On 07/04/2015 02:16 PM, jd1008 wrote:
On 07/04/2015 03:00 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> If you're connecting over IMAP, you can delete the cache:
> rm -rf .thunderbird/*.default/ImapMail/imap.googlemail.com*
Using pop - I had had undesireable experience with Imap,
so I switched to pop. One of the reasons was that I needed
to re-read old messages in situations where I had no internet
access.
In that case, you can probably leave that in place, but set up a second
Gmail profile using IMAP, temporarily. IMAP has access to the full
message store, and you can copy the messages locally. I don't know of a
way to make Thunderbird download your mail otherwise. Maybe move
everything to the Inbox would work? It's hard to say.
Either way, you can configure IMAP to keep a copy of all mail locally,
and I believe that's the default. Access to mail while offline should
work just fine with IMAP.
> Though this should be a reminder that backups matter.
Goes without saying :)
I boldly ran the repair without first backing up Inbox :)
By that time, it was already too late. Backing up corrupt data really
doesn't do you much good. You needed a backup from before it became
corrupt. So, I'll restate my original point:
*Regular* backups matter. Don't skip them. Don't leave them until you
feel like you might need them. Run backups on a predictable, regular
schedule.
> Also consider using Maildir instead of the default Berkeley
format:
>
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Maildir
>
Not sure what that gives me.
Does is turn each message into a separate file?
If so, not for me.
Yes, Maildir keeps each message in a separate file. It's much less
likely to become corrupt than mbox.
With mbox, any time you remove a message from a folder (either deleting
it or moving it to another folder), the entire mbox file has to be
re-written. If you delete/move a message from a very large folder, that
can generate a lot of disk activity, and creates a long window in which
an interruption can corrupt the folder. With Maildir, all operations
should be atomic. An interruption should never destroy an entire folder.