-----Original Message----- From: Anders Johansson [mailto:andjoh@rydsbo.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 4:04 PM
On Monday 11 November 2002 17.43, KMcLauchlan@chrysalis-its.com wrote:
To re-iterate, everything has been working for months with no problem, right up until Friday at 17h30. This morning... suddenly a problem.
I haven't seen this in a while, but in the past kmail had a problem with its index files. every once in a while they would become corrupt and need regeneration. As I said I haven't seen that particular problem in a long while, but it could be worth a try.
Try removing from your Mail folder (/home/<username>/Mail) all index files. these are files starting with a dot and containing the word index, such as .inbox.index.
Those files contain information kmail uses to read large folders faster, and also information about which mails have been read. When you start kmail they will be regenerated, although unfortunately you'll lose information about which mails you've already read. No critical information will have been lost though.
ok... so that might be the problem, then... but I don't know how to fix it... There ARE no ".inbox" files of any sort in the Mail directory. Under /home/kmclauchlan/Mail are the standard directories ... inbox, outbox, sent-mail, trash and drafts, along with another bunch that I created for mailbox management. None of them have index files. I tried starting KMail again today, and all of the standard directories show today's date (when I do ls -l). The other directories have Nov 8. This suggests that KMail is getting at least as far as touching all of those directories, before it craps out. BTW, if it's not already obvious, I'm using directories, and not mbox. I also tried Carlos' suggestion of creating another user on my system and running KMail. KMail runs for that user. This tells me that either a file (or several) is corrupted in my own user space, or I have somehow messed up my configuration while I was away from the office, over the weekend, and not touching my office PC in any way (and my ongoing experience of Linux suggests that either one is equally likely... or both). But, how do I find out what is screwed up? If I knew what I was doing, what would be my obvious next step? Could it be as simple as just "touch"ing inbox.index and related filenames, and hoping that KMail will just start re-building them? I don't want to mess it up any worse than it is, but of course, it ain't doin' me much good right now. Does anybody have a suggestion for a least-damaging alternative mail app? Does KMail use its own formats, or would another, common reader be able to handle the mail chores until I get KMail working? I've been very pleased with KMail until just a few days ago :-) I have several stored messages that are kinda required for my work, if only I knew which (of hundreds or thousands) of numbered mail-message files they might be. Thanks, /kevin (now with 1079 messages in his Outlook inbox...)