Rebuild Dovecot Database

Rebuilding the Dovecot database indexes for a user, email account, or globally in order to resolve some issues related to Webmail clients. Possible issues include:

• Emails or folders may be missing from the email account
• Webmail is not displaying all emails
• Folders in Webmail give a server error
• Searching for emails in Webmail causes a server error

The mail logs may also show the following error:

Unexpected condition from IMAP server. Possible mailbox corruption error

Related Articles

Check Email in Webmail
Email Folders Missing in Webmail

Flush Database on cPanel account

1. Log into cPanel
2. Open the File Manager tool
3. Open the mail folder, located in the root folder
4. Open the domain.com folder
   REPLACE: domain.com with the domain of the email account with issues.
5. Open the account's folder
6. Rename the dovecot.index file
   NOTE: Dovecot will automatically rebuild the index the next time an email client connects to this account.
7. Using cPanel>Email Accounts>Check Email, reconnect to the account using Webmail to see if the issue persists

Rebuild Database on VPS or Dedicated

1. SSH into the server as root
2. To flush the dovecot database indexes for all accounts on a server run the following

   /scripts/remove_dovecot_index_files --all

3. To flush the dovecot database indexes for a single cPanel user run the following

   /scripts/remove_dovecot_index_files --user userna5

   REPLACE: userna5 with the cPanel user.