unix mboxes... now, using imap, it works as before (i can see this in procmail's mail.log) but cyrus seems to drop all the mails which it has already delivered before.
Yes, you just met that "duplicate delivery suppression" feature of your Cyrus lmtpd. The duplicate delivery database is purged every 3 days (see the appropriate process in your cyrus.conf). You can turn this suppression off if you want:
Put in your /etc/imapd.conf (or whereever you have your config fule):
duplicatesuppression: no
HTH, Pascal Gienger