Thunderbird compacted by itself and deleted entire inbox!
chro...@gmail.com
started to receive messages. He then says that the program seemed to
freeze. He tried to open an email but nothing happened. He then
noticed that it said compacting on the status bar and then all the
messages disappeared! We're talking at least 60 important emails here,
both read and new and unread.
Things I've looked at:
Nothing in the deleted folder.
Other folders are intact.
The setting was set to "compact if 1000kb of space can be saved" on
that folder.
I have a program that can recover deleted files (as in "permanently"
deleted files. If you empty your recycling bin I can get the files
back) so if the emails have a certain name I can get the files back.
Some extra info:
Thunderbird version 2.0.0.14 (20080421)
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3
Any other ideas? It's very distressing to my dad as many of the new
emails need to be replied to as they are about his business.
Sul@Mozilla
think you have to set the limit higher
--
Windows XP SP3
Posting from Mozilla server
chro...@gmail.com
deleted. How can I get them back? And I have turned off the auto-
compact all together.
Nir
> But the point is that all of those emails have apparently been
> deleted. How can I get them back? And I have turned off the auto-
> compact all together.
Close TB completely.
Backup your profile folder first .
Goto profile folder/Mail/folder of that mail account . Now delete
Inbox.msf file .
Start Thunderbird .
Btw , if what is the size of Inbox ( no extension ) file in your profile
folder ? Is it 0 kb now ?
John Doue
is 0, deleting the msf file is killing the last chance of recovery
anything, is it not?
--
John Doue
Nir
No exactly true . msf files are just index files , doesn't contains the
original message . So deleting the msf is not same as killing the last
chance of recovery anything . Although it's true that I should have
suggested to check the size of inbox file first. But in most case due to
msf file corruption messages listing don't appear in TB window .
Chromana
In \Mail\Local Folders the inbox file is 204kb
My Dad didn't delete any messages by accident.
What file, if any, should I delete?
Nir
Is it the mail.btinternet.com account where abrupt message deletion was
happened ?
If yes then I believe all messages are deleted permanently .
In that case , do you have any recent backup of profile or are messages
still exist in mail server ?
Chromana
> happened ?
> If yes then I believe all messages are deleted permanently .
> In that case , do you have any recent backup of profile or are messages
> still exist in mail server ?
No, the deletion happened in the "Local Folders" folder.
Vic Moz Garcia
The mail (at least some) on Local Folders is STILL there, there should be to files called Inbox:
Inbox > NOT extension *** leave it ALONE ***
Inbox.msf > the one to be DELETED
First shut down TB, copy both files to another folder, delete Inbox.msf on \Mail\Local Folders
Restart TB, you should be able to see those 204KB of mail now.
Chromana
received since the deletion. I assume this, anyway, because no other
emails have appeared.
I'm guessing that those emails are lost for good then? If so, how do I
stop TB from screwing up so majorly again? Go back to Outlook?
Vic Moz Garcia
do, except for having a working Backup process.
Andrew Sutherland
One possible explanation for the problem is that your father has
Anti-Virus software installed that thought it detected a virus in the
Inbox and tried to quarantine it/delete it.
If your father has anti-virus software installed, I advise checking the
log to see whether it mentions any actions taken against the Thunderbird
inbox. If you are lucky, perhaps it has merely moved/copied the file
away and not entirely eradicated it.
Assuming that is the problem, you can try and avoid it happening in the
future by following the steps on this page:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Download_each_e-mail_to_a_separate_file_before_adding_to_Inbox
However, the fact that the problem showed up during the compaction phase
suggests that the setting may not be at issue; it could be the
anti-virus triggered on the compaction process. In that case, the
following page has more advice, with the suggestion to tell the
anti-viral software not to scan the Inbox (or perhaps any Thunderbird
mail folders) being what I'm mainly thinking of:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Antivirus_software
Andrew
chro...@gmail.com
individual incoming messages" was already checked. There are no logs
or quarantines of anything in our antivirus or firewall relating to
this issue.
My dad did nothing unusual. In fact all he did was open the program,
let it download emails and try to open an email. I can't see how this
can be anything/anyone else's fault besides TB.
It would be great if I were wrong though so that we can avoid this
issue in the future, because TB is an otherwise great program.
Andrew Sutherland
> I looked and the box for "Allow anti-virus clients to quarantine
> individual incoming messages" was already checked. There are no logs
> or quarantines of anything in our antivirus or firewall relating to
> this issue.
Thank you for checking. Would you mind telling me what anti-virus
software you are using (product, year/version)? Could you also check
and let me know what settings/thresholds you have enabled? Namely, we
would be interested in knowing what detection threshold and action
threshold are configured, especially if there is something that would
take an action without performing much/any notification.
> My dad did nothing unusual. In fact all he did was open the program,
> let it download emails and try to open an email. I can't see how this
> can be anything/anyone else's fault besides TB.
On Windows, the virus checker is generally the number one suspect, since
they make it their business to interfere with the operation of other
programs. They also tend to be rather heavy handed when they think they
see a virus. Since Thunderbird currently stores all the messages in
each folder in one file, one message that triggers the anti-virus'
software detection signatures can result in the anti-virus software
impounding/deleting the entire folder.
The "allow anti-virus clients to quarantine individual incoming
messages" tries to deal with this behavior by first writing any new
messages to disk separately, so that if the anti-virus software is going
to impound it, it does it just to the one new message and not to the
whole Inbox.
The risk, and case I am concerned about with compaction, is that if your
anti-virus software has received new virus signatures since the message
was incorporated into your Inbox, the act of compaction may result in
the Inbox now being impounded as Thunderbird writes a message to disk
that (now) matches a virus signature
> It would be great if I were wrong though so that we can avoid this
> issue in the future, because TB is an otherwise great program.
Since you have turned off auto-compaction, it is unlikely you will
experience this problem again. If the problem is Thunderbird's
compaction code, then clearly not compacting keeps you safe from that.
If the problem is the anti-virus software, not compacting keeps you safe
from the anti-virus software scenario described above.
We have two bugs that deal with this observed phenomenon:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=396470
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411971
(One of them will probably be marked as a duplicate of the other at some
point). If you'd like to track the status of the bugs, feel free to add
yourself to the cc list (you may need to create a bugzilla account). At
the very least, I expect we will add a unit test that verifies
compaction does not result in data loss; I will also try and take a
deeper look at the code, but it helps to be able to completely rule out
anti-viral interaction.
Our long term plans for Thunderbird will also potentially moot both
cases; bug 58308 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58308)
would allow use of a message store where each message is stored
separately. This eliminates the need for compaction, and if anti-virus
software wants to impound something, it should only end up impounding
the suspect messages.
Andrew
John Doue
--
John Doue