On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic <office at plnet.rs> wrote: > Vreme: 11/02/2011 07:53 PM, Phoenix, Merka piše: >>>> I have a bunch of old mail spread variously across dovecot maildirs and mbox format files on several machines that are headed for the trash. Is there anything considered to be a portable archive format for mail messages, and if so are there tools to copy into it - or do I have to pick a client and copy to its local storage?<< >>>> >>>> -- >> The mbox format and mail messages in the dovecot maildirs can be copied as is to another server (or directory). >> The only thing that you don't need (or probably don't want) to copy would be the index files that live in the directory above the maildirs. >> >> The index files are in the form: dovecot-* and dovecot.index* and usually live above the actual directory where the messages are stored. Also, most of the sub-folders have a leading '.' so would be "hidden" unless you use 'ls -la' to view the directory contents. >> > > There is simple script to convert maildir to mailbox format: > http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/a-script-to-convert-maildir-to-mailbox-format-381568/ > > and scripts to convert mailbox to maildir: > http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ > http://perfectmaildir.home-dn.net/ > > There are many more, but this ones come at the top of the google search. Thanks - I think most of what I'd want to keep is still accessible via imap. What I'm wondering is if there is a general consensus about the file format for long term storage that would be most likely to permit direct search and access from some future mail reader, possibly on some other OS. I suppose I could make a VM image that I could fire up as an imap server again, but that seems kind of cumbersome. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com