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restore inbox and/or inbox.msf
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opto
Apr 9, 2019, 1:14:02 PM4/9/19
to
not sure this is the right forum, but it seems to special for the support forum as well.
Once again, TB killed my msf file when Windows crashed. I still have inbox file and messages on imap. Unfortunately, my imap doesn't store tags, so they are only in gloda. I can get them out and reapply them if I can connect messageID (in gloda) to a mesageheaderid.
For unknown reasons, I had inbox.msf, but no inbox, and inbox-1.msf and inbox-1 (2 GB, so that are the emails). TB created a new empty inbox-1.msf after the crash.
If I copy inbox-1 to local folders, I can see the emails, but no tags, stars and deleted emails are iin there.
If I delete all msf files from the imap account and copy the inbox-1 as inbox, emails are not shown and an empty inbox.msf is created. The inbox file is deleted.
So: how can I get TB to recognise the emails in inbox as emails? Would messageids be the same so that I can connect the messages to gloda, extract the tags and reapply them? If not, but if messages turn up in inbox, I probably can also extract other info from to to correlate emails between gloda and inbox (subjects, authors, references etc.). My addon tells there are only 500 tags so this should be doable.
I do not quite dare to redownload the messages from imap because I don't know what that would do to gloda indexing. Would old entries be deleted? Or I would have everything twice, once with old mesageid and tags, once with new messageid? And I would probably have 10000 entries in gloda pointing to invalid messageheaders?
what best to do? Any help is appreciated.
(and also the question: why does TB/Windows occasionally - once, twice per year) kill the msf file? Is it writing while windows crashes/stalls?)
any help is appreciated,
Klaus
Once again, TB killed my msf file when Windows crashed. I still have inbox file and messages on imap. Unfortunately, my imap doesn't store tags, so they are only in gloda. I can get them out and reapply them if I can connect messageID (in gloda) to a mesageheaderid.
For unknown reasons, I had inbox.msf, but no inbox, and inbox-1.msf and inbox-1 (2 GB, so that are the emails). TB created a new empty inbox-1.msf after the crash.
If I copy inbox-1 to local folders, I can see the emails, but no tags, stars and deleted emails are iin there.
If I delete all msf files from the imap account and copy the inbox-1 as inbox, emails are not shown and an empty inbox.msf is created. The inbox file is deleted.
So: how can I get TB to recognise the emails in inbox as emails? Would messageids be the same so that I can connect the messages to gloda, extract the tags and reapply them? If not, but if messages turn up in inbox, I probably can also extract other info from to to correlate emails between gloda and inbox (subjects, authors, references etc.). My addon tells there are only 500 tags so this should be doable.
I do not quite dare to redownload the messages from imap because I don't know what that would do to gloda indexing. Would old entries be deleted? Or I would have everything twice, once with old mesageid and tags, once with new messageid? And I would probably have 10000 entries in gloda pointing to invalid messageheaders?
what best to do? Any help is appreciated.
(and also the question: why does TB/Windows occasionally - once, twice per year) kill the msf file? Is it writing while windows crashes/stalls?)
any help is appreciated,
Klaus
emat...@gmail.com
Apr 10, 2019, 9:35:53 PM4/10/19
to
On Tuesday, April 9, 2019 at 1:14:02 PM UTC-4, opto wrote:
> TB killed my msf file when Windows crashed ... why does TB/Windows ... kill the msf file?
I keep synchronization Off so message bodies are stored on the IMAP server only, and not copied to local mbox/maildir files.
In my experience, for many years this part of TB was so fragile that I could not use any features that relied on MSFs and GloDa (messagelist colums/sorting, tags, reliable global search ...). Any crash or even some changes to the Account Settings would lose track of the MSF. TB would create chains of useless folderName-1.MSF, folderName-2.MSF, etc. Deleting all of them was the only way to get a current view of the messages in the folder. TB would re-download the message headers and rebuild the MSFs. This would re-set all the messagelist view to defaults, which were useless. Re-doing the settings absolutely needed help from Addons like "ColumnsWizard" and "Manually sort folders". Had no idea what went on inside GloDa. Didn't care what happened to old entries. Never saw duplicate entries for MsgHeaders. GloDa file did get larger than expected.
MSFs are the write-only Mork format. That proprietary and unsupported file format has got to go.
Sorry, cannot advise because I don't understand your suggestion of "extract the tags and reapply them". As usual, maybe backup the Profile and do some experimenting with a copy. Now getting into the habit of making a daily backup of the profile, so when the crash+corruption happens, a quick restore will set me back only a few hours ... and re-connecting to IMAP is not a disaster, because only messages changed since the backup are affected. Don't know of a way to Import mail, let alone reconnect imported messages to previous GloDa attributes.
Also, having created a new profile with only 5 MABs instead of 60 is now keeping the number of file handles below 100, even with 18 accounts and many folders. Don't know if the trick is fewer MABs or something else, but the next step is to add MABs back in and watch the number of file handles. This is using and old version that still has AddOns, not a version after 53.
> TB killed my msf file when Windows crashed ... why does TB/Windows ... kill the msf file?
