Backup GMail (or other IMAP) accounts to disk

• Source Code
• API documentation
• Rubygem
• Continuous Integration

$ gem install 'imap-backup'

For a full list, run

For more information about a command, run

$ imap-backup help COMMAND

In order to do backups, you need to add accounts via a menu-driven command
line program:

Run:

GMail

To use imap-backup with GMail, you will need to enable ‘App passwords’ on your account.

Folders

By default, all folders are backed-up. You can override this by choosing
specific folders.

Configuration file

setup creates the file ~/.imap-backup/config.json

E.g.:

{
  "accounts": [
    {
      "username": "my.user@gmail.com",
      "password": "secret",
      "local_path": "/path/to/backup/root",
      "folders":
        [
          {"name": "[Gmail]/All Mail"},
          {"name": "my_folder"}
        ]
    }
  ]
}

It connects to GMail by default, but you can also specify a server:

{
  "accounts": [
    {
      "username": "my.user@gmail.com",
      "password": "secret",
      "server": "my.imap.example.com",
      "local_path": "/path/to/backup/root",
      "folders":
        [
          {"name": "[Gmail]/All Mail"},
          {"name": "my_folder"}
        ]
    }
  ]
}

Connection options

You can override the parameters passed to Net::IMAP with connection_options.

Specifically, if you are using a self-signed certificate and get SSL errors, e.g.
certificate verify failed, you can choose to not verify the TLS connection:

{
  "accounts": [
    {
      "username": "my.user@gmail.com",
      "password": "secret",
      "server": "my.imap.example.com",
      "local_path": "/path/to/backup/root",
      "folders": [
        {"name": "[Gmail]/All Mail"},
        {"name": "my_folder"}
      ],
      "connection_options": {
        "ssl": {"verify_mode": 0},
        "port": 993
      }
    }
  ]
}

Note that email usernames and passwords are held in plain text
in the configuration file.

The directory ~/.imap-backup, the configuration file and all backup
directories have their access permissions set to only allow access
by your user. This is not done on Windows – see below.

Windows

Due to the complexity of managing permissions on Windows,
directory and file access permissions are not set explicity.

A pull request that implements permissions management on Windows
would be welcome!

Manually, from the command line:

Alternatively, add it to your crontab.

Each folder is saved to an mbox file.
Alongside each mbox is a file with extension ‘.imap’, which lists the source IMAP
UIDs to allow a full restore.

There a various commands for viewing local backup status.

To view the list, use

If you have problems:

1. ensure that you have the latest release,
2. turn on debugging output:

{
  "accounts":
  [
    ...
  ],
  "debug": true
}

All missing messages are pushed to the IMAP server.
Existing messages are left unchanged.

This functionality requires that the IMAP server supports the UIDPLUS
extension to IMAP4.

List IMAP folders:

Get statistics of emails to download per folder:

• Secure – use a local file protected by permissions
• Restartable – calculate start point based on already downloaded messages
• Standalone – do not rely on