Hi everyone

and happy new year!

I am in contract with a webhoster, having webserver, email and a few other things.

But, there is no way to backup my emails stored on their imap server.
Meaning, when anything happens to that infrastructure (or they go broke)
then all my emails are gone.

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

Now I see, that there are several solutions out, see subject, and I don't
know which one fits best and what component is needed.

Does anyone have some experience here? Do I need an mta (exim for
instance) to just sync emails from external imap server to local?

Thanks for any hint!

Best regards,

Markus



--
Please reply to group only.
For private email please use http://www.dipl-ing-kessler.de/email.htm

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> writes:

I am in contract with a webhoster, having webserver, email and a few other things.

But, there is no way to backup my emails stored on their imap server. Meaning, when anything happens to that infrastructure (or they go broke) then all my emails are gone.

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some
imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

Now I see, that there are several solutions out, see subject, and I
don't know which one fits best and what component is needed.

Dovecot is fairly easy to set up. I?ve not tried the other IMAP servers.

Does anyone have some experience here? Do I need an mta (exim for
instance) to just sync emails from external imap server to local?

I?ve never used imapsync but there?s no reason copying messages from one
IMAP server to another should require an MTA.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 1 Jan 2026 20:19:43 -0000 (UTC), Markus Robert Kessler wrote:

I am in contract with a webhoster, having webserver, email and a few
other things.

But, there is no way to backup my emails stored on their imap
server.

I use POP3 for fetching mail from the public-facing server onto my own
machine. So the only mail store that needs backing up is already under
my control.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

Hi everyone

and happy new year!

I am in contract with a webhoster, having webserver, email and a few other things.

But, there is no way to backup my emails stored on their imap server. Meaning, when anything happens to that infrastructure (or they go broke) then all my emails are gone.

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

Now I see, that there are several solutions out, see subject, and I don't know which one fits best and what component is needed.

Personally I'd ignore all those "solutions" as overkill and use
movemail from GNU Mailutils:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you
may need to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your
email client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works
with IMAP too.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 01.01.2026 20:19 Uhr Markus Robert Kessler wrote:

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some
imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

I use Cyrus and like it.
It saves the mail as text files. The metadata information (folder
permissions, read status etc.) is saved in local databases.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1767295183muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 18:40:16 -0000 (UTC) Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de
mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need
to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de>
wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email
client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works
with IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more
than 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of the
generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail"
program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

Apparently, GNU-Mailutils is not in the Fedora distribution. There are
RPMs for it in SuSE, but I am reluctant to mix "foreign"
RPMs into my Fedora; I have seen that greate small messes in
dependencies. And I really don't like to compile from sources.

Besides this, it looks like movemail can only transmit 'Inbox' but no
other folders?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4 Jan 2026 08:05:59 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 18:40:16 -0000 (UTC) Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de
mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may
need to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de>
wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your
email client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works >>>>>> with IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more >>>>> than 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of
the generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail"
program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

Apparently, GNU-Mailutils is not in the Fedora distribution. There are
RPMs for it in SuSE, but I am reluctant to mix "foreign"
RPMs into my Fedora; I have seen that greate small messes in
dependencies. And I really don't like to compile from sources.

Besides this, it looks like movemail can only transmit 'Inbox' but no
other folders?

No, just add the folder to the URL, such as:

movemail imaps://foo@example.com/draft mh:///tmp/Mail/draft

I just tested that and it works for me. I can't see any way to download
all the folders with one command like you asked before though.

By the way, if you want to keep the messages on the server, you probably
want to use the "--sync=uidnext" option:

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Sync.html

Yes, this way, download by foldername works, thanks!

When wanting the emails to remain on the server, flag '-p' (keep messages)
can be used. What does "--sync=uidnext" differently?

B.t.w., just trying to download folders with special characters in them,
like "Entw�rfe" (drafts). I did not make it yet to get this encoded (for instance "�" in html: &uuml;)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

On 4 Jan 2026 08:05:59 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail imaps://foo@example.com/draft mh:///tmp/Mail/draft

I just tested that and it works for me. I can't see any way to download
all the folders with one command like you asked before though.

By the way, if you want to keep the messages on the server, you probably
want to use the "--sync=uidnext" option:

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Sync.html

Yes, this way, download by foldername works, thanks!

When wanting the emails to remain on the server, flag '-p' (keep messages) can be used. What does "--sync=uidnext" differently?

As explained at the link, adding "--sync=uidnext" avoids
re-downloading old messages that have already been retrieved when
you run it again.

B.t.w., just trying to download folders with special characters in them, like "Entwurfe" (drafts). I did not make it yet to get this encoded (for instance "u" in html: &uuml;)

With percent encoding that character turns into "%FC", or "%C3%BC"
if it uses UTF-8. There's a conversion table here:

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 18:40:16 -0000 (UTC) Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de
mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need >>>>> to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de>
wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email >>>>> client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works
with IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more
than 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of the
generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail"
program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

Apparently, GNU-Mailutils is not in the Fedora distribution. There are
RPMs for it in SuSE, but I am reluctant to mix "foreign"
RPMs into my Fedora; I have seen that greate small messes in
dependencies. And I really don't like to compile from sources.

