migrate several accounts (~150) stored (and running) on a linux server to a win2003 server with mercury+Squirrel in IMAP4 mode.
The big trouble is the configuration on the linux server: all users have mail stored in many mailbox file created by the Openwebmail client (the mailbox's files are located in the home directory).
Any advice to automise the import? (move each file to a fake pop3 user and get via pop3 client of mercury is a very long and busy process!)
Thanks
When doing things like larger import from various systems, we use dos utils to create text-files of directories - then from the textfiles, we import them into Excel, and extract the information we need to create batch-scripts, that can create and move files into a more homogene layout.
I did a quick look at OpenWebMail and a number of thing are not clear. What is the format of the data storage? Are there any extraction tools available from OpenWebMail to extract these to RFC 2822 format message files?
Openwebmail read & write in Mailbox standard (i think) format: one file on server = one folder for the user.
If I simple copy that file in a program like Thunderbird it read all the messages stored (after indexing).
I have a situation like this:
/home
........../user1/mail/
...........................mail-trash.file
...........................sent.file
...........................draft.file
...........................folder1.file
..........................
...........................folderN.file
........../userN/mail/
...........................mail-trash.file
...........................sent.file
...........................draft.file
...........................folder1.file
...........................folderN.file
The whole server must be converted to the new format.
The Openwebmail system non have function to export entire folder or structure in other format.
Since this appears that they are using MBOX you might be able to copy these files to the Mercury/32 user directory and add the MBX file extension. These MBX files though should be converted to Pegasus Mail file folders. There are a couple of mail converters that can perform this task, I've used Aid4Mail to convert MBOX to Pegasus Mail and it did the job for me. The only real problem is the MBOX folders have nothing that specifies how the folders will handle the message separation properly and so you can run into difficulties with the conversion.
Aid4mail
http://www.aid4mail.com/
Transend
http://www.transend.com/
You might want to check out the converters available at the following site as well.
http://www.emailman.com/conversion/#mboxwin
Thunderbird open the openwebmail format without problem.
The other step now is Thunderbird MBOX -> Pmail ... this must be easier.
Then WinPMail could open the files as well as UNIX MBOX type folders if they were put into the HOME mail directory with the MBX file extension. Again though, the MBOX format has a number of "flavors" and no real spec to define how to ensure the files are not combined so you may run into problems with some messages.
...
Yes.. Thunderbird and PMail flavor is different...
The original test MBOX has 1629 messages... whitout converting Pmail read 1750. The lasts are crap almost craps... but...
Need converter!
Mail System Converter freeze
Aid4Mail and transend trial works on too few messagges and I cant test the perfect conversion....
testing other...
The original test MBOX has 1629 messages... whitout converting Pmail read 1750. The lasts are crap almost craps... but...
Now you see the basic problem of a UNIX MBX format, the messages are separated by a line starting with "From" and of course lines in the message may also start with 'from". Also the specific format of this "From" message separator may be different (ands usually is) in each "flavor" of MBX folder. IIRC, Pegasus Mail uses the Eudora type implementation of this message separator. FWIW, I believe Mail System Converter uses the same.
Aid4Mail and transend trial works on too few messages and I cant test the perfect conversion....
I had no problems converting mailboxes this size with Aid4Mail. The conversion was not perfect in all cases though. Not sure that what you see in Thunderbird is exactly the same as what you see in the original either. ;-(
[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]
I had no problems converting mailboxes this size with Aid4Mail. The conversion was not perfect in all cases though. Not sure that what you see in Thunderbird is exactly the same as what you see in the original either. ;-(
[/quote]
Thunderbird show exactly the content of "openwebmail" folder.
I try with Aid but I have trouble in conversion. A4M in export format has only 3 mbox "flavor": Mozilla, Generic, Pocomail. None export correctly for Pmail!
I can export in single messagges...
Is possible get eml (cnm?) files and "compact" them into a PMM file?
is the standard move in folder function of PMAIL....
Now the only way founded to convert "correcly" a mbox unix format was ... download it from pop3.
Aid4Mail fail.
dbxconv fail (after create the dbx outlook express).
mail system freeze (on large mailbox)
You can do this via Pegasus Mail filters if the mail is being downloaded via POP3. That said, if the server provides an IMAP4 access it's easier to do via a IMAP4 connection. There are tools available to move mail from one IMAP4 server to another and that generally keeps the flaky MBOX format from messing up the process.
Strange, Mozilla is generally what Thunderbird uses. If you can export single messages as RFC 2822 messages then you can put these directly into a single location with the CNM file extension. You can then use Pegasus Mail "Add mailbox to list" to get these messages and put them into to proper folders. Could be slow doing this one folder at a time but the results will be accurate.
The Process is too long and cannot be batched:
for each user:
1) copy the entire mail folder containing the mbox files
2) export mbox to single eml/CNM file with folder tree
3) CONVERT eml/cnm to Pmail mbox
4) copy PMM to user dir in MERCURY\MAIL\User
The step 3 is ... tremendous?!
the solution (founded?) is import the maildir in PMAIL as MAILBOX and, after, move all mail in a new PMM... but i can add only a single folder in a MAILBOX... and the process is not batchable...
I have ~150 user to migrate... each user has ~ 8 subfolder... 150 * 8 = 1200! ok, is "una tantum" migration.. but...
1. Extract all MBOX files in a folder to a separate directory.
2. Rename the file extension to CNM
3. Use "Add mailbox to list" in Pegasus Mail and move all the CNM files into a local PMail directory.
4. Repeat for each folder.
It would be a lot easier if the original application did IMAP4.
Hi,
A tool like this one:
http://home.arcor.de/luethje/prog/mbx2e_en.htm
will turn most correct mbox formats (mboxo/mboxrd, in particular - Pegasus Mail's mbox support is a bit, erm, bad) into RFC 2822 messages. Those can be in CNM files which you can then copy into master Pegasus Mail mailbox files. Since this is the only local mail storage format Pegasus Mail knows (I'd really like modern mbox support myself because it's used on a lot of mailers and mailing list servers nowadays), you'll have to either do the import manually or write a tool to convert the individual messages, or mbox files directly, into Pegasus Mail pmm files.
Alternatively, as Thomas says, it would I think be as well if you installed a Unix IMAP service on your Unix box and used it to migrate mails using IMAP. I use Dovecot ( http://www.dovecot.org/ ), which is highly robust and has excellent mbox support.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
