Tag Archives: imap

How to Migrate Email without IMAP credentials

Posted on by
Reply

Here are a few ways you can migrate emails without knowing the IMAP credentials.

  1. Use the Admin Password.
  2. Migrate emails using SFTP.
  3. Import/Export using RoundCube?

Use the Admin Password

Some email services allow you to use the administrator password to sign into any email account. This allows you to move emails without knowing the users password.

You can refer to this FAQ on the imapsync website.

https://imapsync.lamiral.info/FAQ.d/FAQ.Admin_Authentication.txt

Migrating Files using SFTP

Disclaimer:

This option will only work if you have ftp/ssh/filesystem access.
Depending on email volume, you could miss emails that arrive during the transition.
If possible, it is recommended to use something like imapsync.
There could be format issues if the two email servers use different mailbox formats and/or email server software.

Emails are usually stored in the users home directory. Depending on the hosting provider, it could be /mail or ~/mail

You can zip up the mail directory and then unzip on the target server. This would only work if you have access to the filesystem. Create your email accounts before unzipping.

You could transfer the passwd and shadow files to keep the email passwords the same. Again, create the email addresses on the target server first and then either overwrite, or merge the differences between the shadow and passwd files.

For example, on cPanel servers, the mail directory is in ~/mail and the shadow and passwd files are in ~/etc/DOMAIN.COM

If you are logged in as root, you will need to change ~/ to /home/USER/ substituting USER for the actual cPanel user.

Import/Export messages from RoundCube?

You can import and export emails using the RoundCube webmail interface. However, the export is limited to one. message. at. a. time. This could work for a handful of messages, but can get quite tedious if you have a large number of emails.

Moving emails to new host with imapsync

Posted on by
Reply

More info about imapsync here

Install imapsync

CentOS 7, Works on cPanel servers too

yum install epel-release && yum install imapsync

Once installed check and make sure it works.

imapsync --version

If it gives you the version number you should be good to go.

Move email account

imapsync --host1 mail.emaildomain.com --user1 username@emaildomain.com --password1  "password1" --host2 mail.exampledomain.com --user2 username@movetodomain.com --password2  "password2"

Example :

imapsync --host1 mail.myemail.com --user1 bob@myemail.com --password1  "password1" --host2 mail.incredigeek.com --user2 bob@incredigeek.com --password2  "password2"

Moving Multiple accounts

Best way to move multiple accounts is to use a script and and a list that contains all the usernames and passwords to the accounts you want to move.

example scripts can be found on the imapsync website here is a script example and here is the example file.txt

Example script.

#!/bin/sh
#
# $Id: sync_loop_unix.sh,v 1.6 2015/11/04 18:23:04 gilles Exp gilles $

# Example for imapsync massive migration on Unix systems.
# See also http://imapsync.lamiral.info/FAQ.d/FAQ.Massive.txt
#
# Data is supposed to be in file.txt in the following format:
# host001_1;user001_1;password001_1;host001_2;user001_2;password001_2;
# ...
# Separator is character semi-colon ";" it can be changed by any character changing IFS=';' 
# in the while loop below.
# # Each line contains 6 columns, columns are parameter values for 
# --host1 --user1 --password1 --host2 --user2 --password2
# and a trailing empty fake column to avaid CR LF part going 
# in the 6th parameter password2. Don't forget the last semicolon.
#
# You can add extra options after the variable "$@" 
# Use character backslash \ at the end of each suplementary line, except for the last one.
# You can also pass extra options via the parameters of this script since
# they will be in "$@"

# The credentials filename "file.txt" used for the loop can be renamed 
# by changing "file.txt" below.


echo Looping on account credentials found in file.txt
echo

{ while IFS=';' read  h1 u1 p1 h2 u2 p2 fake
    do 
        { echo "$h1" | egrep "^#" ; } > /dev/null && continue # this skip commented lines in file.txt
        echo "==== Starting imapsync from host1 $h1 user1 $u1 to host2 $h2 user2 $u2 ===="
        imapsync --host1 "$h1" --user1 "$u1" --password1 "$p1" \
                 --host2 "$h2" --user2 "$u2" --password2 "$p2" \
                 "$@"  
        echo "==== Ended imapsync from host1 $h1 user1 $u1 to host2 $h2 user2 $u2 ===="
        echo
    done 
} < file.txt

Example list of accounts to

mail.maildomain.com;user1@incredigeek.com;password1;mail.incredigeek.com;user2@incredigeek.com;password2;

 

How to use,

You can run these command from a Linux computer

Download script

wget www.incredigeek.com/home/downloads/imapsync/imapsync_loop.sh

Make the script executable

chmod +x imapsync_loop.sh

Create a text file named “imapsync_list.txt”

This file will contain the mail server to transfer from, username, and password, and then the mail server to transfer to, username and password.  Add one line per account.

Example:

mail.servertotransferfrom.com;Username1;Password1;mail.servertomoveto.com;Username2;Password2;
mail.servertotransferfrom.com;testuser;123456;mail.servertomoveto.com;bob;123456;

Execute the script to start moving mail

./imapsync_loop.sh

Troubleshooting

In the username you may need to use the username@domainname.tld, so if the username is bob, and the mail domain is incredigeek.com, use bob@incredigeek.com for the username in the imapsync_list.txt.