What software to move existing mail off a current pop server to my new server
 

Hi All

I'm very new to linux so please assume I know nothing about linux. Have installed debian onto a server and vhcs and using that for the mail, opened ports for smtp and pop3 to the server as I want to use it as a mail server for my domain, lets call it mydomain.com

Three mailboxes all with mail sitting in them

user1@mydomain.com
user2@mydomain.com
user3@mydomain.com

currently at an ISP on pop server pop.mydomain.com

Have created the same email accounts in vhcs

Now I know I could download all email to an email client such as thunderbird but user2 and user3 have always used webmail and want to stay with webmail.

How can I, or what software would I use to grab all the email from the current pop mailboxes and transfer them to the new pop mailboxes before I move the domains MX records to the new server? I guess I'm looking for something similar to EFS, but this is a MS Windows only program it seems.

I hope this is clear :)

Many Thanks

I think fetchmail will help you.
Fetchmail can download all e-mails from a POP/IMAP account from Internet to the local mail spool in your new server.

You can put several accounts in a single configuration file, and run the program as root (the most commum usage of fetchmail is to run at an user's basis; each user has your own configuration file, and fetchmail is started when each user logs in in the system).

Here, at my site, I run only a single instance of fetchmail to download e-mail for all my users in a internal server. Then, my users download the e-mail for that local server, not from ISP, because they don't have access to the internet (internal policy). Works like a charm.

There are advantages using this schema: With a single point system, I can filter the user's e-mail, block virus and dangerous attachments, backup the user's mailbox, inspect users activities in mail system to make sure the company resources are not been used for other purposes, I can swicth/replace the user computer without losing any e-mails (the mail-client, MS outlook, is configured to leave messages at the server) etc.

Fetchmail have it issues
The dates of the e-mails located at the ISP get changed to current date on fetch
(At least clients like Outlook/Outlook Express have issues)

When I migrated mail server the last time I used this excelent Perl script:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/

As I remember it, it supports POP3 as well

Set it up on a box not running the source or host mail server to avoid leaving the scripts after the completed transfer