Need to remove a ghost file, but can't because it doesn't exist

[hdv@jadev.org (J.A. de Vries)]

Hi,

I have a problem with a file which seems to not exist, but that makes
applications like rsync, offlineimap and tar crash, because they try to read it
anyway (not their fault as far as I can tell).

When I try to sync my mail using offlineimap it crashes after a while with the following output:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thread 'Copy message 2504 from Applications.[vim]' terminated with exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.4/offlineimap/threadutil.py", line 153, in run
    Thread.run(self)
  File "threading.py", line 422, in run
    self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.4/offlineimap/folder/Base.py", line 272, in copymessageto
    message = self.getmessage(uid)
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.4/offlineimap/folder/IMAP.py", line 114, in getmessage
    return initialresult[1][0][1].replace("\r\n", "\n")
TypeError: unsubscriptable object


Last 1 debug messages logged for Copy message 2504 from Applications.[vim] prior to exception:
imap: Returned object from fetching 2504: ('OK', [None])
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That got me started to find out what message 2504 contained and if there was
something unexpected about one or more line-endings in it. Some poking around
led me to a file called dovecot-uidlist in the Maildir directory for the
Applications.[vim] folder. (dovecot version 0.99.14-1sarge0 is the IMAP daemon
I am using on this Debian system.) In that file I found a line like this:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# grep '^2504' ~/Maildir/.Applications.\[vim\]/dovecot-uidlist
2504 1141914051.M484859P8695V0000000000000309Ip0007553_0.draupnir,S=3707
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However when I try to find that file in the cur directory something weird
happens:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# cd ~/Maildir/.Applications.\[vim\]/cur
# ls 1141914051.*
ls: 1141914051.M484859P8695V0000000000000309Ip0007553_0.draupnir,S=3707:2,S: No such file or directory
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just to be sure I did the same for some other files referred to by
dovecot-uidlist, but those were found just fine.

So the system tells me the file is non-existant, but it does know the full name
of that same file without me telling it. I don't understand how that is
possible, but that probably is just due to lack of knowledge on my part. The
problem persists over reboots, though. So I presume it is not due to some form
of caching.

It seems to me that offlineimap gets told by dovecot that such a file is
present when it asks for a list, but when it tries to sync that file it dies
because it is not available. I tried deleting that line from the
dovecot-uidlist and restarted dovecot. Alas, to no avail: the problem persists.

After that I did a recursive grep on the ~/.offlineimapfolder on the local
system for 2504, hoping maybe that UID _was_ cached somewhere, but that didn't
help either.

To rule out any problem in offlineimap itself (which otherwise worked just fine
for me in the past) I also tried to sync that folder with rsync. That got me
the following error message:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
receiving file list ... file has vanished: "/home/hdv/Maildir/.Applications.[vim]/cur/1141914051.M484859P8695V0000000000000309Ip0007553_0.draupnir,S=3707:2,S"
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried archiving my mail (using tar), but that didn't get me any further
either, so creating and copying a tarball won't work as a temporary measure.

To be honest I don't know what to do next. I really want to backup my mail,
but cannot because of this problem. To solve the problem I need to remove the
file, but when I do try such I get told it isn't there. Any suggestions?

Your help would be very much appreciated.

Sincerely,

HdV