Kolab 3.4 - Recovery of previously lost emails in Inbox using the reconstruct command leaves all emails marked as unread

[Andy Kopciuch]

On Tuesday October 13 2015 00:33:51 Homer Dokes wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> I have a Kolab 3.4 server set up with about 60 users.  Today one of
> those users needed to shut down their workstation for some office work
> to be done.  Once he did, his IPhone (also configured for the kolab
> server) suddenly lost all emails in the inbox.  Further review through
> the roundcubemail web interface showed all inbox email gone.  All other
> sub directories were fully intact.
> 
> I could see that the emails actually were still in the users mailbox
> (directory) on the server and I was able to restore the inbox emails
> using the reconstruct command however all emails are now showing unread
> (only in the Inbox, all sub directories are showing as read) and all
> marked for deletion emails are showing not deleted so I now show over 17
> thousand emails and the quota is exceeded.
>

https://docs.kolab.org/administrator-guide/backup-and-restore.html

You should take a look at the details for unexpunge there.  You have to 
remember when messages are :

1.  marked as deleted

_and_

2.  expunged from the users mailbox

... the files are still physically on disk in the mailbox.   The settings are 
defaulted to not expire the message and remove it from disk for 69 days.

Depending on how you ran reconstruct, you probably read every expunged message 
from disk, and restored them as "new".

I remember a client had some problems with certain iphone versions, iphone 
mail clients, etc.   The phone would delete and expunge all messages in the 
inbox.   I had to unexpunge accounts a few times.   I don't remember all the 
details from their techs, but I think they probably just toasted the email 
account on the phone and re-created it once it was working.


Andy