DOVEADM-DUMP(1) Dovecot DOVEADM-DUMP(1)
NAME
doveadm-dump - Dump the content of Dovecot's binary mailbox index/log
SYNOPSIS
doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] dump [-t type] path [type-specific args]
DESCRIPTION
Dovecot uses several binary index and log files in order to improve per-
formance for accessing mails. For some mailbox formats, such as sdbox
and mdbox, the index files are part of the format itself. For details
about index files, see [[link,design_index_format_main].
doveadm dump is used to show the contents of those mailbox index/log
files, in human readable format. This is mainly useful for Dovecot de-
velopers when debugging some problem.
GLOBAL OPTIONS
Global doveadm(1)
-D
Enables verbosity and debug messages.
-O
Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_stor-
age_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be over-
ridden with
-k
Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment
setting.
-v
Enables verbosity, including progress counter.
-i instance-name
If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on
this instance name.
See instance_name setting for more information.
-c config-file
Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first
reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dove-
cot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance
running compatible version.
-o setting=value
Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override mul-
tiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.
OPTIONS
-t type
was omitted, doveadm(1) tries to detect the type of
type can be:
dbox : => m.n (sdbox or mdbox mailbox file)
fts-expunge-log : Dump the list of expunged mails in dovecot-ex-
punges.log.
fts-flatcurve : Dump the keywords indexed in fts-flatcurve indexes
directory and their frequencies.
imap-compress : Decompress an IMAP traffic log, which contains data
compressed using the IMAP COMPRESSION extension.
dcrypt-file : Dump metadata of a dcrypt encrypted file.
type-specific args
private_key=/path : to decrypt file contents.
password=secret : to decrypt private key.
dcrypt-key : Dump metadata of a dcrypt key.
type-specific args
private_key=/path
to decrypt file contents.
password=secret
to decrypt private key.
dump=pem|dovecot|jwk
to specify format to dump in.
index : => dovecot.index, dovecot.map.index
type-specific args
uid=number : Dump only message with UID
log : => dovecot.index.log, dovecot.map.index.log
mailboxlog : => dovecot.mailbox.log
thread : => dovecot.index.thread
ARGUMENTS
path
The path to the corresponding dbox storage, index or log file. If
only a directory is specified, doveadm tries to detect the type of
files under it and dumps them.
EXAMPLE
Look at the contents of a mailbox's index:
doveadm dump ~/Maildir/.work/
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List
⟨dovecot@dovecot.org⟩. Information about reporting bugs is available at:
https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html
SEE ALSO
doveadm(1)
78ffb79 March 2025 DOVEADM-DUMP(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 05:44:52 CET 2025.