How to migrated an external Maildir account into Mailcow?

kantamaru267

I have a backup of one of my email accounts in the Maildir format. I made it manually, and it’s not from a Mailcow instance.

How to import it into a Mailcow? Will I also have to create a domain and mailbox for it first?

I’m aware of the 2 import/export bash scripts of Mailcow, however, can they be used in this case?

kantamaru267

up up

maybl8

I may be wrong with this but I think you can use Thunderbird to do this. I think I did this a while back but don’t remember the exact instructions.
Maybe someone else here can guide you better.

ThiSchwa

You should create a sync-job in the mailcow-ui, in email -> configuration -> synchronisation.
Sorry, I don’t know the correct wording, I used a german localized version.

DocFraggle

@kantamaru267 I think you can just copy the files over to your newly created mailbox directory

The mailboxes are located (in my case) at

/var/lib/docker/volumes/mailcowdockerized_vmail-vol-1/_data/

the actual mailbox dir is located at domain/user/Maildir/

Maybe try it first with a test mailbox

kantamaru267

DocFraggle let me try
have you done it?

simply copy? or will I have to prepare the domains and mailboxes first by creating them via the UI?

DocFraggle

kantamaru267 yes you have to create the domains and mailboxes before copying the files

I dind’t try this myself as I migrated from an existing mailserver and used the sync jobs to sync the mailboxes.
Basically it should be the same as the restore script does while restoring a vmail backup.

What you have to do after copying the files is to run the “Encrypt /var/vmail” part you can find here: https://docs.mailcow.email/manual-guides/Dovecot/u_e-dovecot-mail-crypt/
This will encrypt and compress your imported mails afterwards

Maybe try it first with a simple test mailbox

DocFraggle

As I learned today that won’t work out of the box as the mails are crypted and compressed. You will need to do that manually

https://docs.mailcow.email/manual-guides/Dovecot/u_e-dovecot-mail-crypt/

kantamaru267

DocFraggle have you ever done it?

chriss

If you’re comfortable with the command line, you can look at rick sanders imap tools

There’s a maildir to imap script which could do what you want and the tools are pretty easy to use.

kantamaru267

thx, will try

DarkMatter

For anyone looking for the solution to this…

I had a domain on Zoho Free, and wanted to transfer the domain mailboxes to another email server. Zoho Free does not allow IMAP! So it wasn’t possible to use Imapsync or any other IMAP-2-IMAP tool. I will describe below what I did on a Linux box, for each mailbox, to transfer all the .EML file from my file system to the new IMAP email server. Although this procedure has to do with Zoho, most of it is provider independent.

a) In Zoho settings there is an option to export mailbox contents as .EML files. There is an option to include any sub-folders you may have under Inbox

b) Download the ZIP file(s) and extract them in a folder structure like this:
MainFolder: In here create a directory named cur and any other directories you may have in Inbox. Note to start the directory names with “.” If your directory is Work, then create the directory .Work
MainFolder/cur: Place in here all the .EML files that are inside the ZIP file(s) you extracted
MainFolder/.Work: Create a sub-directory named cur and place in that all the .EML files you extracted from your “Work” IMAP directory. Note that all .EML files are placed inside the cur directories.
Repeat for all IMAP directories

c) Create a file users.txt (or any other name you like) inside the MainFolder and place in there this:
/path/MainFolder/,user@example.com,uSeRpAsSwOrD
It’s 3 values, separated with commas: File System Path where .EML files are, Email Server User Login, Email Server Password

d) Download andrewnimmo/rick-sanders-imap-toolsblob/master/maildir_to_imap.pl

e) Run perl maildir_to_imap.pl -i /path/MainFolder/users.txt -D FQDN.server.com:993

This will load authentication information from users.txt to connect to the new email server, and copy there all the .EML files inside Inbox (cur directory) and all sub-directories, creating all these IMAP directories at the same time on the email server.

Remember to export Sent directory as well and any other IMAP directories you may have/need.

Please note, that your Linux box need to have perl (but I guess that’s default nowadays)