How to obtain emails directly from the server?

[blaszlo]

I have a quick question... There is a person in my office that had deleted an email sometime in April and he was asking me if I could recover it. I really have no idea where to start. I tried accessing it through webmail with no luck. Does anyone have a direction they can steer me in or is it permanently gone?

 

[chatwizrd]

Matters if you deleted it directly from the server or not. If it was retrieved with pop3 without the setting "Keep messages on server" set in the pop3 client then it is likely gone. If you used imap to retrieve it originally then you may still be able to find it. But if it is not in your webmail then it is likely gone.

Do you use dovecot or not on your server?

If you do you can check the mail in users home directory: /home/username/imap

If you do not have dovecot you can check: /var/spool/virtual

 

[blaszlo]

Okay then

Thank you for the info. I assumed that it was gone, but the guy in the office was hounding me. I made sure that on all of out oulooks that we stored the email on the server. Thanks again!

 

[nobaloney]

If you're storing email on the server you should be using Dovecot/Maildir, as otherwise the system will slow down dramatically as the mailboxes get huge.

However email stored with Dovecot/Maildir will count against the site user's quota, so you should keep your eye on that over time.

Jeff