Migration from Berkeley (Unix) Mailbox Format to Cyrus
Unix systems and the out-of-the-box UW IMAP server both store mail messages in Berkeley mail format (also referred to as mbox, Unix, or /var/mail format) mail folders. Many sites that use Berkeley format move their users onto a Cyrus server to take advantage of the quota and ACL support that Cyrus offers. In this section, weâll walk though the steps involved in such a migration. Source code for the tools we used to accomplish the migration are provided in Appendix A .
How Do I Know My Mail Is Berkeley Format?
If your mail setup matches six out of seven of the criteria below, then youâre storing mail in Berkeley format:
There is no mail serverâusers log on to a Unix machine and run a mail program to read their mail.
There is a mail server, but itâs the UW IMAP server, running out-of-the-box with no special site configuration.
Each userâs incoming mail is stored in a spool directory, such as
/var/mailor/var/spool/mail.Each userâs incoming mail is stored within a single file, named after the user.
Mail folders are stored in the userâs home directory.
Mail reading is done with programs such as Elm, PINE, mailâ(1), rmailâ(1), or mailxâ(1).
Each mail folder contains a header, blank line, and message body, and delimits messages with the From header line.[43]
Issues
When converting a production mail system to Cyrus, several issues need to be taken into consideration to make the conversion go smoothly.
User-driven versus ...
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