Linux Commands and Scripts

How To Move vmail To Another Partition

In this article, we will see how to move vmail to another partition.

When the disk space of the partition / or /var/ gets full, it’s better to move /var/vmail to larger partition which has more free space. Most suitable director is /home.

So, let’s get started.

If you want to check free space of the all partition, you can use following command:

# df -h

First, check /var/vmail space using following command:

# du -hs /var/vmail

1. Stop postfix and dovecot service:

# systemctl stop postfix dovecot

2. Use rsync command to copy the vmail directory to new location

# rsync -av /var/vmail/ /home/vmail/

Note: above command will copy vmail to /home/vmail with all existing permissions.

3. Keep a backup of /var/vmail directory

# mv /var/vmail /var/vamil.orig.bak

4. Next, create a symlink to new location from old location

# ln -s /home/vmail /var/vmail

Symlink create a reference from new location to old location.

5. Now, start postfix and dovecot

# systemctl start postfix dovecot

That’s it. We have ran all necessary commands.

Send a test mail and if all works well, you can delete the /var/vmail.orig.bak directory to make the space available.

In this article, we have seen how to move vmail to another partition.

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