To dump / backup your IMAP Mail Folder to a local directory, there are some projects in the Ubuntu repositories:
looked for last changes on 2010-01-10
- imapcopy – pascal http://home.arcor.de/armin.diehl/imapcopy/imapcopy.html last change: 2006-04
- imapsync – perl http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/ last change: v1.286 2009-07
- offlineimap – python http://software.complete.org/software/projects/show/offlineimap last change in git repo: 2009-08
- syncmaildir – C and Lua/Shell http://syncmaildir.sourceforge.net/ last change: 2009-12
not yet in the repositories
more found on http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/README → SIMILAR SOFTWARES :
- imap_tools (in Perl) http://www.athensfbc.com/imap_tools
- UW IMAP toolkit: ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/
- imaprepl – Perl http://www.bl0rg.net/software
- larch – ruby transfer IMAP to IMAP (including GMail) http://github.com/rgrove/larch evolved from a script on http://wonko.com/article/554
mbsync
http://isync.sourceforge.net/
http://www.chrisstreeter.com/archive/2009/04/305/gmail-imap-backup-with-mbsync-on-ubuntu
imapbackup.py
latest version may be on http://tamale.net/imapbackup/ or on http://the.taoofmac.com/space/Projects/imapbackup
http://gist.github.com/273418
MboxDump.py
MboxDump http://wiki.e-shell.org/IMAPFolderBackupTool
http://gist.github.com/273410
The solution I took was offlineimap as it looked pretty mature to me and as development on the project continues.
I describe my setup of offlineimap here: <>
[...] possible alternatives: http://blog.philippklaus.de/2010/02/my-documented-search-for-free-software-for-imap-synchronisation/ [...]