Am 10.04.2013 13:58, schrieb HylkeB:

If it is a client issue, than thats fine.

it is

But then i wonder what the vmail/domain.com/email_name/Maildir/cur folder is for, because in there i can find the inbox of the last 14 days. Cant my emails be stored there for a longer (or infinite) time? It is not really an issue that i need to save my emails locally, but when i log in on a webclient to view emails, i dont see all emails, and when i installed my new computer a few weeks ago, i did also not have all my emails (since they are no longer on the server)

normally POP3 is configured to delete received messages after some days/weeks and it is not smart to disable this becuase if you have your local mailarchive and get a new computer you will receive ALL your mails again

Awnsering to an earlier reply: I am using pop3, not imap. Is it wise to change to imap? or shouldnt i bother that not all emails are stored on the server?

nobody can answer this for you

And how do i change pop3 to imap?

you can't you have to create a new mail-account and select IMAP in your client

and lastly, when i were to change from pop3 to imap, how big are the changes that i mess up completely and i break the email server (which is a major problem)

depends on the storage of your server, on teh amount of mails, on the size of mails

these are all questions that NOBODY can answer for you maybe the admin of your mailserver can, hopefully you are not

normally POP3 is configured to delete received messages after some days/weeks and it is not smart to disable this becuase if you have your local mailarchive and get a new computer you will receive ALL your mails again

Well, receiving ALL mails again, might not be too handy, but 14 days is a quite short time. So can i change the pop3 settings so old emails are stored for e.g. 3 months instead of 14 days? And just curious, where can i disable the configuration that pop3 deletes received messages?

these are all questions that NOBODY can answer for you maybe the admin of your mailserver can, hopefully you are not

Well I am the admin for now, but when business gets more successful i might hire someone who can set up the email server the right way; someone who knows what he is doing. But for now, as long as everything works its good.

-- View this message in context: http://dovecot.2317879.n4.nabble.com/My-old-email-is-not-stored-tp41478p4149... Sent from the Dovecot mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 2013-04-10 8:22 AM, HylkeB hylke@movinsoftware.nl wrote:

Well, receiving ALL mails again, might not be too handy, but 14 days is a quite short time. So can i change the pop3 settings so old emails are stored for e.g. 3 months instead of 14 days? And just curious, where can i disable the configuration that pop3 deletes received messages?

As has already been explained to you, these POP3 settings are CLIENT SPECIFIC. There is nothing that you can set on the SERVER to enforce it. You can have one client set to leave them on the server for as long as you want, and the second you set up your account as POP on another device and it connects, bam, all your messages are gone (unless you ALWAYS remember to change the setting BEFORE you ever connect to the account).

Again - just switch to IMAP and be done with it.

--

Best regards,

Charles

On 2013-04-11 5:00 AM, HylkeB hylke@movinsoftware.nl wrote:

I see now, took some time for me to sink in. Is there any way on the server to disable the pop3 protocol, so all email users cant accidently use pop3 and delete all their old emails?

I suppose i would have to do something like the following on the server: protocol pop3 {

• open dovecot.conf
• change the first line (currently its protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s), and remove pop3 and pop3s
• maybe delete/change something in this piece of code in dovecot.conf:

 pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv

}

• restart dovecot (and maybe some other applications?)

So is this the right way to disable the pop3 protocol in my mail server? I dont want to crash the mail server by disabling pop3.

Yes, although I'm pretty sure you don't need to comment out the 'protocol pop3... section stuff as long as you disable the protocol itself (protocols = ...'). What other apps would you have to restart? Dovecot is the mail server.

Before you do this, I'd inform/warn everyone, provide instructions for setting up their account as IMAP and wait until they have all done so, then tell them they can manually copy their email back to the server via their new IMAP account. This (waiting on everyone to confirm they have changed over) may not be practical though, depending on how many users you have.

And you won't crash the server, but anyone still trying to connect using POP will start complaining loudly... ;)

And about me being the admin of the mailserver, thanks to you guys im going to search for a company that can maintain the server stuff for me (hiring someone is too expensive for now), for they have more experience in servers and know what to do.

I would strongly recommend Timo's new company. His rates are very reasonable, and who better to admin your server than a company run by the man himself? That is what we did. He converted our old courier-imap server in place (about 350GB of mail for about 70 users) in a very short period of time, and none of our users even noticed.

http://www.dovecot.fi/

Do you have any tips about what is important knowledge that an external company must have to properly maintain my server system? (mail server, backup, security etc)

Way too broad of a subject... either you know, or you don't, and if you don't, it is up to you to decide if you want to spend the time and effort to learn it yourself (but what about securing things while you're learning?), or pay someone else to do it. And security is an entirely separate subject all its own.

I consider myself to be reasonably competent (far from expert), but I know my own limitations and feel more comfortable having paid support from Timo's company...

I'm also very curious about the upcoming (commercial) Object Storage support that will be available in 2.2 for real time cloud backup and to offload older emails from our local server... but that is another email...

--

Best regards,

Charles