Hi Jeffrey,
thanks for your reply. Just at the moment I fixed the problem, I saw your message coming in. Those 'sudo serveradmin' commands are very useful. Just don't know too many of them, but I checked this one. And it now all points correctly. It has one line where it points to the volume, and that's ok also. Here is my solution I found and adapted a little bit:
First of all .. I truelly can't say it loud enough how much I am relieved to see it all working again. And have all my mail (plus all flags and such) back! Ok, here is the solution: I found the following thread which had the same kind of problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4991270
In my case my volume didn't come offline due to a network issue or such. But changing the volume name actually did the same 'trick'. So I gathered I could use the same approach here as it was in the referred thread above. Two issues came together here:
(1) Somehow, due to the volume renaming, OS X Server and Mavericks, got confused. And I ended up with a physical volume "Macintosh HD 2", but having two mounting points. If I looked in Disk Utiliy it showed that my physical volume "Macintosh HD 2" had a mounting point "Macintosh HD 2 1". But when looking in "/Volumes" (CMDshift-G->"/Volumes"), I could see an erroneous volume "Macintosh HD 2" which was in fact a folder. A so-called ghost volume. In this way Mavericks had 'mounted' a ghost volume with the original name, and when mounting the original volume it added a number to it. Big ****.
(2) To make the chaos complete, OS X Server, upon restarting, referred back to it's default. Which is on "Macintosh HD". Going back simply says that it already has data on that, and wants to destroy that. No good.
Finding the above mentioned case/thread and looking at the reasoning behind it, it all followed logic. I won't repeat the whole solution from that thread. Just my specific actions. So yes, I first created backups of my original "/Library/Server" directory+files. Via Terminal with a 'cp -pR' and onto another disk. I also looked at the different security settings of the original volume and the ghost volume. I needed to re-establish the normal ownership on "/Library", via a 'sudo chown _dovecot:admin'. I then followed directions of the mentioned thread/solution. My adaptions in those were that I did not delete the ghost volume, nor did I do a deletion of the temporary "Library/Server" in the latter part of the solution. I simply renamed some things. So here is what I did:
- 1. In Finder I renamed the ghost volume "Macintosh HD 2" -> "Macintosh HD 2ghost". By checking this in Terminal at "/Volumes", that one did show up correctly. So that's the first step.
- 2. In Disk Utility I dismounted the original "Macintosh HD 2" and remounted it. After that, the mounting point showed up normal again, being just the volume name itself. Without the added number. Checking again in Terminal at "/Volume" also turned out ok. So good on track here.
- 3. On the (now correctly mounted) original volume I renamed the "/Library/Server" -> "/Library/Server_old".
- 4. In Server.app I then changed (via 'Edit Services Data location') to the original volume again. This lead to a "/Library/Server" on "Macintosh HD 2". So far so good.
- 5. In Server.app I chose to stop the Mail service. Just to be sure.
- 6. Then (in Finder) on "Macintosh HD 2" I renamed the newly created "Library/Server" to "/Library/Server_new". And after that renamed "/Library/Server_old" -> "/Library/Server"
Immediately after this, to my surprise and BIG relieve, I received an email message on one of the 'lost' accounts. I did see however that Profile Manager in OS X Server stopped. So to be sure I stopped/started Mail service. And also Profile Manager. They all came up perfectly!
Lessons learned (and a narrow escape from heartfailure...). NEVER, EVER CHANGE THE VOLUME NAME WHERE OS X SERVER HAS IT'S DATA STORED. And if so, then immediately backup the whole "/Library/Server" stuff and follow directions above.
Pfff, couldn't be a happier girl right now. Finally adding some sleep here.
