[FC4] Thunderbird Inbox gone

[M. Lewis]

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.
>>>   
>>
>> -----
>> 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
>>
>>  
>>
>    Another good place to look is the box that says view, just above your 
> subject column and to the left of the filter box.  Make sure that says 
> "All" or just about anything but "has attachments" or "Last 5 days" etc.
> 
> Scott
> 

Thanks for the suggestions Craig and Scott. Been there. Done that.

M