How to backup an external IMAP account?

Amitz

Dear all,

I have an external IMAP account at 1&1 that I would like to backup daily to one or more of my Debian Linux backup servers. Is there any script out there that can do this for me? I would not only need the backup, but also an uncomplicated way to restore them afterwards.

Do you have any hint for me? That would be very much appreciated - Thanks in advance!

Kind regards
Amitz

rds100

When i was looking for this a few years ago i found two softwares that could do it - imapsync and imapcopy. I can't remember now which one worked and which one i used.

You need to have another imap account somewhere else and can copy everything from the first one to the second one. For restoring, do the same thing replacing the source and destination.

mpkossen

I've used offlineimap for this and it has worked very well. I've tested this with Gmail.

Nomad

I have used imapsync before for a similar task.
I used it to backup my Gmail acc to my postfix server in a way like:

screen -d -m -S sync imapsync --host1 imap.gmail.com --user1 [email protected] --password1 yourpassword -ssl1 --host2 mail.secondsite.com --user2 [email protected] --password2 secondaccpassword --exclude All Mail --exclude Folder1 --exclude OtherFolder

This was the command I used while I was transferring Google Apps > Postfix

Might help. The last time it made me struggle a bit afterall.

You can reverse the command and try it.
Cab run in crontab as well.

simonindia

@mpkossen said:
I've used offlineimap for this and it has worked very well. I've tested this with Gmail

+1 for Offline IMAP

zeitgeist

I've used imapsync on various occasions. +1

TheLinuxBug

imapsync is the answer here, I believe on debian it is now even a package.

apt-get install imapsync

Cheers!

Amitz

Guys, thank you all very much!
I will go through the suggestions and surely find a solution that fits - Again, thank you! :-)

heachhog

Thanks for the information, quite useful. Has anyone tried using the tools mentioned here with Gmail account that has two factor authentication enabled?

traceray

@heachhog said:
Thanks for the information, quite useful. Has anyone tried using the tools mentioned here with Gmail account that has two factor authentication enabled?

You have to generate and unique password for that type of app on Gmail

netomx

imapgrab is working great, i am testing it right now.

Amitz

imapsync did the job for my specific needs perfectly. Thank you again, folks! :-)
https://github.com/imapsync/imapsync