Re: [Evolution] Mail file corrupt

[Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh pacbell net>]

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 10:01 +0200, opensource webmail co za wrote:
> hi
>
> I was composing an e-mail when the power went out.  Now I cannot start/use
> evolution.  It starts up but ten freezes with a message in the right panel
> "searching folders".
>
> Please I have important business e-mails in there. Can I recover it? and how?
>
> I run Ubuntu 9.04.

Is your mail archive local or on a server?  If it's local, this has
worked for me.  If it's on a server, ask someone else:

Change directories to ~/.evolution/mail/local

You will see a large number of files of the forms:
        ...
        Inbox
        Inbox.cmeta
        Inbox.ibex.index
        Inbox.ibex.index.data
        ...
The files of the form *.cmeta, *.ibex.index, and *.ibex.index.data are
indexes into the data file, here Inbox.

To fix things:
     1. Stop evolution by running "$ evolution --force-shutdown"
     2. Back up .../local by copying it to somewhere safe: say in
        ~/.evolution/mail run "$ cp -a local ~/evolution-mail-backup"
     3. Delete all of the index files mentioned above.  In
        ~/.evolution/mail/local run "rm -f *.cmeta *.ibex*".  Check that
        all the index info is gone.  If you have any subfolders, this
        procedure will have to be modified appropriately.
     4. Start evolution, which will re-create all of the index files.
     5. Make sure everything is OK.
You should now be back in business.

jon