[Dovecot] Dovecot's maildir format / is rm safe

[Timo Sirainen]

On 26.10.2010, at 21.05, ian at comtek.co.uk wrote:

> Is it considered 'safe' to delete directly from a dovecot Maildir? I mean things of the form:
> 
>   rm Maildir/cur/1288062016.M581217P9422.alpha,S=1873,W=1900:2,S

Yes.

> Specifically I'm wondering what happens with:
>   dovecot.index
>   dovecot.index.cache
>   dovecot.index.log
>   dovecot-uidlist
> 
> Since (http://wiki.dovecot.org/IndexFiles) tells me these files index each message is there a chance of Dovecot breaking badly if it can't find them?

No.

> Is it intelligent enough to automatically update the above files when it finds a missing message file?

Yes.

> Would simply deleting the 4 files be appropriate?

Don't do that. And if you ever do decide to delete any dovecot.index* files, just don't delete dovecot-uidlist or the clients will have to redownload mails.