In maildir format, you will find cur folder, it should contain all emails in inbox and you can open it unless it was compressed and if it was you can use doveadm to decompress it:-
e.g. :- doveadm fs get compress zstd:6:posix:prefix=/ "/mail/zakaria.website/hi@zakaria.website/cur/MESSAGEFILENAME"
I tested this on dovecot 2.3 and it works. To Timo and Aki, this failed on dovecot 2.4, it throws the following errors, it could be a bug in this release:- Debug: conn unix:/var/run/dovecot//stats-writer: Connecting Debug: conn unix:/var/run/dovecot//stats-writer (pid=32320,uid=0): Client connected (fd=5) Debug: conn unix:/var/run/dovecot//stats-writer (pid=32320,uid=0): Sending version handshake Error: module /usr/lib/dovecot/libfs_compress.so: dlsym(fs_compress_init) failed: /usr/lib/dovecot/libfs_compress.so: undefined symbol: fs_compress_init Error: module /usr/lib/dovecot/libfs_compress.so: dlsym(fs_compress_deinit) failed: /usr/lib/dovecot/libfs_compress.so: undefined symbol: fs_compress_deinit Fatal: Couldn't load required plugin /usr/lib/dovecot/libfs_compress.so: Module doesn't have init function
These are my relevant configuration, I placed them at top and bottom of the configuration file and it didnt make any difference:-
mail_plugins = mail_compress fs_compress fs_compress_write_method = zstd mail_compress_write_method = zstd compress_zstd_level = 10 fs_compress_read_plain_fallback = yes
With thanks.
On 2025-02-03 14:31, Zane B Stein via dovecot wrote:
My mail was hosted by a site that no longer handles email. I asked them if they could send me a file with all my emails in it and they said sure. I was thinking maybe I would get something I could import into Outlook such as a .pst or .ost file, or perhaps a .csv file.
What I received was a zipped file and when I opened it there were a bunch of folders with emails in them in some strange format (each one with a . in front of it, such as .NEWMAIL ), plus a bunch of files along with the folders such as dovecat.index, dovecatindex.cache, dovecot.index.log2, dovecot.list.inex, divecot.mailbox and others with a dovecot prefix, plus one called maildirsize and one called subscriptions.
I have no idea how to read the emails in this format.
Can someone tell me how I can access the emails in this set of files? Feel free to ask if you need more information before you can answer.
If I need a special program to read the files, is there an easy one available that is user friendly for someone with no experience with dovecot files?
Thank you. Zane B Stein
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