Besides this, it looks like movemail can only transmit 'Inbox' but no
other folders?

No, just add the folder to the URL, such as:

movemail imaps://foo@example.com/draft mh:///tmp/Mail/draft

I just tested that and it works for me. I can't see any way to
download all the folders with one command like you asked before
though.

By the way, if you want to keep the messages on the server, you
probably want to use the "--sync=uidnext" option:

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Sync.html

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

Hi everyone

and happy new year!

I am in contract with a webhoster, having webserver, email and a few
other things.

But, there is no way to backup my emails stored on their imap server.
Meaning, when anything happens to that infrastructure (or they go
broke) then all my emails are gone.

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some
imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

Now I see, that there are several solutions out, see subject, and I
don't know which one fits best and what component is needed.

Personally I'd ignore all those "solutions" as overkill and use movemail
from GNU Mailutils:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email
client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works with
IMAP too.

Hi Kev,

movemail seems to work, thanks!

Well, in the document mh was misspelled as
'mh://Mail' instead of
'mh:///Mail', so it took a while until I got it to work.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than
1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

Best regards,
Markus

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need to
percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email
client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works with
IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than
1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of
the generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail"
program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 18:40:16 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Apparently, GNU-Mailutils is not in the Fedora distribution. There
are RPMs for it in SuSE, but I am reluctant to mix "foreign" RPMs
into my Fedora; I have seen that greate small messes in
dependencies. And I really don't like to compile from sources.

Maybe you should switch to a more comprehensive distro?

<https://packages.debian.org/trixie/mailutils>

And what?s with this reluctance to compile from source, anyway? It?s
part of the bread and butter of running any Linux distro.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 18:10:11 -0000 (UTC) Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de
mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need
to percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de>
wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email
client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works
with IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more
than 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of the generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail" program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

"mh
A local mailbox in the MH format. User and pass are not used. Host-or- file-name denotes the name of MH folder, e.g., mh://Mail/inbox."

see http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/software/emacs/manual/html_node/Movemail.html

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2 Jan 2026 07:43:14 +1000 Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

movemail -v imaps://no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de mh:///home/[user]/Mail

If you have special characters like '@' in the username, you may need to >>> percent-encode them, eg. "%40".

https://www.mailutils.org/wiki/Fetching_Mail_with_Movemail

On 2026-01-03, Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

I use MH format for storing the mail, check what format/s your email
client understands and change "mh://" to suit.

https://www.mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Local-Mailboxes.html

I actually use POP to get mail using movemail myself, but it works with
IMAP too.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than >> 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

What is this "mh:" in a URL? Never saw that before. Is that part of
the generic URL specification? Or is this a quirk of the "movemail"
program?

I guess I need to get out "man movemail" or see what's in
/usr/share/docs ...

Apparently, GNU-Mailutils is not in the Fedora distribution.
There are RPMs for it in SuSE, but I am reluctant to mix "foreign"
RPMs into my Fedora; I have seen that greate small messes in
dependencies. And I really don't like to compile from sources.

--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 03/01/2026 21:56, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

movemail seems to work, thanks!

Well, in the document mh was misspelled as
'mh://Mail' instead of
'mh:///Mail', so it took a while until I got it to work.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than
1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

I think you have to run a separate movemail command for each
folder (and pointing to each destination folder). But you could put
them in a script and have it add the password or set it in
~/.mu-tickets so you don't have to enter it manually multiple
times.

..and use & to background each folder transfer to spawn many shells to
move it sorta concurrently...


--
?People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them,
and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them. Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one?s
agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of
one?s suitability to be taken seriously.?

Paul Krugman


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 21:10:32 +0100 Marco Moock wrote:

On 01.01.2026 20:19 Uhr Markus Robert Kessler wrote:

So, I'd like to mirror them via imapsync to a local instance of some
imap server, and then pack them together as a tgz archive.

I use Cyrus and like it.
It saves the mail as text files. The metadata information (folder permissions, read status etc.) is saved in local databases.

Is there a sample configuration out, to not having to start from scratch
by "trial and error"?

Thank you!

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 03/01/2026 21:56, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

movemail seems to work, thanks!

Well, in the document mh was misspelled as
'mh://Mail' instead of
'mh:///Mail', so it took a while until I got it to work.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than >>> 1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

I think you have to run a separate movemail command for each
folder (and pointing to each destination folder). But you could put
them in a script and have it add the password or set it in
~/.mu-tickets so you don't have to enter it manually multiple
times.

..and use & to background each folder transfer to spawn many shells to
move it sorta concurrently...

Maybe, but it might also get you blocked for too many connections
to the IMAP server.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Markus Robert Kessler <no_reply@dipl-ing-kessler.de> wrote:

movemail seems to work, thanks!

Well, in the document mh was misspelled as
'mh://Mail' instead of
'mh:///Mail', so it took a while until I got it to work.

Anyway, is there an option to automatically transmit content of more than
1 folder, i.e. inbox, draft and sent... at once?

I think you have to run a separate movemail command for each
folder (and pointing to each destination folder). But you could put
them in a script and have it add the password or set it in
~/.mu-tickets so you don't have to enter it manually multiple
times.


--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)