[Gloucs] Backing up IMAP mailbox from Dovecot?

[Richard Dawe]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Oakley wrote:
> At home I run the Dovecot IMAP mail server (under Ubuntu 6.06), and keep 
> all my mail in my IMAP account. The account has several sub-folders, eg. 
> a GlosLUG folder, a LiveJournal folder etc.
 >
> What is the simplest way to back up this one account only (with 
> subfolders), such that it can be reliably reloaded on to Dovecot server 
> on a freshly reinstalled machine, please? I don't want to backup any 
> other accounts.
> 
> Ideally I'd be looking for a few files that I can just gzip and scp 
> elsewhere on a cron job.

If you're looking to shift your mail from one IMAP server to another, 
perhaps you could use OfflineIMAP?

http://software.complete.org/offlineimap/static/doc/manual.html

"With OfflineIMAP 4.0, a powerful new ability has been introduced -- the 
program can now synchronize two IMAP servers with each other, with no 
need to have a Maildir layer in-between."

Disclaimer: I've never used OfflineIMAP.

Rich