emails have disappeared, folders and message count remains

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emails have disappeared, folders and message count remains

I have an osx 10.7.5 server.

oddly, one of my client emails has disappeared... well, the email address still exists, and the folder structure still exists. if i log in to the email via [server]/webmail the email folder structure is complete, and each folder shows "Messages x to y of z" (eg. Messages 1 to 28 of 28)

it has only happened on one of many users account, and I don't know what caused it. the time machine backup had failed, so the backup was useless (I wonder if this is linked) and spotlight appears to index continuously(again possibly linked). I made a clone of the drive, and upgraded to El.Cap server, now the time machine is working again, however the emails for this one user are still missing. each folder shows the correct number of emails however only shows a single email with no sender and a subject of (no subject) then when trying to access the email via webmail a message shows "could not load message from server"

any ideas? would be greatly appreciated.

Mac Mini Server (Late 2012), OS X Server

Posted on Dec 20, 2015 3:37 AM

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Answer 1

B.Holmberg Author

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Dec 20, 2015 4:18 AM in response to B.Holmberg

further information, I have:

- tried mail - mailbox - rebuild on the users computer. (osx El.Cap user)

- tried repairing permissions and verifying disk using disk utility.

- looked on the users computer in the [user]/Library/Mail/V2/[imap-account] where the folder structure exists in mbox form, but no data emails within.

- found on the server Library/Sever/Mail/Data, however unable to work out which file or folder may be the appropriate one, and/or how to see emails within.

with an educated guess (creation date, and size) I THINK I know which folder is the offending client folder, its size shows as 1.07GB, however within I can only account for around 60KB

I am currently making a SuperDuper clone of the drive before making further changes, as time machine will not work on this build.

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Answer 2

cdhw

Level 4

3,588 points

Dec 20, 2015 2:25 PM in response to B.Holmberg

If what you say is correct it seems very like a disk issue to me. Having cloned the disk with a block level copy such as dd, my next move would be to break out my favourite recovery utility, which is Disk Warrior 5:

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

I have no affiliation with Alsoft, but I've used DW to fix server disks with bad directories on multiple occasions over the years with great success. DW 5 is a 64 bit version so it can fix the huge directories associated with Time Machine backups too. If you plan to use it, don't run other repair facilities first as it likes to be 'first on the scene'.

C.

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Answer 3

B.Holmberg Author

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Dec 20, 2015 2:26 PM in response to cdhw

that sounds like a logical next step. I will have a try over night when the office is closed. thanks.

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Answer 4

B.Holmberg Author

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Jan 2, 2016 3:21 AM in response to B.Holmberg

SOLUTION FOUND: vague but mostly successful.

DiskWorrior took a VERY long time and didn't seem to provide me with a solution. a number of other attempts also failed miserably.

I then started up on another cloned disk for a bit of disaster protection, deleted all of the other email accounts on the lion server from the server application, leaving just the problem email, then updated to El.Capitan, plus the new server app off the app store.

After the server app had processed (this took at least 10 hours to process) the email was about 4/3 restored, while the other 1/4 showed the message but the content was garbled encodings which were pretty useless, other than to show that an email once existed in its place!. We're cutting our losses, writing off that 1/4, and moving the successfully restored emails to a new user on the primary install, where everything appears to be working perfectly normally, including the time machine backup.

I hope this information helps someone in the future.

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