cyrus-imapd crash, fails to restart

[Shane Y. Gibson]

Hi Simon - thanks for the reply.  I apologize for being remiss in
providing the necessary info; I know better than that.

Simon Matter wrote:

> what version you are running.

cyrus-imapd-2.2.12-1.1.fc3

> cyrus-imapd really doesn't like disk full problems!

I'm gathering that! :-)

> Do you have backups of the box?

I do - but they're 5 weeks old - I backup to my home system, and we just
moved.  I haven't plugged in my home server and backup system since.  If
possible, I would like to recover the users mailboxes as currently as
possible.

> If you told us what's still there in your /var/lib/imap/

.
./sieve
./db.backup2
./db.backup2/mailboxes.db
./db.backup2/log.0000000017
./db.backup2/annotations.db
./deliver.db
./db.backup1
./db.backup1/mailboxes.db
./db.backup1/log.0000000017
./db.backup1/annotations.db
./quota
./mailboxes.db
./log
./log/shane
./log/shane/14936
	.... skipping a bunch of ./log/shane/ stuff ....
./socket
./socket/pop3-0.lock
./socket/pop3-1.lock
./socket/imap-1.lock
./socket/imap-0.lock
./socket/imaps-1.lock
./socket/pop3s-1.lock
./socket/idle
./socket/pop3s-0.lock
./socket/sieve-1.lock
./socket/imaps-0.lock
./socket/lmtpunix-0.lock
./socket/lmtp
./proc
./proc/8600
	.... skipping a bunch of ./proc/ stuff ....
./msg
./rpm
./rpm/cvt_cyrusdb_all.log
./tls_sessions.db
./.viminfo
./db
./db/__db.003
./db/skipstamp
./db/__db.005
./db/__db.002
./db/log.0000000017
./db/__db.001
./db/__db.004
./user
./user/s
./user/s/shane.seen
./user/s/shane.sub
	.... skipping a bunch of ./user/X/ stuff ....
./annotations.db
./backup
./backup/mboxlist.1.gz
./backup/mboxlist.gz


> su - cyrus -c "gzip -cd /var/lib/imap/backup/mboxlist.gz |
> /usr/lib/cyrus-imapd/ctl_mboxlist -u"
> 
> Maybe do have to remove the old db's first, maybe you even have to remove
> /var/lib/imap/db/* and /var/lib/imap/db.backup? before.

Thanks for the thoughts here - I wasn't able to get any of this to work.
 the ctl_mboxlist command worked without complaint, but on startup, I
get the same issue (summarized log entry):


you are using /var/lib/imap/sieve as your sieve directory.
fatal error: can't open old database
Converting from /var/lib/imap/mailboxes.db (berkeley) to
/var/lib/imap/mailboxes.db.flat (flat)
ERROR: unable to convert /var/lib/imap/mailboxes.db from berkeley to flat


Is there a way to manually convert the existing Imap Mailboxes to a flat
format, then rebuild the cyrus-imapd stuff again from scratch, then
re-import the mailboxes?   I have to admit, I don't know much about
cyrus-imap, and there seems to be precious little doc on the cyrus
website on problem recovery steps.

Alternatively, can I just comment out the cvt_cyrusdb_all step in the
startup?  Is the actual cyrus-imapd service dependent on the
cvt_cyrusdb_all step?

> Once cyrus-imapd is running again, you may try to "reconstruct -rf" all
> your mailboxes to update you mailboxes db.

...since I couldn't get cyrus_imap running in the first place, I didn't
try this.

Thanks a ton for the start on pointers, Simon!

--Shane