kmail lost old folders/emails

[John Walsh]

New info below...

>From: "John Walsh" <dear_grommet at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>To: fedora-list at redhat.com
>Subject: kmail lost old folders/emails
>Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 09:57:01 +0000
>
>
>Hi,
>
>wrt: kmail
>
>I had FC1 as per the CD ISO's installed and working for a day, I had 
>coppied my old
>user accounts (from RH9.0) accross - totally replacing anything Fedora 
>created.
>
>When I login, it says the 'Desktop' has changed, and its makes a link to 
>the old one,
>and thats fine.
>
>When I ran Kmail, all was well - it saw all the folders and emails I had 
>before.
>
>Then yesterday I got all the latest packages through up2date:
>
>yum fedora-core-1 
>http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/$ARCH/os/
>yum updates-released 
>http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/1/$ARCH/
>#yum updates-testing http://fedora.redhat.com/updates/testing/fedora-core-1
>
>I don't think there was a new kmail, but I don't know if it is included as 
>part of another rpm...
>
>Anyway, while it was downloading the rpm's (so it had not even installed 
>them yet, but maybe
>rhn-applet-2.1.4-3.i386.rpm had been installed), I had kmail open and 
>things started to
>go wrong.
>
>First I got error messages when clicking on an existing folder, that it 
>could not read it, because
>it was either not in 'maildir' format, or it did not have permissions to 
>read it (this is as root).
>
>So I closed kmail and re-opened it - now it only has the default folders 
>and all the existing
>ones don't show up.
>
>Even in the inbox, new emails show up, but the existing old ones (that are 
>in the correct
>place) do not show up.
>
>All the filters and ID's are still in kmail, just fine, its just the 
>folders and emails that have gone.
>
>Another note: that link to the old desktop that was made at the start, also 
>dissapeared.
>
>Anyone any ideas ? Or have any questions ?
>
>Thanks,
>John.
>
>ps. after the up2date, I don't use the latest kernel because it does not 
>see the mouse, so I'm
>still running the original FC1.0 kernel 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
>
>_________________________________________________________________


Update:

I compared the contents of 'Mail' to that from my backup (the original 
source of the
RH9.0 users homes), and quite a few things had changed.

for example:

'drafts', 'outbox', 'sent-mail' and 'trash' had become a file (zero length) 
instead of a folder,

some of my folders had dissapeard, but their '.*.index[.ids/.sorted]' files 
were still there,

Now I'm starting to think kmail had tried to convert them to mbox format - 
but I have no idea
why it would do this while it is open (not at start/exit).

Of my old folders that still existed as folders, they only contained the 
'cur' sub-folder, but
they did have emails in there.

Kmail was still configured to use 'maildir' format, but none of the existing 
folders showed up.


I've restored my 'Mail' from my backup, and now Kmail is reading everything 
just fine, so
I'm sorted.

But if this looks like a bug to anyone - I've cc'd it to the the Kmail team.

Kmail = 1.5.4 (using KDE 3.1.4-4 Red Hat)

Thanks,
John.

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