Can't take accounts back online

When you received the message I assume it was in a window offering you two ways to rebuild? You should not need to manually do a printf command. I'm not sure exactly what kind of state MailMate is currently in, but it sounds like rebuilding has not finished. Are you sure an Import window is not shown somewhere (which has not finished yet)? The accounts cannot be taken online before rebuilding has finished.

My current internet connection is flaky (I'm on vacation). Therefore, here are instructions to start over without deleting accounts, signatures, and smart mailbox settings:

You can refetch all messages from the server(s) by removing the following folders:

~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Database.noindex
~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Messages
~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Attachments

In your case, probably also:

~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/OldDatabase

Then launch MailMate. The accounts should start to synchronize with the server(s).

I am also very interested in the error shown when MailMate asked to rebuild and any events leading up to this. This is not something that should happen very often. (In theory, it could happen when restoring from a backup, but that is the only known case.)

Hi -

I've been using MailMate for a couple weeks in trial mode, and generally love it compared to the default Mail client. However, I just ran into this exact issue and came across this ticket via a google search. I didn't think too much about it when I got the "database needs to be rebuilt" message. The app has been so rock solid that I just clicked on the option to rebuild it from the cached messages. I have about 40,000 messages in my combined inboxes (yeah, I know...), so I didn't want to redownload them from the server. Anyway, it completed the rebuild in a few minutes, and then it crashed. I relaunched it, and got the option to send the anonymous report, which I did (this was like 5 minutes ago). But now it's in the "stuck offline" mode that Dennis reported above.

Before I do anything else, is there any log file or anything you want me to send?

@jimw: Just to be sure. Have you tried selecting an account under SOURCES in the mailbox outline and then use “Take Online”?

Did you try restarting MailMate before telling it to rebuild the database?

Oops, duh, doing what you suggested worked fine. I guess I assumed that things would automatically go back online after the rebuild. I had "Inbox" selected under MAILBOXES, so that's why I wasn't seeing the option to take it online.

About the db rebuild, here's what happened:

• I got the error dialog saying something was corrupt, and I need to rebuild the db. Should have taken a screenshot. I think the options were to do nothing, to rebuild from local cache, or to rebuild from server. I think at this point I decided to do nothing and quit.
• Relaunched, and got the same message, so I figured I should rebuild, so I chose rebuild from cache. Took a few minutes to do the rebuild, and then it crashed.
• Relaunched, got the message to send the crash report, which I did anonymously.

Now after taking the accounts back online, everything seems fine...

Are there any log files or anything I should send you?

I'm afraid there is no usefull logging available now. If it happens again then let me know and if I reply quickly then we can try debugging the issue before rebuilding.

The accounts are not taking online automatically because the user should have a chance to review the result before synchronizing with the server. I realize this can be confusing, but the solution is probably to make it easier to see that something is offline and to take it online.

Cool, I'll keep an eye out for it.

If it happens again, is there anything I can do to preserve the state of things right when it's happened, then temporarily get on with rebuilding the db and using the app to actually get email in the meantime (it's a pain to leave it in an unusable state)? Like if I archive the entire ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate folder right then, could we then go back to that in order to debug?

@jimw: Yes, renaming that folder would to the trick and then later you can swap the folders (while MailMate is not running) to get back to the failure state. It'll take up a lot of space though if you have a large message store.

As a data point, I just saw this as well (all accounts were in an offline state, with 'take online' disabled).

Apparently the MailMate data got corrupted at some point (this happened after an unexpected machine crash). I chose the offered 'rebuild from cache' option to fix it (rather than 're-download'), which was probably was not the right choice, as after it rebuild & restarted, everything was offline with no apparent way to bring it back online.

I deleted the subdirs you indicated above, and after a re-download on all accounts, everything seems back to normal.

@unroo: This shows that I should change what happens after a rebuild. MailMate deliberately takes the account(s) offline in order to let the user review them before synchronizing with the server. You can take them online by right-clicking them under SOURCES and choose “Take Online”.

I'm not sure how MailMate should behave though, but I'll give it some thought.

Benny,
Actually the 'take online' option was grayed out, as the users above also were seeing. I definitely had internet connectivity. It may have still been in some intermediate state if there was something problematic about the rebuild from cache?

@unroo: Ok, I'll assume MailMate had not finished rebuilding, but I'll keep an eye out for bugs in this area.