Moving from mercury mail server to Direct Admin

B

Base2121

New member
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
3
Hi there,

I currently have a Mercury mail installation with approximately 500 email addresses added into the system.

About 5% are IMAP and the rest are POP3 based mail accounts.

I highly doubt that any of you are familiar with Mercury mail as it's very old; however all you need to know is that it stores it's emails in a flat file format, and this flat file includes all the information including headers, received time, incoming mail server & the body of the email.

Basically I want to know how Direct Admin or the programs that it uses stores it's mail, and if it's possible to import Mercury's email into Directadmin/dovecote.


I am really hoping that there is a user on the DirectAdmin forums who has experience with Mercury Mail Transport Server, however I would be surprised if they do.

I have heard that emails are stored in a MySQL (or similar) database, is this true?

Any help would be brilliant!

Thanks,

Thomas Gray
Inca Europe Ltd
 
Memories out of the past :).

For those who are too young to remember, Mercury Mail is the MTA written by the same gent who wrote Pegasus, an early Windows based MUA.

MTA = Mail Transport Agent (mail server, for example exim, but in the case of Mercury mail also includes a delivery agent [for example, Dovecot]).

MUA = Mail User Agent, for example, Outlook Express.

To give you an idea of how old Mercury Mail is, it was written for not only Windows but also for the original Novell Netware network operating system. Remember that :)?

Now to answer the question:

If the file format is standard mbox (I cannot find that information), then it can be converted, but the steps are a bit too complex to explain in a forum post.

Since DirectAdmin has two different types of email addresses (server uses and virtual email addresses for domains) you'd have to:

1) set up DirectAdmin to use mbox rather than Dovecot/Maildir.

2) set up your users (domains) and email addresses.

3) manually import the mailbox files to the correct locations, and give them the right ownership and permissions.

4) run the DirectAdmin Dovecot conversion routines (you can find them in these forums and in the DirectAdmin Knowledgebase.

If the files are NOT in standard mbox format, then it all depends on how easily they can be converted to standard mbox format.

We can most likely do this conversion as a commercial service, but I don't know how much it would cost; email me for more information.

Out of curiosity: do you run it on Windows or on Netware?

Jeff
 
Oh thank you!

I do love it when I get a response like that :D

Windows, SE2003.. We have used the same mail server for 8 years, and only had to fix it once. But it is finally time for a change.

I will have a look into the mbox format, I will also ask the previous engineer to me (who maintained mercury) about what format they are stored in.

Again thanks for the response, I will have a gander about and see what I can find out, and should I need it I may just email you for a quote..

Cheers!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top