Moving notmucch between machines

Moving notmucch between machines

[Bart Bunting]

Hi everyone,

Sorry if this question has an obvious answer but I couldn't find it.

I am migrating from OSX to Linux and want to move my mail over.

I am unsure of the best way to approach the problem.

Is it possible to somehow export and re import tags or can I simply move the
maildir and notmuch indexes over and expect things to work?

I have previously tried and some how offlineimap got itself in a tangle
and redownloaded all messages.  This is nontrivial as I have about 50g
of mail and indexes.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.


Kind regards
Bart
-- 

Bart Bunting - URSYS

Re: Moving notmucch between machines

[Dan Čermák]

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Hi Bart,

Bart Bunting <bart@ursys.com.au> writes:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Sorry if this question has an obvious answer but I couldn't find it.
>
> I am migrating from OSX to Linux and want to move my mail over.
>
> I am unsure of the best way to approach the problem.
>
> Is it possible to somehow export and re import tags or can I simply move the
> maildir and notmuch indexes over and expect things to work?

You can "abuse" the nmbug script for that: it saves all your tags into a
git repository and allows you to later apply all the tags onto another
notmuch database. However, it requires a little bit of fiddling (as it
is actually intended as a bugtracker: https://notmuchmail.org/nmbug/) to
set up, as it expects the tags to exist in a certain branch.

I'd advise you to make a backup first and make a dry run before nuking
your old system.

>
> I have previously tried and some how offlineimap got itself in a tangle
> and redownloaded all messages.  This is nontrivial as I have about 50g
> of mail and indexes.

You can rsync all your maildirs, but without the ~/.offlineimap folder
it will lack the UUIDs of all your messages and will have to redownload
them. If you copy the ~/.offlineimap folder over too, then it should
work (fingers crossed).


Hope this helps,

Dan

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Re: Moving notmucch between machines

[David Bremner]

Dan Čermák <dan.cermak@posteo.net> writes:

> Hi Bart,
>
> Bart Bunting <bart@ursys.com.au> writes:
>
>> I am migrating from OSX to Linux and want to move my mail over.
>>
>> I am unsure of the best way to approach the problem.
>>
>> Is it possible to somehow export and re import tags or can I simply move the
>> maildir and notmuch indexes over and expect things to work?
>

notmuch dump and restore are intended for jobs like this (as well as for
backing up the database in a relatively compact form).

> You can "abuse" the nmbug script for that: it saves all your tags into a
> git repository and allows you to later apply all the tags onto another
> notmuch database.

FWIW, nmbug is just a wrapper around notmuch dump and restore.