Disabling an user does delete all emails?

[Juan Inostroza]

Hello everyone,

just happened with a customer. It started when a user tries to change its password and cannot. The procedure the operator had was to disable the user and reenabling the user. At that time, all the email from the user is gone.

So, disabling the user does delete its home directory? Is there a way to avoid this behaviour?

Kind regards,
--J

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

Can you verify the specific steps used to disable the account?

Thank you.

 

[Juan Inostroza]

Sure.

Home -> Manage users -> Edit user -> Edit Services -> Disable Email.

Then the same.

Home -> Manage users -> Edit user -> Edit Services -> Enable Email.

It's cpanel 58.0.32.

Kind regards,
--J

 

[Juan Inostroza]

Confirmed the behavior on two different instances of Cpanel. The home directory for the email is gone after disabling the email service (which it's a completely different result, I expect the directory to not be deleted).

Is there a way to keep the mail directory? (move it to a different directory, rename it to user.disabled or changing the filesystem permissions to the directory, etc).

Disabling the service should not delete the directory, in case I want to enable it again.

Kind regards,
--J

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

I've opened internal case CPANEL-19024 to report that disabling the email service for a user via the "Edit" option in "cPanel >> User Manager" permanently deletes any existing emails stored for that email account on the server. This can lead to confusion because we don't a provide a warning in the UI noting this behavior. I'll monitor the case and update this thread with more information as it becomes available.

In the meantime, I recommend suspending the email account instead of disabling it via the User Manager if you want to block access to it:

Email Accounts - Version 70 Documentation - cPanel Documentation

Additionally, note that cPanel version 58 is at end-of-life status:

cPanel & WHM Version 58 now EOL | cPanel Newsroom

Is there anything we can do to help you upgrade to a supported version of cPanel?

Thank you.

 

[Juan Inostroza]

Thank you very much for your response. Regarding Cpanel version, it's a managed legacy version and cannot change version, so I'll have to keep it until having a green light for update.