Large amount of hidden folders within /home/user/mail directory

George_Fusioned

• January 10, 2020 08:37

Hello, I'm trying to do a bit of clean up in a client's account (multiple addon domains, each addon domain has a few email addresses), and I can see a large number of hidden folders inside the /home/[username]/mail/ directory, which refer to usernames of email accounts, for example: drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.cur drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-acl-list drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot_index_cache drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot_index_log drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidlist drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidvalidity drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidvalidity_51f62b77 drwxr-x--x 3 username username 4096 Nov 4 2017 domain.com drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.maildirsize drwxr-x--x 3 username username 4096 Nov 4 2017 otherdomain.com drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.tmp lrwxrwxrwx 1 username username 16 Jul 2 2013 .mail_user@domain_com -> domain.com/mail_user lrwxrwxrwx 1 username username 23 Jul 29 2013 .mail_user@otherdomain_com -> otherdomain.com/mail_user
What are all those hidden directories and can they be safely deleted? They appear to be empty folders, containing the default maildir structure (new, tmp, cur folders). I understand that as long as the /home/user/mail/domain.com/mail_user folders exist, everything should work fine. Other than .Sent, .Junk, .Draft, .Trash in the mail/ directory, there shouldn't be any other hidden directories under mail/ right? Thanks in advance, George

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  cPanelLauren

  • January 10, 2020 15:08

  Hello, The symlinks are normal: lrwxrwxrwx 1 username username 16 Jul 2 2013 .mail_user@domain_com -> domain.com/mail_user lrwxrwxrwx 1 username username 23 Jul 29 2013 .mail_user@otherdomain_com -> otherdomain.com/mail_user
  It's not normal for these to be formatted this way: drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.cur drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-acl-list drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot_index_cache drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot_index_log drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidlist drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidvalidity drwxr-x--x 5 username username 4096 Nov 28 16:45 .mail_user.dovecot-uidvalidity_51f62b77
  For example on my test server they're formatted as follows: -rw-r----- 1 user user 0 Jan 16 2019 dovecot-acl-list -rw-r----- 1 user user 400 Dec 5 12:09 dovecot.index -rw-r----- 1 user user 8.5M Dec 4 15:20 dovecot.index.cache -rw-r----- 1 user user 6.4M Dec 5 12:09 dovecot.index.log -rw-r----- 1 user user 1.1M Dec 4 15:19 dovecot.index.log.2 -rw-r----- 1 user user 2.0K Nov 13 15:40 dovecot.list.index -rw-r----- 1 user user 1.7K Dec 5 12:09 dovecot.list.index.log -rw-r----- 1 user user 48 Mar 12 2019 dovecot.mailbox.log -rw-r----- 1 user user 45 Dec 5 12:09 dovecot-quota -rw-r----- 1 user user 56 Dec 5 12:09 dovecot-uidlist -rw-r----- 1 user user 8 Apr 16 2019 dovecot-uidvalidity -r--r--r-- 1 user user 0 Jul 16 2018 dovecot-uidvalidity.5b4cf493
  (no hidden files and not appended with the user) Are you aware of changes that have been made to the mail directory here?

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  George_Fusioned

  • January 10, 2020 16:08

  I believe it's garbage from previous/multiple migrations between servers. The setup date of this account is 2008-09-02! What makes me wonder is why all those hidden folders have recent timestamps. I'm pretty sure they existed before that too. So, I grep'd the cPanel access log for Nov 28 16:45 and found the following POST requests at that exact date/time: POST /cpsessxxxxxxxxxx/execute/Personalization/get POST /cpsessxxxxxxxxxx/execute/ResourceUsage/get_usages POST /cpsessxxxxxxxxxx/execute/Email/list_pops_with_disk POST /cpsessxxxxxxxxxx/execute/Resellers/list_accounts
  Tthe folders are empty and I have backups anyway, so I'll go ahead and delete them.

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