[FC4] Thunderbird Inbox gone

[Jim Cornette]

M. Lewis wrote:

> 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
>

Did you ckeck the local mail folder? The settings for the particular 
account could have changed to global or something similar.

Just a thought from my brief usage of T-bird as a mailer.

Jim

-- 
I'd love to help you -- it's just that the Boss won't let me near the computer.