Today I have noticed, all subdirectories and e-mails of a local folder sub-directory are disappeared.
But the respective files and folders are yet in /.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/ !!
What can I do, in order to see the disappeared e-mails under kmail?
Please note: I haven't made any change in Kmail configuration before this problem happened.

OS: openSUSE 10.2
Kde: 3.5.5
Kmail: 1.9.5

Thank a lot for any suggestion

Bye, redpine

First of all, have you backed those folders up? Trying to fix KMail without a backup is just asking for trouble, when backing them up copy the entire mail directory that has all your folders underneath it ( ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/ ) as there are hidden files, etc.

Once this is done, you may wish to check the permissions on the folder. In Konqueror, right click on the folder, select Properties, and select the permissions tab. Owner should be "Can View & Modify Content", group and others should be "Forbidden". Ownership should also be set to your user name. If you need to change the permissions, ensure KMail is closed at the time.

Also, what mail format is the email stored in? It will either be Maildir or MBox. there should be a guide somewhere that can tell you what you are using.

Hallo bcooksley,

first of all, many thanks for your suggestion. It helped me.

Yes, I had backed up the whole /home folder, but unfortunately on last 29th Oct.
Your tip has go on, obviously! After download from mail provider-server I have a more of hundert mails, which have double enter in kmail.
Because I cannot find some sent memos, I think they are definitively lost. The mail provider do not usually save the mails sent directly from user unities.
Don't you have a solution for that?

After the recovery action I checked the properties. They was different as you wrote:
owner: can view and modify content
group: can view and modify content
others: forbidden
ownership is correct.
So I made the changes you suggested and set on the option "only the owner can change content, delete or rename".
I think, it could be an additional safe measure.

Maildir or Mailbox?
I don't know actually. I cannot find any information about in Kmail but I suppose, it is Maildir, because I don't remember I have ever changed the suggested option by default creating a new directory.
I'm setting the issue to SOLVED.

Bye, redpine

You can mark an issue as solved by adding [SOLVED] to the subject of the first post. Regarding the emails that were in your sent folder, if they are still on your hard disk, yet the KMail folder appears blank just like your inbox before you downloaded your new messages, then all KMail may need is a wake-up call which can be provided by sending an email to yourself.

By doing this it should re-read the content on disk, and re-create the indexes of your folder and making your email re-appear. I can only speculate at what happened but I would say that somehow the indexes of the mail folders got corrupted somehow, and when you add a email to that folder the index gets rebuilt making your email magically reappear.

bcooksley wrote:By doing this it should re-read the content on disk, and re-create the indexes of your folder and making your email re-appear. I can only speculate at what happened but I would say that somehow the indexes of the mail folders got corrupted somehow, and when you add a email to that folder the index gets rebuilt making your email magically reappear.

Super idea !!