This is looking more encouraging Yes, shut down your kmail. Don't erase /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/kmail but rename it to kmailtemp - we'll try to use that to recover your recent mail. Then, as you say, copy across the whole of the kmail091115/mail directory, making sure that the hidden files go with it. Open kmail and check that everything looks ok. Now in kmail, underneath Inbox, create a new folder called tempMail. Close kmail.

Last stage - in dolphin, navigate to the new /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/ where you should see kmail and kmailtemp directories. Split the dolphin screen, then in one half, enter the kmail, then mail directories, and finally enter Inbox. You should still be able to see kmailtemp in the other pane. Look for the new folder you have just created, anc copy all the new mail from kmailtemp into your new mail/tempmail folder. I say copy, rather than move, because if anything goes wrong you still have the messages and we can try a different tack, but hopefully this will work.

Just bear in mind that anything you do in dolphin should be with kmail closed, and you should be safe.

- After the 1st step :

- Inbox :

i have some mails from today missing,
some mails look ok (2 weeks old),
but others (3 weeks old for example ) are empty.

- sent-mails :
It looks ok but it's not : when i double click on mails the date becomes unknown and content is empty .


What i did : copied the kmail/mail dir *alone* from my external HD and pasted it to replace the one i had in kmail.

I think i shall do differently :
erase ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail dir
copy the entire kmail091115 saved dir,
paste it in ~/.kde4/share/apps/ ,
then add the hiden files in the mail subdirectory.

Then try to use the kmailtemp dir to have back my mails from in between

Will this be better ?

manchette wrote:- After the 1st step :

- Inbox :

i have some mails from today missing,
some mails look ok (2 weeks old),
but others (3 weeks old for example ) are empty.

- sent-mails :
It looks ok but it's not : when i double click on mails the date becomes unknown and content is empty .

Gah! That's what you see when index files are corrupt!

What i did : copied the kmail/mail dir *alone* from my external HD and pasted it to replace the one i had in kmail.

I think i shall do differently :
erase ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail dir
copy the entire kmail091115 saved dir,
paste it in ~/.kde4/share/apps/ ,
then add the hiden files in the mail subdirectory.

Then try to use the kmailtemp dir to have back my mails from in between

Will this be better ?

It sounds OK. Are you copying by drag and drop in dolphin? If so, assuming that your username and userid match the old one (and I think you already said they do) everything _should_ copy across correctly.

oh, in fact i seldom use drag and drop, you mean this comfy feature ?
What i usually use is right click : copy/paste
Does it behave that differently ?
Did you mean that drag and drop copies the hidden files even if i do not thick the box "show hidden files" ?

manchette wrote:oh, in fact i seldom use drag and drop, you mean this comfy feature ?
What i usually use is right click : copy/paste
Does it behave that differently ?
Did you mean that drag and drop copies the hidden files even if i do not thick the box "show hidden files" ?

As far as I'm aware, both methods should do (some command-line copies can run into trouble). Just check that you can see them when you've done your copy.

Hello,

i have sent-mails that are passed unknown (date) as soon as i double click them.

How can an index become corrupted ?


About in between mails : it's ok, i have them in mailtemp dir.

The 'disappearing emails' due to index corruption is a problem that has been known for a very long time. It's not been short of investigation time, but no-one has been able to come up with the reason for it. The only thing that's known is that deleting the indexes and re-creating them seems to cure it - until next time. Fortunately it's not a frequent problem, but we can't guarantee you won't see it again.

On my system my mail is pulled onto a local imap server, and I read mainly from this laptop. From time to time I will suddenly notice that I have sent-mail in the local part of my folder setup, instead of in the server part as it should be. When that has happened I know that I have triggered the problem, so I close kmail and delete the sent-mail indexes. It's crazy - but until something happens that gives the developers a clue as to what happens, we are just stuck with it.

So i guess i shall close kmail,
and now that i have these hidden files in /kmail/mail and still some corruption i need to erase /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/.sent-mail.index & .sent-mail.index.ids

Am i right ?

Yes

ok, but this erases all sent-mails, too bad.

i guess hidden files is our key here, i need to remember this next time.

Thanks

I have read this discussion with interest. Comments:

My mail was in ~/Mail probably from way back. I brought my mail across from a SuSE 11.1 box to a brand new SuSE 11.2 box. I used command line tools to do this "find" and "cpio -pdum".

I have tried deleting the index files. Kmail takes a longish time to come up as it recreates them. I still have some emails stamped with date "unknown". However, I notice that the dates in the files post date the access times on the files and wonder if Kmail is checking this. Can you confirm/deny this?

I also notice that as each of the mails with an "unknown" date are selected for display the real date appears. So it does have a "known" date.

Not able to tell you more, i left these unknown mails on their own, too bad as it appears "it sometimes happens" and it's kind of hard to be sure what produces these problems, thus find a solution working all the time.