Data and Backups

Data and Backups

Everything lives under GOODMAIL_DATA (default ./data): one small JSON file per user and kind, named by a hash of the login.

Folder / file	What
secret.key	the server key: seals login cookies and encrypts stored secrets. Without it nobody can sign in and the files below are unreadable
accounts/	extra mail accounts users added (passwords encrypted under the server key and the user's own password)
contacts/, calendar/, tasks/	address books, calendars and to-do lists
prefs/	signatures and templates
mfa/	two-step sign-in: authenticator seeds, passkeys, recovery-code hashes, reset address
smime/	ca.json (the certificate authority; its key is encrypted under the server key), users/ (certificates, keys encrypted under the user's password), contacts/ (correspondents' certificates)

Back up the whole folder, always including secret.key. Mail itself stays on your mail server; goodmail keeps none.

Deleting secret.key signs everyone out and makes stored secrets unreadable. To keep the key out of the data folder, set GOODMAIL_SECRET.

Opened messages are cached in memory only (GOODMAIL_CACHE_MB, default 150), never on disk.