I just lost several days worth of email ... /var/spool/mail/user not mapped to /rw?

[Sven Semmler]

I followed the instructions to setup postfix [1], fetchmail [2] and mutt [3] and everything seemed great. I didn't move / save the emails (~200) yet as I wanted to fully read the mutt manual before doing so.

Then I did an update off all my templates this morning and restarted the VM that runs postfix, fetchmail & mutt and all my mails are gone!

I assume this is because /var/spool/mail/user is not part of the VM but the template? ... and I have to bind it to /rw like I did with the postmail directory: mount --bind /usr/local/etc/postfix /etc/postfix ?

If that is so, what would be my best choice? /home/user/var/spool/mail ?

Should we maybe update the mutt page [3] to mention this?

Is there any way I can get those mails back? (I assume no, but ask anyway)

/Sven

[1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/postfix/
[2] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/fetchmail/
[3] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/mutt/

[Sven Semmler]

On Wed, Nov 6, 2019, at 10:32 AM, Sven Semmler wrote:
> I assume this is because /var/spool/mail/user is not part of the VM but
> the template? ... and I have to bind it to /rw like I did with the
> postmail directory: mount --bind /usr/local/etc/postfix /etc/postfix ?
>
> If that is so, what would be my best choice? /home/user/var/spool/mail ?

I followed https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/bind-dirs/ and created a /rw/config/qubes-bind-dirs.d/50_user.conf containing the line

binds+=( '/var/spool/mail' )

Which did the trick. I'll make a CR for the https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/fetchmail/ to add a note to this effect. No need for other folks to loose their emails too.

/Sven