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Mail Migration

After a successful migration of all LEPP users from local mail accounts to Exchange (in part, when CU increased their mailbox limit from 300MB to 50GB) in 2010, CLASSE is finally planning on shutting down our legacy local mail storage services. This includes any mail stored on LNX120, LNS61/62, and LNSCU5 (also known as IMAP.LEPP.CORNELL.EDU). This page includes instructions for migrating any local CLASSE mail to exchange.

Option 1: Do Nothing: abandon all legacy mail

Most likely, your legacy LEPP Mailboxes are empty or contain no useful information. If you haven't been monitoring them or didn't know they existed, it should be safe to do nothing. All of our old mail is backed up to tape, so if you ever realize you missed something it can be restored as needed. (However, mail left on LNS61 is not likely to be recoverable after November 1, 2016.)

Option 2: Self Service Migration

Anyone who desires, can manually migrate their mail as follows.

Note: the Office 365 mail service used by Cornell has a maximum message size of 25MB, so you will need to exclude messages larger than 25MB when migrating your mail. In addition, CU has a maximum mailbox size of 50GB.

imapsync

Although drag-and-drop will generally work, we highly recommend the usage of the linux imapsync utility. This is the fastest and most reliable method we've found, and gives a clear log of what was copied and any errors, the ability to exclude specific messages and folders, etc.

  1. Make sure all mail sent to "lepp_username@mail.lepp.cornell.edu" (lnscu5) is forwarded by following the instructions at EmailForwarding
  2. Make sure all mail sent to "lepp_username@lepp.cornell.edu" (lns61) is forwarded by following the instructions at EmailForwarding
  3. Create a new folder in your Exchange account for the legacy mail. For example, legacy/lnx120, legacy/lns61, and legacy/lnscu5.
  4. Create a protected file that contains the password for your legacy account, and a second file for the password of your CU account. For example, ~/passfile_lnx120 (LEPP Interactive password), ~/passfile_lns61 (LEPP VMS password), ~/passfile_lnscu5 (LEPP Network password) and ~/passfile_CU (Cornell netid password).
  5. Make sure only you can read these files by executing
    chmod go-rwx ~/passfile*
  6. Login to lnx201 (or any CLASSE Linux box), and use the imapsync utility to copy your mail. In the following example commands, replace ${USER} as necessary. imapsync is very flexible and powerful, so please see man imapsync and imapsync --help for the full list of options to exclude specific folders or messages, etc.
    • Copy from LNX120
       imapsync --host1 lnx120.lepp.cornell.edu --port1 993 --ssl1 --user1 ${USER} --passfile1 ~/passfile_lnx120 --host2 imap.cornell.edu --port2 993 --ssl2 --user2 ${USER}@cornell.edu --passfile2 ~/passfile_CU --prefix1 "INBOX." --prefix2 "legacy/lnx120/" --errorsmax 10000000 > /tmp/imapsync_${USER}_lnx120.log 2>&1
    • Copy from LNS61
      imapsync --host1 lns61.lepp.cornell.edu --port1 143 --user1 ${USER} --passfile1 ~/passfile_lns61 --host2 imap.cornell.edu --port2 993 --ssl2 --user2 ${USER}@cornell.edu --passfile2 ~/passfile_CU --prefix2 "legacy/lns61/" --errorsmax 10000000 > /tmp/imapsync_${USER}_lns61.log 2>&1
    • Copy from LNSCU5
       imapsync --host1 imap.lepp.cornell.edu --port1 993 --ssl1 --user1 ${USER} --passfile1 ~/passfile_lnscu5 --host2 imap.cornell.edu --port2 993 --ssl2 --user2 ${USER}@cornell.edu --passfile2 ~/passfile_CU --prefix2 "legacy/lnscu5/" --errorsmax 10000000 > /tmp/imapsync_${USER}_lnscu5.log 2>&1
  7. Watch the logfile for progress and any errors. If the sync quits for any reason, or you just want to make sure everything was copied over, the above commands can be executed multiple times and only mail that doesn't already exist on "host2" will be copied over.
  8. Hint:
    1. Run one of the three "imapsync" commands listed just above. (After the first iteration of this command, use command recall (up-arrow) )
    2. Type the following command (substitute your username for ${USER} and lnx120, lns61 or lnscu5 for ${COMPUTER}):
      more /tmp/imapsync_${USER}_${COMPUTER}.log | grep "Err " >> errors.txt
      (After the first iteration of this command, use command recall (up-arrow) )
    3. The command in the previous step will append (note the double ">>") a list of emails that could not be copied to errors.txt
      Type the command:
      more errors.txt
      and note the number of errors reported (After the first iteration of this command, use command recall (up-arrow) )
    4. If you don't have the same number of errors twice in a row, go back to step 1 just above
    5. If you do have the same number of errors twice in a row, proceed to the next step
    6. Type the following command (substitute your username for ${USER} and lnx120, lns61 or lnscu5 for ${COMPUTER}):
      more /tmp/imapsync_${USER}_${COMPUTER}.log | grep "Err " > errors.txt
      (note the single > to overwrite errors.txt for this step instead of the double >> to append to errors.txt as in step 2)
    7. ~/errors.txt will have a list of mail messages that imapsync will not be able to copy - you can go through the list to see if there are any messages you can try to recover by other means.

Drag and Drop

If you already have your email client setup to monitor both LEPP and Cornell mail accounts, in some cases drag and drop will work just fine.

  1. Make sure all mail sent to "lepp_username@mail.lepp.cornell.edu" (lnscu5) is forwarded by following the instructions at EmailForwarding
  2. Make sure all mail sent to "lepp_username@lepp.cornell.edu" (lns61) is forwarded by following the instructions at EmailForwarding
  3. Create a new folder in your Exchange account for the legacy mail. For example, legacy/lnx120, legacy/lns61, and legacy/lnscu5.
  4. Highlight all top-level folders and messages in your legacy mail account, and drag and drop to the desired folder in your Exchange account.

Option 3: Assisted Migration

If you would like the CLASSE IT Group to assist in the migration of your mail, please email service-classe@cornell.edu. We can assist in locating any mail you have stored on our legacy servers, and migrating it to the destination of your choice.
Topic revision: r7 - 09 Oct 2015, MichaelRoman
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