Backup (via IMAP) then place back onto different webhost?

[sammich]

I'm in the process of moving webhosts to something more appropriate for our level of usage (down) so I need to grab a copy of all the emails (via IMAP) which is the easy part. But since some of the family like to access their emails only via the webmail I was wondering if there was some way to re-upload all of the content back onto the new host?

Thanks.

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

I'm in the process of moving webhosts to something more appropriate for our level of usage (down) so I need to grab a copy of all the emails (via IMAP) which is the easy part. But since some of the family like to access their emails only via the webmail I was wondering if there was some way to re-upload all of the content back onto the new host?

Thanks.

The usual way to handle this is to see if the MTA on the old server has an imap backup utility built in -or- use a freeware script like imapsize available here and install it on both servers for a backup/restore.

Better than copying mail files manually, losing attachments and read/unread sychronized data.

If unsure of what I mean, tell me what your mailer is, i.e Courier, Cyrus, sendmail-pop-imap, exim or what?

-jim

 

[sammich]

I'm moving from a budget webhost (the email dir isn't accessible and the control panel is next to useless in it's simplicity). So I'm guessing I wouldn't be able to figure out what my MTA is.

About that imapsize script you linked, it says it stored data as .eml files. All my caches messages from Mail.app are also stored as .eml and are completely viewable. Would they be of any use should I decide to go down the route of hosting my own mail server?

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

About that imapsize script you linked, it says it stored data as .eml files. All my caches messages from Mail.app are also stored as .eml and are completely viewable. Would they be of any use should I decide to go down the route of hosting my own mail server?

They should be, but backup in case they're not. My advice was to use the script for both backup and restore, as I know it works. Also you might find it interesting to read this page which explains what EML files are and a great tip on renaming to MHT so you can view them in MSIE.

-jim