Possible to convert only one mailbox to MAILDIR/MDBOX? (Instead of entire cpanel account)

electric

• May 29, 2020 13:38

Hello, I have a customer with several very large (+20gb) mailboxes in their cpanel account. They currently use mdbox mail format, and they want to change ONE mailbox to maildir format. (They don't want to change all the mailboxes.. just one. Is that possible? If it is, can they switch it back to mdbox format if needed later? Thanks! (They are having problems with the one mailbox, using mdbox method, getting very large for an unknown reason, and want to switch it to maildir, which does not have the problem. The problem is that the mailbox is around 2gb, and slowly grows to over 20gb throughout the day, and immediately shrinks back down to 2gb after "/scripts/dovecot_maintenance" runs. The problem doesn't seem to happen when using maildir method, but the customer wants to keep all other mailboxes in the account using mdbox.)

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  DennisMidjord

  • May 29, 2020 19:05

  We have the same issue with a single client. Their account usage for a single mail account is close to 40GB. I'd also like to know if it's possible to change for just a single email account (or cPanel account).

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  cPanelLauren

  • June 01, 2020 05:48

  You can't change this for one email account you can change it for one cPanel account but that's the limit. It would cause issues on the account as far as I am aware if different accounts were storing data differently. May I ask why they feel it would be problematic to change the entire cPanel account?

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  electric

  • June 01, 2020 15:47

  May I ask why they feel it would be problematic to change the entire cPanel account?

  
  This cpanel account has multiple mailboxes that have many thousands of emails. (One mailbox has over 125k emails, another has 83k emails, etc..) Using maildir method means there will be a *lot* of files created, which increases backup time, backup time, etc. The account is on a smaller VPS which does not have unlimited inodes or resources available. The problem is that one particular mailbox is ... showing a bug in mdbox or something. For example, this morning at 1:30am immediately after "/scripts/dovecot_maintenance" ran this mailbox was 2.3gb usage. Then 7 hours later it was at 24gb usage. (I am tracking the size of the mailbox's storage folder every minute.) This massive size increase occured while the customer was sleeping and only received 129 new emails during that time, the biggest email being 1mb. So something is screwy with that mailbox. Switching that mailbox to maildir method resolves the problem, as it seems to be a bug in mdbox.. but only for that particular mailbox.

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  cPanelLauren

  • June 01, 2020 18:56

  The problem is that one particular mailbox is ... showing a bug in mdbox or something. For example, this morning at 1:30am immediately after "/scripts/dovecot_maintenance" ran this mailbox was 2.3gb usage. Then 7 hours later it was at 24gb usage. (I am tracking the size of the mailbox's storage folder every minute.) This massive size increase occured while the customer was sleeping and only received 129 new emails during that time, the biggest email being 1mb. So something is screwy with that mailbox. Switching that mailbox to maildir method resolves the problem, as it seems to be a bug in mdbox.. but only for that particular mailbox.

  
  That is concerning and I can see why they'd want to switch it based on that. But rather than use maildir, I'd like to see if our analysts can identify the issue with that mailbox, if they can, hopefully that'd resolve your customer's concerns as well. Can you please open a ticket using the link in my signature? Once open please reply with the Ticket ID here so that we can update this thread with the resolution once the ticket is resolved. Thanks!

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  electric

  • June 01, 2020 23:51

  Once open please reply with the Ticket ID here so that we can update this thread with the resolution once the ticket is resolved.

  
  Ticket has been submitted. Your support request ID: 93493216

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  cPanelLauren

  • June 03, 2020 15:02

  Hi @electric I checked in on this today and found that a pretty thorough investigation has been done on the issue already and currently they're requesting that you change the password so that the email user's mail client does not have access to rule out the mail client causing this duplication.

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