Email account usage different than "du" output

Symptoms

Attempting to determine the disk usage for an email account using du is greater than the usage reported within cPanel / Email Accounts

Cause

Checking an email account's disk usage via the command line using the du command line utility may often report more usage than what is seen in the cPanel interface. This is often because any email in the Trash directory is not reported as usage. Instead, this is counted under the section Other Usage inside of cPanel / Email Accounts.

Resolution

Use the cPanel interface to obtain the correct disk usage, or use the following API to get the usage as cPanel measures it:

1. Connect to your server using SSH as the root user.

2. Run the following uapi call:

   # uapi --user=cpaneluser Email get_disk_usage user=mailuser domain=domain.tld

3. Alternatively, you can use doveadm to check the quota:

   # doveadm quota get -u mailuser@domain.tld

Note: The above examples require that cpaneluser be replaced by the cPanel account username. mailuser is the email account name, and domain.tld is the domain the email is attached to.

Additional Information

API Documentation