[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: kmail corrupts emails [solved]



On Monday 26 September 2005 03:29 am, Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> Am Freitag, 23. September 2005 20:30 schrieb Randy Kramer:
> > On Friday 23 September 2005 01:29 pm, Theo Schmidt wrote:
> > > This has solved it, thanks!  Kmail used to compact mailboxes on
> > > closing; it looks like it no longer does so.
> >
> > You're welcome!  But there is something else I should have
> > mentioned--hope you haven't unindexed your inbox yet--
> >
> > on my kmail system, compaction was totally disabled "for safety
> > reasons"--when I removed the index, all of a sudden I got thousands of
> > old emails that had been "marked for deletion" (my words) (and no longer
> > visible) but never actually deleted.
>
> When kmail detects a corrupted mbox file for the inbox (and for any other
> folder), compacting it might eat all your mail, that's the safety reasons.
> Without compacting, kmail can simply ignore the corrupted parts of the mbox
> file, and it still works for everything else. But a compaction will mess
> this all up.

Reinhold,

Thanks for the information!

I don't know if you are the right person to ask, but I'll ask here anyway, 
maybe someone will additional information.   

Is there / will there ever be a fix for this?  I mean, I certainly don't want 
to lose emails (from my inbox or anywhere else) but also I don't want my 
inbox to:
   * grow without bounds filled with the text of removed emails
   * bring back those deleted emails when I have to reindex the inbox to fix 
some other problem (as discussed in this thread)

What do other email clients do?  Do they:
   * have a system of compaction that never fails, despite a perhaps corrupted 
mbox file
   * have a method to detect mbox corruption, perhaps when compaction is 
invoked, warn the operator, stop/prevent the compaction, and suggest 
corrective action to the user
   * have the same potential problem (of potentially losing emails on 
compaction of a corrupted mbox file), but just let the user learn the hard 
way
   * other?

regards,
Randy Kramer



Reply to: