2

I have a cyrus-imapd server running for last five years. The cyrus-imapd version is 2.2. Now I have set up a new mailbox server with cyrus-imapd version 2.3. I need to migrate all mailboxes to this new server. As far as I know I should follow either of the following two methods.

  1. Use imapsync to transfer mailboxes
  2. rsync all mailboxes to new server and then reconstruct all of them on new server

I do not want to setup imapsync so rsync followed by reconstruct remains.

But I tried moving random five mailboxes to new server without following reconstruct. I did following.

  1. rsync mailboxes to new server
  2. copied mailbox-name.seen and mailbox-name.sub from /var/lib/imap/ to new server

And I am able to access those mailboxes without any problem on new server. So can I move mailboxes and corresponding .seen and .sub files directly to new server without following reconstruct? and what exactly reconstruct do?

Note: I am not using any kind of quota on cyrus mailboxes so I don't want any quota figures.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

reconstruct reconstructs cyrus' indexes. While they may survive a move from one machine to another, nothing guarantees that they will. Reconstruct is also idempotent, non-destructive and non-intrusive, so you can safely run it on migrated mailboxes.

Improve this answer
2
  • thanks, should I keep cyrus-imapd down during reconstruct?
    – Sachin Divekar
    Nov 30, 2012 at 20:31
  • No, that's not necessary.
    – Dennis Kaarsemaker
    Nov 30, 2012 at 20:38

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .