cur file in /imap/%DOMAIN_NAME%/%USERNAME%/Maildir/cur?

i have some users on my system that have very large mailbox's. When i go into the file manager i find that their space is being used in the following folder..

Does anyone know what this is, and more so, how to reduce it's size ? obviously deleting the contents go without saying, but i want to ensure that this is unneeded or what have you.

/imap/%DOMAIN_NAME%/%USERNAME%/Maildir/cur

Thanks,
Rob

You're using Maildir. When using Maildir each email is stored in it's own file.

Before being read, those emails are located in the:

/imap/%DOMAIN_NAME%/%USERNAME%/Maildir/new

directory. After they're read, they're either kept in:

/imap/%DOMAIN_NAME%/%USERNAME%/Maildir/cur

(if the user read them with IMAP, or the user's setting is to leave mail on the server) or deleted.

So if you delete the contents of that directory you'll be deleting all the email in that user's inbox that's already been read.

If you want to do that you should probably then delete these files:

/imap/%DOMAIN_NAME%/%USERNAME%/Maildir/dovecot*

so the next time the user logs in the indexes will be rebuilt properly.

Jeff

thanks for the explination jeff... it makes sense, now i can of course advise my users accordingly.