Migrating mails from GMail to other IMAP server
16 Nov 2010I have previously blogged on how I migrate mails from one IMAP server to another. Today I had to migrate some mails again.
My client's staff wasn't happy about the GMail webmail we gave them. The lack of a true "Draft" feature (one tha could be used and reused) had them drop a lot of productivity, so we decided to get back to Squirel Mail.
I started by manually recreating all the email adresses on the back-end on the Dreamhost server. Once at least one address is created, Dreamhost automatically creates the matching A and MX records.
I had to update my zone file on my registrar to update the previously MX and A records that were set to point to Google and updated to point to Dreamhost. I have to use an intermediate zone file on my registrar because I'm dealing with a limitation of the .fr TLD here.
Once the zone were updated and changes repercuted accross the network, I connected to the new Squirel mail. My inbox was empty.
So I ran imapsync to copy all mails from the google hosted service to my new server.
The syntax to be used is a little different than the one I mentioned on my previous post, so here it is :
imapsync --host1 imap.gmail.com --ssl1 --authmech1 LOGIN --user1 foo@domain.fr --passfile1 /path/to/pass1 --host2 208.97.*.* --user2 foo@domain.fr --passfile2 /path/to/pass2 --useheader="X-GMail-Received" --useheader 'Message-Id' --noauthmd5
After that, I reloaded my Squirel Mail inbox, and it was populated. I just had to do that for every account.
Want to add something ? Feel free to get in touch on Twitter : @pixelastic