Hi

What would be the best way to restore my mails in Kmail ?

I saved my .kde4/share/apps/kmail dir from suse 11.1 and used it to start kmail in brand new opensuse 11.2, so that i have all my mails available as usual.

But i saw that received mails (my old mails ) are marked "unknown" for 'date', 'from', 'to' and moreother look empty .

How come ?

How can i fix this please ?

Thanks

kmail --version
Qt: 4.5.3
KDE: 4.3.1 (KDE 4.3.1) "release 6"
KMail: 1.12.2

Hmm - at this stage, probably more questions than answers

First, you said "and used it to start kmail in brand new opensuse 11.2". How exactly did you do that? The method you used is likely to tell us what can and can't be done.

If possible, avoid touching your mail until we have talked about this. We need to try to ascertain whether actual damage has been done or simply the index files corrupted.

The other useful information would be a description of what you see in ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox/cur

Moved to Office & Productivity as KMail topics should go there.

I copied the kmail dir from suse 11.1 (~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail)
I pasted it at the same path on suse 11.2
Then started kmail

I understand there also is some files i need from /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/config :
kmail.eventsrc
kmailrc
kmailsnippetrc

more may be ?

I had tried to use the import tool but was not sure which file to choose, i therefore used the copy/paste way

manchette wrote:;)

I copied the kmail dir from suse 11.1 (~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail)
I pasted it at the same path on suse 11.2
Then started kmail

That should be fine. I'll come back to this in a minute.

I understand there also is some files i need from /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/config :
kmail.eventsrc
kmailrc
kmailsnippetrc

more may be ?

Check out http://userbase.kde.org/KMail/FAQs_Hint ... #Migration

I had tried to use the import tool but was not sure which file to choose, i therefore used the copy/paste way

What you did was better.

Now, when you look in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox/cur can you see the messages? Can you open one (just as a test) in kwrite?

Possible problems - do you have the same UID in your new install as you did in the old one? Check ownership of the message files.

Assuming that everything else looks fine, make sure that kmail (and kontact) is closed and delete all the index files that you can find relating to the inbox in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail. It may simply be that kmail needs to rebuild the indexes.

Let us know how it goes.

Hello,

i wrote down the migration tips for next time

Yes i can read mails in kwrite from ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox/cur

I have the same user id than the previous install. Is ownership ok then ?

How do i make sure the files i need to erase are index files ?
From the inbox you said ? Not in the sent-mail dir ?
It's in the sent mail that i see mails marked unknown (date, subject, to ...)

manchette wrote:Hello,

i wrote down the migration tips for next time

Yes i can read mails in kwrite from ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox/cur

So I think we can assume that the messages are ok and recoverable.

I have the same user id than the previous install. Is ownership ok then ?

Should be.

How do i make sure the files i need to erase are index files ?
From the inbox you said ? Not in the sent-mail dir ?
It's in the sent mail that i see mails marked unknown (date, subject, to ...)

Ah sorry - my mistake. Yes, in that case, all the files with names like sent-mail.index, sent-mail.index.ids and there's sometimes a third one with a name something like sent-mail.index-sorted (may not be remembering it exactly).

I thought you had said that you couldn't read Inbox mails. If that's so, delete the inbox indexes as well. If you can read Inbox ok, just ignore that.

Deleting extra index files will not damage your mail. You may have lost some information such as flags, but that's all. Remember that KMail saves all index files when you exit, so you must always have kmail closed when you work on them. Any deleted index files will be rebuilt when you re-start kmail.

Hello

i'm not sure where i'm supposed to find index files (1) :
- in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/sent-mail i can't see any files with index in their name
- i only have a file called autosave.index.ids in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/ . Is this the one i shall erase ?



(1)
(you mentionned "files with names like sent-mail.index, sent-mail.index.ids and there's sometimes a third one with a name something like sent-mail.index-sorted" )

manchette wrote:i'm not sure where i'm supposed to find index files (1) :- in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/sent-mail i can't see any files with index in their name- i only have a file called autosave.index.ids in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/ . Is this the one i shall erase ?(1) (you mentionned "files with names like sent-mail.index, sent-mail.index.ids and there's sometimes a third one with a name something like sent-mail.index-sorted" )

Hello i'm not sure where i'm supposed to find index files (1) :
- in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/sent-mail i can't see any files with index in their name
- i only have a file called autosave.index.ids in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/ . Is this the one i shall erase ?

No. Try checking ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail - aren't they there?

No, i have none there : only drafts, inbox, oubox, sent-mail etc ...

Desperate measures! They must be somewhere, so do you have 'locate' installed? The package used to be called slocate, then it went to mlocate. I'm not sure that distros install it automatically. Anyway, it's very useful when you need to find something, so if you don't have it, get it installed. Then, in a konsole, type

locate sent-mail.index

With any luck that should do the trick

I have installed locate but it does not find any sent-mail.index
locate can't find it , nor whereis

manchette, I'm going to try to call in some more expert help. Stay with it - I'm sure we can sort it, even though at the moment I'm very puzzled.

I've spoken to Ingo, our kmail expert who was maintainer for several years. He confirms that we have looked at most of the possible reasons. The only thing he can think of that we haven't mentioned, is the possibility that you don't have 'Show hidden files' enabled in your file manager - I forgot to say that the index files are dot-files. Just check ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail once more in dolphin, making sure that 'Show hidden files' in the View menu is checked.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this, because we are really running out of things to try if this isn't the case.

Can you get to your backup, the one that you used to copy the files? Can you see hidden files there? I'm just wondering, if the above doesn't sort it, whether it might be easier to just copy the whole directory over afresh.

Hello,

Suse 11.2 uses .kde4 instead of .kde :
i look at /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail and do not have any index file.

The only one i can see is in /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/kmail : it is autosave.index.ids
another is called lock.

The backup is on my external HD, in /media/IOMEGA_HDD/suse/kmail091115/mail which is my last saved of kmail dir i indeed have hidden files .
I guess i shall shut down kmail, erase my kmail dir.
Then copy my saved kmail dir and its hidden files and paste them in my actual operating system at /home/fabrice/.kde4/share/apps/

Is there a way to save the mails i received/sent in beetween ?
(not very important)


Hidden files that i found :

.drafts.index
.drafts.index.ids

.inbox.index
.inbox.index.ids

.outbox.index
.outbox.index.ids

.Pourriel.index (my own trash dir)
.Pourriel.index.ids

.sent-mail.index
.sent-mail.index.ids

.templates.index
.templates.index.ids

.trash.index
.trash.index.ids