Dovecot recovery/reading old e-mails

[BenLinux.Org]

I have data files from what appears to be a dovecot server. I say this because some of the files are named dovecot.index.

Is there any way to access files from this without setting up a dovecot server? I'm not looking to use the e-mails, just to be able to read them.

Regrettably I know nothing of the original server's setup, though in perusing some of the contents of the files, which were semi-plain text there was mention of Squirrel Mail.

Thanks a million!

 

[ryanvade]

Well the dovecot servers are "written with security primarily in mind". And "Dovecot's indexes are self-optimizing. They contain exactly what the user's client commonly needs, no more and no less." . Then their is the issue of the index files not having emails in them:
Main index
The main index contains the following information for each message:

• IMAP UID
• Current flags and keywords
• Pointer to cache file
• mbox-only: mbox file offset
• mbox-only: MD5 sum of some of the message headers, intended to help find the message when its X-UID: header hasn't yet been written
• Other extensions in Dovecot v1.1+, such as mailbox sorting data

Do you have any other files? I need more information about what you are trying to do...

 

[BenLinux.Org]

Well the dovecot servers are "written with security primarily in mind". And "Dovecot's indexes are self-optimizing. They contain exactly what the user's client commonly needs, no more and no less." . Then their is the issue of the index files not having emails in them:
Main index
The main index contains the following information for each message:

• IMAP UID
• Current flags and keywords
• Pointer to cache file
• mbox-only: mbox file offset
• mbox-only: MD5 sum of some of the message headers, intended to help find the message when its X-UID: header hasn't yet been written
• Other extensions in Dovecot v1.1+, such as mailbox sorting data

Do you have any other files? I need more information about what you are trying to do...

I have what appear to be several complete mailboxes, when reading them plain text I can see some of the contents of e-mails, unformatted. I'd like to get this into a clean organized format, not active for sending and receiving, just able to read without resorting to notepad and spammed with formatting codes.