Let's say someone is changing web hosts. He normally uses SquirrelMail to read and manage mail, and has many emails stored in folders. When moving to a new web host, how does he bring all that mail with him?

Vito

Vito, have a look at http://squirrelmail.org/docs/admin/admin-11.html

It gives you a detail step by step method of moving mails and address book. Let us know if this works as I have never done this in the past and would like to know if you run into any problems.

Which mail client do you use? exim, sendmail...?

Just a follow up for others who might face this issue in the future.

I got the old host to zip up the client's mail folders and send them to me. So I tried uploading them via FTP to the client's MAIL directory on my server. Unfortunately, this did not work. When the customer logged in to SquirrelMail, they did see the folders (typically located in the left column), but they were only accessible by clicking OPTIONS, but the enclosed emails were not viewable. Hmmmm.

So I brainstormed a bit and came up with a plan. I asked my client to manually create the folders in his account. Once that was done, I then uploaded all the mail to those manually created folders. Voila. It worked!! :banana:

So the trick is to manually create the folders in the SquirrelMail account, and then you can upload all the archived emails.

Vito

It depends on what kind of mailserver software is running on the current server, and what's running on the new server.

Don't forget Squirrelmail is 'just' an IMAP-client.
Most used formats are mbox and Mailbox format.

When moving your mail to your new server, it depends on what your current application (IMAP-server) is generating.
Dovecot for example, is generating the Mailbox format, and has posibilities to convert mbox to Mailbox.

Just a follow up for others who might face this issue in the future.

I got the old host to zip up the client's mail folders and send them to me. So I tried uploading them via FTP to the client's MAIL directory on my server. Unfortunately, this did not work. When the customer logged in to SquirrelMail, they did see the folders (typically located in the left column), but they were only accessible by clicking OPTIONS, but the enclosed emails were not viewable. Hmmmm.


The problem was probably related to improper permissions.