[FC4] Thunderbird Inbox gone

[Craig White]

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.
-----
most of the time people ask this question, they have 'filtering' turned
on which hides the mail in their inbox until they clear it. I can't give
the steps since I don't use Thunderbird but would guess that it involves
a 'search' or 'filter'

Craig