[FC4] Thunderbird Inbox gone

[M. Lewis]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 04, 2005 at 08:03:10AM -0700, oldman wrote:
> 
>>Craig White wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat, 2005-09-03 at 23:08 -0500, M. Lewis wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>FedoraCore4
>>>>T'bird version 1.0.6-1.1.fc4 (20050720)
>>>>
>>>>I've read numerous other postings about mail disappearing. I've searched 
>>>>the FAQ as well as the forum at the Thunderbird help. I've tried all the 
>>>>steps outlined in the 'mail disappearing' topic on the T'bird forum. 
>>>>Still I have no Inbox.
>>>>
>>>>The scenario:
>>>>
>>>>Today I needed to reboot my machine to install a new kernel. T'bird was 
>>>>working fine. I had about 70 or so emails in my inbox. Last night I was 
>>>>working on cleaning the inbox up and moving messages out of there.
>>>>
>>>>Rebooted machine. Brought up T'bird. Went to the inbox folder and it was 
>>>>empty. Shutdown T'bird, started it again. Inbox is still empty.
>>>>
>>>>If I go to my profile/ImapMail/ I cannot find any files or directories 
>>>>called Inbox. It apparently somehow magically was completely deleted.
>>>>
>>>>I've sent messages to myself from other accounts. I can not receive mail 
>>>>now. I suspect the reason is the inbox is gone.
>>>>
>>>>If I click on another folder in T'bird (other than Inbox) then click on 
>>>>Inbox again, I see in the bottom left of the screen "Opening Folder..." 
>>>>but of course nothing happens.
>>>>
>>>>I'm very suspicious of some issue with IMAP, though Dovecot seems to be 
>>>>running fine. I set T'bird to check mail every 1 minute. If I do 'tail 
>>>>-f /var/log/maillog | grep imap' I DO NOT see T'bird logging in every 
>>>>minute. I see it only when I start T'bird.
>>>>
>>>>If I send new message to myself, I can see it in /var/spool/mailboxname.
>>>>
>>>>1) Any clues as to why this happened?
>>>>2) Any clues how to recover the messages that were in the Inbox?
>>>>3) Any clues how to prevent this from happening again? I suspect the 
>>>>answer to this is have very small Inbox. As I stated earlier, I was 
>>>>working on that last night. Guess I didn't get to it quickly enough.
>>>>
>>>>I posted this on the Thunderbird help forum and I did get some answers 
>>>
>>>>from one fellow. Unfortunately, he was a M$ user and just gave me the 
>>>
>>>>standard spiel about things I had already tried.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for any ideas about how to proceed.
>>>>  
>>>>
> 
> I don't know how to prevent it happening again. But this is a common
> occurrence when using pine for the first time. But to find your mail
> should be simple enough if it has not been erased. It has to me
> somewhere in your directory, A combination of grep and find will find
> the mail file if you look for a word you would expect to see it mail
> like: Return-Path
> 

Thanks Aaron. At this point I don't much care about the lost mail. I 
can't receive NEW mail. And what's really funny is I'm using  the same 
T'bird right now to send this mail from a different account.

I get no new messages on the other account, YET, I can see them coming 
into /var/spool/mail/mailboxname.

M