Bulk Import

[Duane Abrames]

I have about 30 or 40 domains which I would like to convert to Ability. They are mostly currently running on xmail server.

What I need is a way to smoothy transition from one mail server to the other. I'd like to do this in one fell swoop if possible, since I am still in the process of 'upgrading' into the xmail server, 2.5 years later, and already ready to replace it before we found the time to transition all the accounts. Here are some of my thoughts, see what you can some up with that helps me out. I want to be able to do all of this automatically, I do not have the time, nor the tolerance for errors to hand-key 1000+ mailboxes' info at any point.

1) My accounts on Xmail are using "maildir" format, one message-per-file, much like your "Inbox" directory. I had hoped that I could copy the files in there and have Ability magically recognize the files (even though the naming scheme is wrong), but obviously that won't work. I tried faking up a filename in the right general format, and that was also ignored. I'm guessing at this point that mail may only be inserted into a user's mailbox by the mail server itself.

2) Is there some sort of command-line delivery agent which could be called upon to deliver mail into the users' mailboxes, from a script?

3) failing the other two ideas above, i could perhaps use POP3 access from the old server to the new one to transport the mail, but i need to know a couple of things: A) where are the details of a user's inbound POP3 links stored, and can I store them there from a script? B) (probably self-evident from A) Can I then later delete that information from a script as well? and C) how can I trigger and/or monitor the progress of POP3 transfers? What I see here is creating a quick and dirty script to extract all users from one domain in my existing mail server and create a CSV that I can use with the import function to create the accounts and directories, then another script that takes the info from CSV and creates a POP3 link to my old mail server, and triggers (if possible) all accounts to download mail. Then, once all mail is gone from the old server for the domain, I run script #3 to disable all pop3 links for the domain (possibly using the CSV as input again). Is this doable, or is there something in the system which will keep me from doing this?

Or, is there already a known solution for these kinds of issues? Surely everyone who has converted to Ability has not had to lose all the mail that was in their previous system, so how do they accomplish it?

[rob]

Thank you for your interest in Ability Mail Server. To import your actual users (ignoring mails and settings), you can always use the CSV import tool. If your current mail server supports CSV exporting or databases (some databases contain tools to export tables into CSV format), then you should be able to quickly load in the users.

The actual format of our mail files is pure raw text, and so if your current mail server does the same, this should work. However, the key will be to firstly ensure all your users are added to software, then this process can be applied to bringing in the mails. Unfortunatly we do not have any tools which can do this but the naming format of mails is...

idnumber_flags_popidstring.txt

idnumber = Starting at 1, every new mail added to an account gets the next increment (2,3,4...etc).
flags = Should be set to 16 for new unread mails, and 1 for already read mails.
popidstring = Basically the UIDL set in POP3, simple set this to any unique string of letters and numbers.

Another method of importing mails would be allow users to this themselves. Basically you can leave the old mail server active with IMAP4 running, but on a new domain/port. Users can then create a new account which will access the old server and download and copy mails into AMS (clients such as outlook allow simple drag and dropping of mails).