Mail not found

[Ken Mankoff]

Hello,

I have a Maildir/tmp/cur folder with files that I see in my tmp/ (that's the real foldername) mailbox in mu4e on computer A. I just got a new computer, moved my Maildir over, upgraded mu4e from 1.12.09 to 1.12.11, ran mu init and then mu index, and on the new computer everything seems to work but the files in tmp/cur are not found:

$ mu find maildir:/tmp
no matches for search expression

I've done this same sequence before (every few years if upgrading a hard disk) and never had a problem.

Any suggestions why one specific sub-folder seems to be ignore? I do not have .noupdate or any other such file in the tmp folder.

  -k.

[Ken Mankoff]

Huh. If in Maildir I run

mu mkdir foo

mv tmp/cur/* foo/cur

And then re-index, I see the files in mu4e maildir:/foo

If I delete and re-make the tmp folder, move them back, and re-index, I do not see them. It looks like 'tmp' became a reserved word recently?

  -k.

[Dirk-Jan C. Binnema]

On Friday May 30 2025, Ken Mankoff wrote:

> Huh. If in Maildir I run
>
> mu mkdir foo
> mv tmp/cur/* foo/cur
>
> And then re-index, I see the files in mu4e maildir:/foo
>
> If I delete and re-make the tmp folder, move them back, and re-index, I do
> not see them. It looks like 'tmp' became a reserved word recently?

Indeed, but it is not recent.

Next to 'cur' and 'new', directories named 'tmp' have a special meaning
for Maildirs; it is to be used internally by the maildir delivery
system, so mu explicitly ignores it. I suppose mu could potentially
handle e.g. tmp/subdir/..., but I suspect that'd just add confusion.

I've added a note about this to the mu-index man-page.

So perhaps use "Tmp" or "temp" instead.

Kind regards,
Dirk.

--
Dirk-Jan C. Binnema Helsinki, Finland
e:dj...@djcbsoftware.nl w:www.djcbsoftware.nl
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