Recovering emails from "dead" server
I have a Linix server that won't boot. I've patched in a live CD and mounted the original HDDs so I can browse the files using SSH.
I am trying to find where all my customer emails are stored so that I can (hopefully) copy them off this "dead" server onto a new server which is also running cPanel and Dovecot.
Does anyone know where Dovecot stores emails for each email account when it runs under cPanel?
I can see a directory called /home/<cpanel username>/mail/<domain name>/<mail username>
(I've used <xxxxx> in place of the actual text to obviscate the actual user information).
If I navigate to that directory I can see lots of interesting sub directories e.g. cur, new and tmp plus some files such as:
dovecot.index.cache, dovecote.index, dovecote-uidlist
But then I'm stumped. I was hoping to find a big fat directory that contained all the mail files.
Is anyone able to tell me what I need to copy across to get all the old emails off the "dead" server onto the new one?
Thank you.
You found the right thing :)
15 years ago yes, it was a file but people wasn't sending mpeg4 on mail :)
On 10/29/19 8:29 PM, Mark | Small World Systems via dovecot wrote:
I have a Linix server that won't boot. I've patched in a live CD and mounted the original HDDs so I can browse the files using SSH.
I am trying to find where all my customer emails are stored so that I can (hopefully) copy them off this "dead" server onto a new server which is also running cPanel and Dovecot.
Does anyone know where Dovecot stores emails for each email account when it runs under cPanel?
I can see a directory called /home/<cpanel username>/mail/<domain name>/<mail username>
(I've used <xxxxx> in place of the actual text to obviscate the actual user information).
If I navigate to that directory I can see lots of interesting sub directories e.g. cur, new and tmp plus some files such as:
dovecot.index.cache, dovecote.index, dovecote-uidlist
But then I'm stumped. I was hoping to find a big fat directory that contained all the mail files.
Is anyone able to tell me what I need to copy across to get all the old emails off the "dead" server onto the new one?
Thank you.
On 29/10/2019 20:29 Mark | Small World Systems via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
I have a Linix server that won't boot. I've patched in a live CD and mounted the original HDDs so I can browse the files using SSH. I am trying to find where all my customer emails are stored so that I can (hopefully) copy them off this "dead" server onto a new server which is also running cPanel and Dovecot. Does anyone know where Dovecot stores emails for each email account when it runs under cPanel? I can see a directory called /home/<cpanel username>/mail/<domain name>/<mail username> (I've used <xxxxx> in place of the actual text to obviscate the actual user information). If I navigate to that directory I can see lots of interesting sub directories e.g. cur, new and tmp plus some files such as: dovecot.index.cache, dovecote.index, dovecote-uidlist But then I'm stumped. I was hoping to find a big fat directory that contained all the mail files. Is anyone able to tell me what I need to copy across to get all the old emails off the "dead" server onto the new one? Thank you.
Hi, you can copy the directory structure "as-is" to new dovecot. The format you are looking is called 'maildir++' format, and is supported by dovecot out of the box. The actual mails are under new and cur directories.
Just configure dovecot
mail_home=/home/cpanel/%Ld/%Lu mail_location=maildir:~/ mail_gid=cpanel mail_uid=cpanel
replace cpanel with actual username.... for the rest of the config, you can start with https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/quick_configuration/
Aki
participants (3)
-
Aki Tuomi
-
Mark | Small World Systems
-
MIhai Badici