email loss!

[Bing Du]

> 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
>

I've looked.  Those lost emails are not on the server.

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

That's right.

> 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.
>

Well, the messages I deleted several weeks ago are still in the TRASH
folder.  Only when I click 'purge' in SquirrelMail will they disappear
from the mail server completely. SquirrelMail does not purge messages on
logout at least I do not set it to do so.

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

I'll ping there as well.  Thanks much for looking and helping.  Appreciate
it.  By the way, where does cyrus save log files on the mail server?

Bing