> I do not quite dare to redownload the messages from imap because I don't know what that would do to gloda indexing.
> what best to do? Klaus
I keep synchronization Off so message bodies are stored on the IMAP server only, and not copied to local mbox/maildir files.
In my experience, for many years this part of TB was so fragile that I could not use any features that relied on MSFs and GloDa (messagelist colums/sorting, tags, reliable global search ...). Any crash or even some changes to the Account Settings would lose track of the MSF. TB would create chains of useless folderName-1.MSF, folderName-2.MSF, etc. Deleting all of them was the only way to get a current view of the messages in the folder. TB would re-download the message headers and rebuild the MSFs. This would re-set all the messagelist view to defaults, which were useless. Re-doing the settings absolutely needed help from Addons like "ColumnsWizard" and "Manually sort folders". Had no idea what went on inside GloDa. Didn't care what happened to old entries. Never saw duplicate entries for MsgHeaders. GloDa file did get larger than expected.
MSFs are the write-only Mork format. That proprietary and unsupported file format has got to go.
Sorry, cannot advise because I don't understand your suggestion of "extract the tags and reapply them". As usual, maybe backup the Profile and do some experimenting with a copy. Now getting into the habit of making a daily backup of the profile, so when the crash+corruption happens, a quick restore will set me back only a few hours ... and re-connecting to IMAP is not a disaster, because only messages changed since the backup are affected. Don't know of a way to Import mail, let alone reconnect imported messages to previous GloDa attributes.
Also, having created a new profile with only 5 MABs instead of 60 is now keeping the number of file handles below 100, even with 18 accounts and many folders. Don't know if the trick is fewer MABs or something else, but the next step is to add MABs back in and watch the number of file handles. This is using and old version that still has AddOns, not a version after 53.
Tanstaafl
Apr 11, 2019, 9:12:03 AM4/11/19
to dev-apps-t...@lists.mozilla.org
On Wed Apr 10 2019 21:35:51 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time),
If you are not downloading/syncing your emails, then GLODA is a
non-starter, and you should disable it. It *requires* full copies of all
emails on your local device in order to work.
This is why I disabled it way back when it was first introduced -
because it literally killed Thunderbird for me (I have 15+ accounts,
most with many GBs of email, and I *never* keep it locally synced).
But msf's? Those will always be there and are required for TB to even
work, so not sure what you mean by 'features that relied on MSFs'.
> Any crash or even some changes to the Account Settings would lose track of the MSF. TB would create chains of useless folderName-1.MSF, folderName-2.MSF, etc. Deleting all of them was the only way to get a current view of the messages in the folder. TB would re-download the message headers and rebuild the MSFs. This would re-set all the messagelist view to defaults, which were useless.
This is a big pain point for me, just one more UI issue that needs
fixing, but can't be fixed until the underlying codebase is rewritten.
> Re-doing the settings absolutely needed help from Addons like "ColumnsWizard" and "Manually sort folders".
Thanks for the pointer to the ColumnsWizard Addon, I'll definitely give
it a look - does it make it easy to set the columns for all folders in
all accounts? Been using Manually Sort Folders forever.
> Sorry, cannot advise because I don't understand your suggestion of "extract the tags and reapply them".
The best thing to do - and only reliable way to permanently fix this
problem - is switch to a server that stores the flags on the server.
emat...@gmail.com <emat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I keep synchronization Off so message bodies are stored on the IMAP
> server only, and not copied to local mbox/maildir files.
>
> In my experience, for many years this part of TB was so fragile that
> I could not use any features that relied on MSFs and GloDa
> (messagelist colums/sorting, tags, reliable global search ...).
?
> I keep synchronization Off so message bodies are stored on the IMAP
> server only, and not copied to local mbox/maildir files.
>
> In my experience, for many years this part of TB was so fragile that
> I could not use any features that relied on MSFs and GloDa
> (messagelist colums/sorting, tags, reliable global search ...).
If you are not downloading/syncing your emails, then GLODA is a
non-starter, and you should disable it. It *requires* full copies of all
emails on your local device in order to work.
This is why I disabled it way back when it was first introduced -
because it literally killed Thunderbird for me (I have 15+ accounts,
most with many GBs of email, and I *never* keep it locally synced).
But msf's? Those will always be there and are required for TB to even
work, so not sure what you mean by 'features that relied on MSFs'.
> Any crash or even some changes to the Account Settings would lose track of the MSF. TB would create chains of useless folderName-1.MSF, folderName-2.MSF, etc. Deleting all of them was the only way to get a current view of the messages in the folder. TB would re-download the message headers and rebuild the MSFs. This would re-set all the messagelist view to defaults, which were useless.
fixing, but can't be fixed until the underlying codebase is rewritten.
> Re-doing the settings absolutely needed help from Addons like "ColumnsWizard" and "Manually sort folders".
it a look - does it make it easy to set the columns for all folders in
all accounts? Been using Manually Sort Folders forever.
> Sorry, cannot advise because I don't understand your suggestion of "extract the tags and reapply them".
problem - is switch to a server that stores the flags on the server.
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