How to restore missing emails from a backup within the command line

Introduction

There may be times when you need to restore a single email account from a backup instead of the entire account. This can be accomplished from the command line.

Procedure

Please note that in the following examples, "$username," "$emailusername," and "$domain.tld" must be replaced with the cPanel account's username, the email account's username, and the account's domain name, respectively.

1. Log into the cPanel user's account.
2. Ensure that the target email account exists.
3. Access the server's command line as the 'root' user via SSH or "Terminal" in WHM.
4. Extract the contents of the backup for the account.

   tar -xf /path/to/backup/location/$username.tar.gz -C /path/to/extraction/folder/

   Please note that "/path/to/backup/location/" and "/path/to/extraction/folder/" must be replaced with the path to the backup location and the path to the extraction folder.
5. Copy the email account's files to the email account's Inbox under the cPanel account.

   cp /path/to/extraction/folder/$username/homedir/mail/$domain.tld/$emailusername/cur/* /home/$username/mail/$domain.tld/$emailusername/cur/

   Please note that if you wish to restore all emails, you must copy all the mail directories (cur, new, .spam, .Sent, .Trash, etc.).
6. Change the ownership of the mail files.

   find /home/$username/mail/$domain.tld/$emailusername/ ! -user $username -exec chown $username. {} \;

Additional resources

How to manually extract individual files from a cPanel backup with the tar utility