IMAP Mailbox Synchronization

IMAP Mailbox Synchronization

How do you synchronize a mailbox between two remote servers? A small tool called Imapsync exists for this purpose!

To install it, nothing complicated:

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apt-get install imapsync

Next, let's create a folder in our home directory called .imapsync.

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mkdir ~/.imapsync

In this folder, we'll store the IMAP password for the account(s). The first file corresponds to the first server, and the second file to the second server:

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echo "password1" > ~/.imapsync/secret1
echo "password2" > ~/.imapsync/secret2

You can also use the same file if you use the same password (as in my case).

For security reasons, let's change the permissions of this file(s):

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chmod 600 ~/.imapsync/secret*

Then, we simply call the command with the appropriate arguments:

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imapsync --syncinternaldates --host1 fire --ssl1 --user1 deimos --passfile1 ~/.imapsync/secret --host2 burnin --ssl2 --user2 deimos --passfile2 ~/.imapsync/secret

The parameters in italics should be adapted according to your needs. Here are some brief explanations of the options:

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--syncinternaldates: fixes date issues with Eudora, Thunderbird...
--ssl1 and --ssl2: allows IMAP connections with SSL support. Remove these arguments if they don't apply to you.

Given the CPU load it generates, it's recommended to redefine the process priority. We can combine everything in a crontab entry to automate the process:

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0 */1 * * * nice -n +19 imapsync --syncinternaldates --host1 fire --ssl1 --user1 deimos --passfile1 ~/.imapsync/secret --host2 burnin --ssl2 --user2 deimos --passfile2 ~/.imapsync/secret

And that's it, we're all set!