#1619 new
Thomas Helmrich

Lost Mails caused by Server Change?

Reported by Thomas Helmrich | December 23rd, 2016 @ 10:41 AM

It already happend 2 times this week that i lost all my mails in my inbox. The Mails didn´t were in the Trash Folder, neither on the Mailserver, it just was empty.

I changed my IMAP server a week ago and since then this happens. I already found something strange in Sources.plist:

{ MRUPort = "993"; clientUnsubscribedMailboxNames = ( ); idle_minutes = 15; name = "thomas@domain.com"; requireSSL = :true; serverURL = "imap://thomas%40domain.com@oldmail.domain.com"; shadowServerURL = "imap://thomas%40domain.com@newmail.domain.com"; smtp = "smtp://thomas%40domain.com@newmail.domain.com"; },

So the serverURL is still the old, but the shadowServerURL is the new one. Could this be the issue?
I Changed the Server Configs via the Interface -> Edit IMAP Account.

Thanks & Cheers,
Thomas

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • Thomas Helmrich

    Thomas Helmrich December 23rd, 2016 @ 10:43 AM

    What i forgot:

    Mailmate Version 1.9.6 (5319)

  • benny

    benny December 23rd, 2016 @ 12:51 PM

    Loss of email is a very serious problem. I'll do all I can to help you resolve it. If you have a backup, e.g., Time Machine, then you can find the emails somewhere within this folder:

    ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Messages/...
    

    The shadowServerURL is an implementation detail. MailMate does this to be able to efficiently allow changing the IMAP server address. The old server URL is not used to connect to anything. It just tells MailMate where to look for these emails in its database.

    But you should very rarely need to change the IMAP server URL. If it's not the exact same account with a different server address then you really should create a new account and then delete the old one.

    Nevertheless, this should never result in a loss of emails. MailMate should never delete anything unless explicitly asked to do so. Are you sure nothing else is connected to the account, for example, a POP3 email client (which often deletes emails server side some time after fetching them). Right now I don't see how MailMate would decide to delete any emails even if the account settings is a bit messed up.

    I'm very interested in tracking down if this is some kind of MailMate bug. Therefore I would like to ask you not to delete the account and re-add it just yet. But make sure you have a backup of your emails.

    You can keep the activity viewer open (⌥⌘0) and then if you notice “auto-deletion” happen then use “Help ▸ Send Server Logs” as soon as possible. Then I'll look for any suspicious behavior in the actions of MailMate.

  • Thomas Helmrich

    Thomas Helmrich December 26th, 2016 @ 11:04 PM

    Hi Benny,

    hopefully i had an (older) Backup - still missing some mails.
    Other connects:
    Don´t have any POP3 or something else connected. Just one thing - an webmailer (Rouncube - IMAP) and GMAIL via Android ( also IMAP ).

    Account and change of IMAP Server: It was the exact same account - (almost) same postfix / dovecot config, just on another server.

    I recognized one more thing: If i want to send an E-Mail with the changed-mail account, the account itself does not appear in the FROM select box- just my three other Accounts.

    Thanks,
    Thomas

  • benny

    benny December 28th, 2016 @ 01:23 PM

    When I write “exactly same account” then I mean it in the strongest sense possible. In particular, each mailbox should have the exact same UIDVALIDITY value. If this is not the case then at best, MailMate would just forget and then refetch all emails. At worst, some UIDVALIDITY values would, by random, be the same while the ordering of emails would be different. This could lead to wrongly mapped emails. I don't think this is very likely to happen with Dovecot though.

    Which account has the problem with the disappearing emails?

    The missing From is a sign that the “Email Address(es)” field is not correct in the related account (check via “File ▸ Edit IMAP Account ▸ ...”.

    Has it happened again? If it happens fairly often then there's a change we could get some logs as I described in my previous comment.

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