Hi,

I am in the process of moving from a directadmin server to a cpanel server due to several issues.

I have resigned myself to manually moving accounts one by one from the old server to the new. I have migrated all hosted accounts that do not have an active email account.

Now here's the problem:

How do I successfully migrate all mail accounts for a hostee account from DA to cpanel?
DA seems to be using vm-pop3d whereas cpanel seems to be using courier imap. I might even be wrong in this.

All the mail in the DA server seems to stored a mbox files.
Permissions are also a tricky issue.

I don't want to risk losing mail, and I want to keep mail downtime minimal for my hostees. So I thought I would ask you guys here to find if you know how best to do this, from your past experience.

Any guides/help will be VERY welcome. I am at a loss here.

Thanks in advance.

Download all your email from DA using POP. Once it is downloaded to your email client, setup a IMAP to your new server. Then you can drag all your old emails to the new servers.

This only applies if you have password for your email accounts.

I can't do this for all my clients. I don't want to be reading their emails, leave alone downloading their email without their knowledge/permission!!

I don't know the passwords either - I am not the guy who is hosted, I am the guy that hosts some folks (mostly friends and family).

Thank you!

Hi,

I am in the process of moving from a directadmin server to a cpanel server due to several issues.

I have resigned myself to manually moving accounts one by one from the old server to the new. I have migrated all hosted accounts that do not have an active email account.

Now here's the problem:

How do I successfully migrate all mail accounts for a hostee account from DA to cpanel?
DA seems to be using vm-pop3d whereas cpanel seems to be using courier imap. I might even be wrong in this.

All the mail in the DA server seems to stored a mbox files.
Permissions are also a tricky issue.

I don't want to risk losing mail, and I want to keep mail downtime minimal for my hostees. So I thought I would ask you guys here to find if you know how best to do this, from your past experience.

Any guides/help will be VERY welcome. I am at a loss here.

Thanks in advance.

Im really curious why your moving from DA to cPanel. We moved from cPanel to DA almost a year ago and would never go back. I cant see the reason why. DA is a much better CP. Youll be moving back shortly, guaranteed.

DA seems to be using vm-pop3d whereas cpanel seems to be using courier imap. I might even be wrong in this.

All the mail in the DA server seems to stored a mbox files.
You can replace vm-pop3d by dovecot, using Maildir, not mbox anymore

Im really curious why your moving from DA to cPanel. We moved from cPanel to DA almost a year ago and would never go back. I cant see the reason why. DA is a much better CP. Youll be moving back shortly, guaranteed.

My vps hosting provider had provided DA on an experimental basis when I signed up. They no longer support it, and I need to upgrade mysql to at least 4.1 - these are just a few of the problems. I like DA over whm/cpanel too.

You can replace vm-pop3d by dovecot, using Maildir, not mbox anymore
Yes, the question is, how do I move existing mail from one to the other.

Thank you

if both are using Maildir, you can copy folders between servers

if both are using Maildir, you can copy folders between servers

No, like I said in the post, the old one use mbox files and the new uses maildirs. That is the problem.

Did I write that you can replace vm-pop3d by dovecot using Maildir above?

Did I write that you can replace vm-pop3d by dovecot using Maildir above?

I am sorry, but the old server uses vm-pop3d and has been doing that for over 2 years. I don't intend to keep using that server, since I am moving to a new one.

Are you saying that there is a script/tool that will convert the existing mail created/handled by vm-pop3d to dovecot? If not, I don't see how changing the mailserver on the old server will help me move the existing mail.

Thank you.

update your DA to the latest version, then run the below commands in ssh
cd /usr/local/directadmin/customapache
./build update
./build update_dovecot
./build dovecot
./build todovecot

they will compile Dovecot and convert mbox accounts to Maildir. Pls pay attention that it's one-way, you cannot get mbox back after converting. However, we have done this on many DA servers without trouble