imapsync - ask for advice when mailbox migration

[tiger2000]

Hello All,

Follow the build steps from Wiki site, we've built imapsync and it also
works to migrate one user's mailbox from old server to new ZCS server.

in order to run imapsync, we need to know users info on host1/host2,
such account/passwd. I'm really curious how system admins do
the mailbox migration job for his users since we have no idea what
users' passwd are in host1?

any advice on this?
Thanks.

Rgds,
Kevin

[dNb]

Originally Posted by tiger2000

in order to run imapsync, we need to know users info on host1/host2, such account/passwd. I'm really curious how system admins do the mailbox migration job for his users since we have no idea what
users' passwd are in host1?

There are a number of ways to do it (I think this is even documented in the wiki), but here's the short answer: you need an imap server for host1 that can give you access to their mailbox without needing the user's real password. I think the easiest way to do this is to bring up another imap server (perhaps on another machine) that can see the same mailbox data and configure it to accept the passwords you want it to accept vs. the real ones. There are a number of ways to do that depending on which IMAP server you pick.

The hack we're using right now during a large scale migration is running another copy of wu-imapd with fake password entries on the machine (for the duration of the copy). These fake entries override the usual authentication method the imap server would use since it sees them first. It is working great for us.

Does that help at all?
-- dNb

[Rich Graves]

It's not as well known as it should be, but uw imap does support sasl plain authz. Put a user into a group named "mailadm" (group name compiled into the code).
Most other imap servers support some form of admin override. If you give some specifics about your legacy environment, we can give more specific tips.

PAM fiddling and renaming mailboxes (re-associating with another user with a known password) might also work on some systems.

[dNb]

Originally Posted by Rich Graves

It's not as well known as it should be, but uw imap does support sasl plain authz. Put a user into a group named "mailadm" (group name compiled into the code).

Hmm, cool tip! Learn a new thing every day. I'm probably not going to change our current migration stuff, but this is certainly good to know. Thanks Rich!

-- dNb