[Users] Importing kmails complete mail corpus to claws

[Steve Litt]

On 05/23/2013 02:54 PM, Vayu wrote:
> Steve, You've just described the setup I've wanted for a long time and have failed at all previous attempts.  Would you mind verifying my understanding of the components involved?
>
> Fetchmail is used to get the mail from my various pop servers. *YES*
> Procmail takes those and moves them to folders for dovcot. *YES*
> Dovecot is the imap server that I could then use any client to read the same messages. *YES*
>
> Are these all the components I need to set up and get working together?
They're all I can think of.
> Are there any other things I should study?
IMAP will be your biggest challenge. I'd suggest you study IMAP with an 
existing server, like gmail, and get knowledgeable with connecting Claws 
to that before setting up your Dovecot server.

Configuring your Dovecot server will be a challenge the first time. I'd 
suggest you first get it working without SSL, which of course in 
production is asking for trouble, and then get it working with SSL. Only 
after you have a working Dovecot IMAP you know you can connect to with 
Claws should you connect to it with Kmail and transfer.

Study the hell out of IMAP and Dovecot.
> Part of the problem I've had in the past is I didn't understand what components I needed and what they were for.  Any help you might offer would be greatly appreciated.
View the diagrams at 
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm. Read the whole 
thing. After a while it will make sense to you. You mentioned 
difficulties of setting up Procmail filters. Read the two articles in 
the preceding URL and it will be clear.

I prefer procmail filters because they're independent of any email 
client, they are in a plain text file that gets backed up and never 
replaced, and you can make new filters with copy and paste in your 
favorite text editor.

HTH

SteveT
>
>
>
>
> On Thu May 23 12:12:15 PM Steve Litt wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 May 2013 12:48:17 -0400
>> Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings all;
>>>
>>> I would like to be able to do this so that kmail remains intact and
>>> usable until I have claws configured close enough to kmail that claws
>>> can take over with no gaps in the timeline.
>> Hi Gene,
>>
>> I can't help you with a cutover that remains parallel. The way I
>> emigrated from Kmail involved a sharp cutover with a few
>> dayshttp://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm of email
>> downtime. I did this after months of investigating the best way of
>> doing it. Here are the details:
>>
>> http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm
>>
>> Basically, I got Dovecot running on my desktop machine. I grab my email
>> with fetchmail, which shoots each message to procmail for deposit in
>> the proper Dovecot email folder. So all my email is in Dovecot, *not*
>> in my email client. That way, if at a later date Claws-Mail goes and
>> does something stupid the way Kmail did (Akonadi, etc), then I can drop
>> in any IMAP aware email client. I find it very reassuring to separate
>> email creation and reading from email storage, and will never again
>> store my email in an email client's format.
>>
>> So my conversion required me to get my local Dovecot running, and then,
>> one at a time, within kmail I copied my folders to equivalent IMAP
>> folders in Dovecot. I could have copied whole folder trees, but IMHO
>> you'll have less problems if you don't copy excessively big trees.
>> During the conversion I could receive no email. I wanted my IMAP tree
>> to exactly match my Kmail tree. My records showed I sent my last Kmail
>> email at 2:35am on 2/3/2012, and sent my first Claws email at 12:48pm
>> on 2/4/2012, so I was down for a day and a half.
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> SteveT
>>
>>
>>
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