Topic: Transferring mails from SME 6 to SME 7

[EnglishRob]

Hi folks,

I've been looking at upgrading to SME Server 7.  Rather than upgrade over the existing server, I am planning on putting together a new box with bigger hard drives, and a bit faster processor etc.

Now I have had a bit of a play with SME Server 7 on VMWare.  Everything seems to work okay (apart from a problem sending e-mails, but this will be resolved by changing my e-mail provider).

The only problem I am having is moving my e-mails from the old server to the new server.

I tried moving the mails over by doing a backup to desktop.  The backup worked fine, gave me a nice big .TGZ file which I then uploaded to the SME 7 box using the server-manager restore from desktop backup option.

When it came to rebooting the server (the SME 7 box), it rebooted fine, and picked up all the configuration settings (apart from the network card which a reconfiguration fixed).  The problem I found though was the e-mail folders other than the Inbox would not show up in Thunderbird.

The mail folders and e-mails in them show up fine in Horde, but I can't seem to get them up in Thunderbird.  When I try to subscribe to the e-mail folders they just show up grey.

It's a bit of a pain that this has happened.  I've got god knows how many e-mails stored on the SME 6 box.  If I can't get round the problem with Desktop backup, is there a way of syncronising the mail from one server to another?  (I have done this previously by dragging the mail over to Thunderbird and back onto the other servers mailbox but this takes hours!)

Rob

[CharlieBrady]

I tried moving the mails over by doing a backup to desktop.  The backup worked fine, gave me a nice big .TGZ file which I then uploaded to the SME 7 box using the server-manager restore from desktop backup option.

Backup and restore is intended to work perfectly. If it doesn't, you should use the Bug Tracker to send details to the developers. Link is to the left.

[jfarschman]

Rob,

  I did this awhile back.  The best method is to do an upgrade, but DELL has a deal on a nice new server that I couldn't refuse, so I used IMAPCOPY.EXE to move the files.

http://home.arcor.de/armin.diehl/imapcopy/imapcopy.html

It'e pretty straight forward, but imapcopy will not respect the instances per IP limits on the Savvy Server.  You will want to raise those up before running it, or you'll see row after row of error messages:

echo 400 > /var/service/imap/runenv/PER_IP_INSTANCES
svc -t /service/imap

That sets it to 400 which should be good enough.  Set it back to 5 after you are done.

[jfarschman]

As usual... Charlie's idea is better.

[EnglishRob]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll give both a shot and see what happens.

I'm not overly fussed if it doesn't work on the test server, but if I can transfer my mail over with the minimum of hassle it would be great.

Rob

[william_syd]

Rob,

  I did this awhile back.  The best method is to do an upgrade, but DELL has a deal on a nice new server that I couldn't refuse, so I used IMAPCOPY.EXE to move the files.

http://home.arcor.de/armin.diehl/imapcopy/imapcopy.html

It'e pretty straight forward, but imapcopy will not respect the instances per IP limits on the Savvy Server.  You will want to raise those up before running it, or you'll see row after row of error messages:

echo 400 > /var/service/imap/runenv/PER_IP_INSTANCES
svc -t /service/imap

That sets it to 400 which should be good enough.  Set it back to 5 after you are done.

There is a small patch that may allow changing concurrency via the db.

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=884

I have not tried it yet.

[EnglishRob]

Rob,

  I did this awhile back.  The best method is to do an upgrade, but DELL has a deal on a nice new server that I couldn't refuse, so I used IMAPCOPY.EXE to move the files.

http://home.arcor.de/armin.diehl/imapcopy/imapcopy.html

It'e pretty straight forward, but imapcopy will not respect the instances per IP limits on the Savvy Server.  You will want to raise those up before running it, or you'll see row after row of error messages:

echo 400 > /var/service/imap/runenv/PER_IP_INSTANCES
svc -t /service/imap

That sets it to 400 which should be good enough.  Set it back to 5 after you are done.

IMAPCOPY worked a treat!

It took a bit of reading up to get the settings right, but it appears to have copied all my mail over from my SME 6 box to a virtual SME 7 box running in VMWare.

Thanks for the info on that one.

Rob