Mailcow keeps deleting mails

Jxstin1337

Hello Community,

i’ve been using mailcow as a most-likely secondary mailservice beside gmail for over a year now.
This year i want to swap over using mailcow as my primary mail service for personal and business concerns but there is the following big problem: Mailcow keeps deleting mails out of my inbox like randomly. For example if i have between 200-300 mails in a mailbox and receive 15 new today, mailcow starts deleting the oldest 10-20. I already tried to handle this configuration-wise or by the commands shown at this mailcow help site: https://docs.mailcow.email/en/manual-guides/Dovecot/u_e-dovecot-expunge/ but nothing seems to really work. Mailcow has already deleted some really important mails over the past months. The given storage is not even 1% in use by any mailbox so i don’t know what to try out anymore to set the limit like 1000x higher.

Help is appreciated! 🙂

esackbauer

Could you please be more specific what you have done with expunge?
Was it configured with a job scheduler all the time?
Why are you running something that deletes mails?
Was it really mailcow that deleted something, or was it due to a setting in client software?

Jxstin1337

esackbauer

I haven’t configured it with a job scheduler. I’ve just set the deletion time of all mails to 5 years with docker compose exec dovecot-mailcow doveadm expunge -A mailbox % before 5y.

I wanted to stop mail deletion by this command. I’ve encountered the problem the first time in 2021 testing mailcow. I just install it, configure domains, 2 factor, SSL, DNS and create mailboxes and then start using. My mailboxes are connected in Outlook via Exchange Login on my Computer and via IMAP in Gmail on my mobile device. I didn’t configured anything by myself to set a maximum of mails or to force deleting them.

esackbauer

It seems you haven’t understood how expunge works. It doesnt set the “deletion time” of all mails to 5 years. It simply deletes mails that are older than 5 years. And only each time the expunge command is executed.

Configured in Outlook “via Exchange login”? Do you mean ActiveSync?
Are the mails also gone in SOGo Webmail?

Most of the time these kind of things happen if people fiddle around with settings that they do not understand…

Jxstin1337

esackbauer

I’ve got your point. So, I just misunderstood the expunge command, my bad.

The attached picture shows what is meant with “Email connect via Exchange” in Gmail and Outlook.

In SOGo the mails disappeared as well, yes. There are currently 340 mails in my primary mail inbox starting at 07.07.2023 but last week there were mails until 11.06.2023 so another month is gone over the past 5-6 days.

The storage usage is 0.24% of 10gb in use atm.

esackbauer

Most likely the reason is then not to be found within mailcow.
Is your mailcow mailbox configured within gmail? Or the other way? Any IMAP Sync jobs running?

Jxstin1337

esackbauer

No, I don’t have IMAP jobs running.
Yes, it’s “configured” in Gmail but there is nothing clearing the mails. It’s only configured to work properly and synchronize the Mails from the server every 5 Minutes

kimdre

Can you check if the mails in the affected time range are also gone when you check the Maildir directory of the dovecot container?

Jxstin1337

kimdre

Hey kim, sure. In dovecot cur folder, there are only files that lasts to the beginning of July this year. Sadly, nothing to see from before..