The Case of the Disappearing E-mail

(NOTE: The information contained in this troubleshooter applies only to accounts utilizing the SiteMadeEasy PlusMail control panel system.)

Each POP user receives a mailbox disk quota of 10 MB. When the quota is exceeded, any e-mail sent to that mailbox will be returned to the sender with a fatal error.

In order to keep mailboxes functioning, we have an automatic system process that periodically checks mailbox quotas. When it finds a mailbox that's over-quota, it archives the existing mail in a gzip file and places that archive in the /home directory of the domain. That effectively empties the mailbox and allows the mailbox to continue to receive mail.

It's important that POP users either 1) delete mail from webmail on a regular basis, and/or 2) use an e-mail client like Outlook or Eudora to download and remove the mail from the server. SquirrelMail is not designed to be used for permanent storage of e-mail.

Note that when mail is archived, the archive files consume disk space limited by your primary account disk quota. If mail archives are allowed to get out of control, you may find your main account over quota, which will cause a number of problems with your web site, control panel, site statistics, CGI processes, etc.

 
Reading Archived E-mail

Mail archives are stored in the home directory of the primary account (e.g., /home/mydomain, where "mydomain" is your domain name with the extension.) The archives will be named in this format: username.oldmail.date.gz (e.g.: bob.oldmail.20040225.gz -- instructions below will use this example.) Note that once a mailbox has been archived, it can only be viewed from SquirrelMail by the default account user (e.g., mydomain@mydomain.com).

To make this archive available for viewing:

1. Connect to your account via ssh, log in as the primary user (e.g., mydomain@mydomain.com)
    
   
2. Type the following at the command prompt:
   

   gunzip bob.oldmail.20040225.gz

3. then type

   mv bob.oldmail.20040225 /home/mydomain/mail/bob.oldmail.20040225

4. Log into your SquirrelMail interface (e.g., http://www.mydomain.com/webmail/) as the primary user (e.g., mydomain@mydomain.com).
    
   
5. Click on the "Folders" link and you should see a folder named "bob.oldmail.20040225" in the "Unsubscribe/Subscribe" section.
    
   
6. Highlight the "bob.oldmail.20040225" folder and click the Subscribe button
    
   
7. Click "refresh folder list" and the mail folder will appear at the bottom of the left navigation bar. Click on that folder to view the mail.