email loss!

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 08:22 -0500, Bing Du wrote:
> >> Cyrus imap server (2.2.10)
> >> Linux 2.6.9-11.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri May 20 18:26:27 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386
> >> GNU/Linux
> >>
> >> I have several folders.  All of a sudden,
> >> all the emails in my INBOX are gone!!!  Other folders look fine though.
> >>  Those gone INBOX messages are not found in the TRASH folder either.
> >> Where did they go?
> >>
> >> Anybody want to give me some hints what could have happened, where on
> >> the server to look for possible evidences?  Not familiar with cyrus,
> >> where
> >> are the mail logs stored?
> 
> I use SquirreMail 1.4.3a-9.EL4 as mail client.  It's web based.  I did not
> do anything special.  As the first I do every morning, I just went through
> various folders and deleted those messages I did not want to keep after I
> read.  I have root access to the mail server.  Under my mail directory, I
> don't see any additional folder created to store those lost messages due
> to INBOX over quota.  We don't have quota on INBOX here.
> 
> The thing confused me is if it was me who deleted all the messages in
> INBOX, say by accident, those messages should be saved in the TRASH
> folders.  However, the TRASH folder just had old trash and the newly
> deleted messages that I was aware of.  In another word, those lost INBOX
> emails are not found in the TRASH folder.
> 
> Any other thoughts, anybody?
----
either those mails are there or they are not - use a shell to see if
they are there... (note these commands track my RHEL system-YMMV)

cd /var/spool/imap/c/user/craig
ls -l

if the mails are there, then reconstruct
su - cyrus -c '/var/lib/cyrus-imapd/recontstruct -fr user.craig

if those mails aren't there, there's no magic to make them re-appear

As for squirrelmail, I don't use it.

Normally, IMAP would simply set a flag for deleted messages and require
a separate purge operation to fully delete them.

It is possible that a mail client implementation such as squirrelmail
could create a 'Trash' folder, and copy all deleted emails to this
folder and set the delete flag on the deleted messages and purge at some
pre-appointed interval (perhaps even logout) but that would be the
squirrelmail implementation and not of interest here. That would strike
me as a rather poor concept for IMAP - especially when you have a bunch
of users as it creates too much work each time you delete a message.

In fact, it seems that your questions would be better served at a list
that handles squirrelmail.

Craig