corrupt mailbox
Daniel Cohen
I have just run into my first major issue.
My inbox (local version of an IMAP inbox) has become corrupt. When I
open a message what I get is fragments of an earlier message. I tried
restoring from a Time Machine backup. That seems fine except that the
dates of the messages are screwed up, with many of themproducing the
same date, 30th June.
Is it possible to clear things up completely? If so, what's the best
ting to do?
--
<http://www.decohen.com>
Send e-mail to the Reply-To address.
Mail to the From address is never read.
Kathy Morgan
> My inbox (local version of an IMAP inbox) has become corrupt. When I
> open a message what I get is fragments of an earlier message. I tried
> restoring from a Time Machine backup. That seems fine except that the
> dates of the messages are screwed up, with many of themproducing the
> same date, 30th June.
>
> Is it possible to clear things up completely? If so, what's the best
> ting to do?
I've never used IMAP, so my suggestions are purely guesses. I think the
first thing I would try, since you're using IMAP, is quit Eudora and
move the Inbox to a different location. When you restart Eudora, I
think it will create a new empty Inbox, which you could then refill from
the IMAP server. If it doesn't work, you can quit Eudora again and move
the old Inbox back.
Another option would be to edit a copy of the Inbox using a text editor
such as Text Wrangler or BBEdit. Open the copy and another good mailbox
and edit the copy to have the same formatting as the good mailbox.
Before I tried either of those, though, I'd wait a little bit and see if
another IMAP user has better suggestions.
--
Kathy
Daniel Cohen
> I've never used IMAP, so my suggestions are purely guesses. I think the
> first thing I would try, since you're using IMAP, is quit Eudora and
> move the Inbox to a different location. When you restart Eudora, I
> think it will create a new empty Inbox, which you could then refill from
> the IMAP server. If it doesn't work, you can quit Eudora again and move
> the old Inbox back.
What would you have done if it had been a corrupt POP mailbox?
Because a safe thing to try would be to copy the IMAP Inbox to a new POP
mailbox and work on that copy.
John H Meyers
> Running Eudora 6.2.4 on Snow Leopard.
>
> I have just run into my first major issue.
>
> My inbox (local version of an IMAP inbox) has become corrupt. When I
> open a message what I get is fragments of an earlier message. I tried
> restoring from a Time Machine backup. That seems fine except that the
> dates of the messages are screwed up, with many of themproducing the
> same date, 30th June.
>
> Is it possible to clear things up completely?
> If so, what's the best thing to do?
Is it under an IMAP folder?
Is everything under an IMAP folder
basically just a temporary "mirror" of what's on the server,
which would be automatically re-created if deleted?
(except for any as yet unsynchronized changes).
That's the very idea of IMAP, isn't it -- that even if you start
with a brand new account, with no local files at all,
local copies of some server info are made, under an IMAP folder,
after you connect to the server.
With IMAP, the server itself is the "permanent storage,"
rather than the local files.
You can, of course, using Eudora, also create "local only"
mailboxes, to which you can either just copy or "move"
any server-side mail. Those are what we may think of
as "POP" mailboxes, where our own files are the permanent storage,
instead of the server's files.
I suppose that one could also try deleting the TOC
of even the local version of an IMAP mailbox,
as an attempt to recover from TOC corruption,
if that was the cause of the problem.
--
Daniel Cohen
>
> Is it under an IMAP folder?
Yes.
>
> Is everything under an IMAP folder
> basically just a temporary "mirror" of what's on the server,
> which would be automatically re-created if deleted?
> (except for any as yet unsynchronized changes).
>
> That's the very idea of IMAP, isn't it -- that even if you start
> with a brand new account, with no local files at all,
> local copies of some server info are made, under an IMAP folder,
> after you connect to the server.
>
> With IMAP, the server itself is the "permanent storage,"
> rather than the local files.
I don't fully understand IMAP. I had to use it because collge, where I
have my mail email address, moved over to IMAP. I would have preferred
to stay with POP.
If I move mail from my local IMAP mailbox to the trash, it gets trashed
on the server. Though I see this is because there is a setting for this
in Personality Extras.
I don't really want to muck about with the Inbox itsself in case the
effect is to permanently delete mail I want.
I can (and have) copied all the mail from the IMAP Inbox to a local POP
mailbox.
So I can just as well reclaim that mailbox, if someone will tell me what
to do to correct it.
I don't know why I didn't Google for an answer before asking here.
If anyone else is caught by a similar problem,
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9545>
provided a solution for me.
Kathy Morgan
> Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > I've never used IMAP, so my suggestions are purely guesses. I think the
> > first thing I would try, since you're using IMAP, is quit Eudora and
> > move the Inbox to a different location. When you restart Eudora, I
> > think it will create a new empty Inbox, which you could then refill from
> > the IMAP server. If it doesn't work, you can quit Eudora again and move
> > the old Inbox back.
>
> What would you have done if it had been a corrupt POP mailbox?
I'd have started with editing a copy of the Inbox, using a non-corrupted
mailbox as a guide to go by.
I read the TidBITS article you mentioned in another message; very useful
info!
--
Kathy
John H Meyers
>> Is it under an IMAP folder?
> Yes.
> If I move mail from my local IMAP mailbox
> to the "trash" [mailbox, persumably],
> it gets trashed on the server.
Of course it does, but who told you to do that?
I believe that you can delete any _files_ in the IMAP folder,
or even delete the entire IMAP folder (or hide it somewhere else),
so that it will be re-created next time, just as Eudora
creates anything that it needs which isn't yet present.
Close Eudora first, of course.
The other suggestion I made was to try deleting
(and thus also re-creating)
the TOC of the local Inbox under the IMAP folder -- that's what
the "Tidbits" article shows how to do, in a roundabout manner.
--