Migrating Zimbra backup to .mbox

[jonachen]

Hi,

We have an old server that I would prefer not to turn on again. This old mail server runs Zimbra 4.x? or maybe 5.x. Anyways, I am wondering if there is a way I can extract the emails to .mbox or whatever is easier to read on OSX/Linux.

Oh, the Zimbra email data is in "zimbra_backup"

total 52
-rw-r----- 1 2007 2007 15344 Oct 29 2009 acct_name_id.dat
-rw-r----- 1 2007 2007 14413 Oct 29 2009 acct_session.dat
drwxr-x--- 29 2007 2007 4096 Oct 29 2009 ldap
drwxr-x--- 28 2007 2007 4096 Oct 29 2009 sessions
drwxr-x--- 3 2007 2007 4096 Oct 29 2009 tmp
-rw-rw-r-- 1 214 users 4201 Feb 12 2008 zmrestoreldap

[Krishopper]

I don't think you will find a way to do this. The Zimbra backups are not in a standard format that other applications can understand, so there probably isn't anything out there to convert them to MBOX format.

You may be able to dig into them and see the raw emails, but your chances of getting them into an MBOX file or another email client are still pretty low.

Is this the only Zimbra directory that exists on the server? Or do you still have the entire /opt/zimbra directory tree?

[Dirk]

I'd suggest booting the server, on an isolated network if needed and use an email client of some nature to connect to each account to back it up.

[jonachen]

I can see the emails but unable to determine who the user is or rather grab all email from user A, B, and C only.

Is there a way to just get user A, B, and C only email? I can probably get the server back up but not sure about the zimbra configuration needing to be changed or not because of IP and hostname needing to be renamed for in order to get the server up.

I don't think you will find a way to do this. The Zimbra backups are not in a standard format that other applications can understand, so there probably isn't anything out there to convert them to MBOX format.

You may be able to dig into them and see the raw emails, but your chances of getting them into an MBOX file or another email client are still pretty low.

Is this the only Zimbra directory that exists on the server? Or do you still have the entire /opt/zimbra directory tree?

[jonachen]

Found the email box after linking LDAP info....

zimbraMailStatus: enabled
zimbraId: df5e0c3f-2691-4656-9f11-acf4cf27b9fc

with below data.

/zimbra_backup/sessions/full-20091024.090003.453/accounts/df5/e0c/df5e0c3f-2691-4656-9f11-acf4cf27b9fc% du -sh *
4.0K account.dat
4.0K account_latest.dat
4.0K backup.dat
3.2G blobs
30M db
226M index

Still, how can I convert it to something meaningful? Basically friendly enough to read them from 4.5.x version of Zimbra.