claws mail lost inbox content

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jpg153
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claws mail lost inbox content

Post by jpg153 »

Hi all,

I am just scared. I had opened my claws mailer and was busy writing a new message, which I could not save...
Then all by a sudden, inbox, sent folder, outbox and trash bin are all empty (outbox is ok to be empty) - sure I did not click on delete.
Any idea about how and why and how to fix?

Edit: There are more folders empty which had messages.

Thanks.
Regards Gruß
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gapan
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by gapan »

That doesn't sound good. Did you try closing claws and reopening it?

Is there maybe some issue with your hard drive?

How is your inbox set up? Are you using IMAP? If you do, and in case something failed locally, then the emails should still be on the IMAP server. Otherwise there might be something wrong with your IMAP server?

What is inside your ~/.claws-mail directory?
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by jpg153 »

Hi gapan,

yep, close and reopen and no positive effect.

Well hard drive I need to check - probably this evening.

No, I still use POP and all emails should be kept here locally on my hard drive. We are talking about +10years emails, at least since I am on Salix. :(
.claws-mail/

Code: Select all

jpg:> ls
RSSyl			 folderitemrc		summary_searchbody_history
accountrc		 folderitemrc.bak	summarysearch_adv_history
accountrc.bak		 folderlist.xml		summarysearch_from_history
accountrc.tmpl		 folderlist.xml.bak	summarysearch_subject_history
actionsrc		 gdata_cache.xml	summarysearch_to_history
actionsrc.bak		 imapcache		tagsdb
addrbook		 matcherrc		tagsrc
certs			 matcherrc.bak		tempfolder
claws.log		 matcherrc.pre_names	templates
claws.log.bak		 menurc			themes
clawsrc			 messagesearch_history	tmp
clawsrc.bak		 mimetmp		toolbar_compose.xml
command_history		 newscache		toolbar_compose.xml.bak
compose_save_to_history  passwordstorerc	toolbar_main.xml
exporthtml.xml		 passwordstorerc.bak	toolbar_main.xml.bak
exportldif.xml		 perl_filter		toolbar_msgview.xml
fancy			 print_page_setup	toolbar_msgview.xml.bak
filtering.log		 python-scripts		uidl
filtering.log.bak	 quicksearch_history	vcalendar
jpg:> 
log files are pretty empty (there is nothing that helps or explains)
the folder
tagsdb
contain
#mh
and inside that there are all folders, even those I dont see in claws.

I thought I might have applied some weird filter or so, but no.
New emails are fetched and stay.
Regards Gruß
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by jpg153 »

Hi gapan,

I installed GsmartControl and all HD (2 SSD and 1 HD) are reported having no errors.

I am still at the point that some configuration collapsed rather than a real loss of data, but I still don't find the place where it happened.
Regards Gruß
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gapan
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by gapan »

OK, so first do a backup of that directory now.*

What is the total size?

Code: Select all

du -h ~/.claws-mail
Claws uses the MH format. You can try opening those with another client that supports the same format. I can see that at least nmh, xmh support that format. Some documentation here:
https://web.mit.edu/daveg/SIPB/Info/Lin ... ok/toc.htm

According to this wikipedia page, alpine, kmail, evolution, mutt, opera mail and sylpheed do too. I would first try to move my mail to one of those.

Then, maybe try to convert the MH format to something else that can be read by other clients. A very quick internet search revealed tools such as these:
* https://github.com/vuntz/mh2maildir/
* https://ericlathrop.com/2013/02/mh2mbox ... box-files/

I'm sure there are probably others too. I haven't tried any of the above, so not sure if anything works. But you can try.

Trying the claws-mail mailing lists will probably give you better support related specifically to claws-mail, what actually happened and how you might fix it. They also seem to have an IRC channel.

* As a general comment, consider that if you have any important data, back it up. If you have no backups, you might as well have no data.
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gapan
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by gapan »

I have uploaded new packages for claws-mail 4.3.0 here: https://people.salixos.org/gapan/claws-mail/
in case these might help, but I doubt it. In any case, if you reach out to the claws-mail developers, they would probably want you on the latest version.
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Re: claws mail lost inbox content

Post by jpg153 »

Hi gapan,

well, no backup...it was all the time running smooth...

Well I went to the claws IRC channel and asked for help and as it looks, I really have lost the data. All files that would belong to "emails in claws" are gone.
That is what we found out quite fast.
Really ... folders were empty besides generic configuration files and some folders were lost completely. I may have lost 6-7000 emails including attachments, from which the vast majority was not stored elsewhere. Its a big shjt...

All tools reported no issues on the drives so still no idea what went wrong. There is no way that I might have clicked something wrong, as the pattern of the failure cannot be achieved by faulty clicks or filters or whatsoever.
I ran photorec and recovered 3.5 million files, most are *png of thumbnails. The rest might be interesting.
I am just running a script to remove the *png in order to examine the rest.
The next challenge is then, how to bring back these recovered data into claws in order to check if those were the lost ones or really deleted "on purpose".
But first cleanup and examination.

Thanks for looking into!
Regards Gruß
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