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Chapter 1 Understanding Mail Service 15
Where Mail Is Stored
Mail is stored in an outgoing queue awaiting transfer to a remote server or in a local
mail store accessible by local mail users.
Outgoing Mail Location
By default, outgoing mail messages are stored in the following spool directory on the
startup disk in /var/spool/postx/.
This location is temporary, and the mail is stored until it’s transferred to the Internet.
These locations can be moved to any accessible volume if you create a symlink link to
the new location.
Incoming Mail Location
Mail service stores each message as a separate le in a mail folder for each user.
Incoming mail is stored on the startup disk in /var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail/GUID.
You can change the location of mail folders and indexes to another folder, disk, or disk
partition. You can even specify a shared volume on another server as the location of
the mail folder, although using a shared volume negatively aects performance.
For remotely mounted le systems, NFS isn’t recommended. The incoming mail
remains on the server until deleted by a Mail User Agent (MUA).
Mail storage can also be split across multiple partitions or stored on an Xsan
cluster. This can be done to scale Mail service or to facilitate data backup. For more
information see “Setting Up Mail Server Clustering with Xsan” on page 82.
You can change where mail is stored. For more information, see “Working with Mail
Service Data Storage” on page 79.